Restoring my 33 year old Falcon

[steffiemorris 14]

Hi Guys,  I am new  to this forum as a member. Reason for joining was my recent discovery in a very old storage box of my childhood love, the Tamiya Falcon. I got the car from my dad for my birthday when i was just a little kid. It was the start of a lot of RC car joy in my childhood and eventually the move to 1/8 Nitro stockcar racing. (http://www.modelstockcar.nl/) After going to college i left it al behind just to rediscover it this month after 30 years.

So i came across the Falcon and it inmediately sparkled joy on my face. although most components would probably be broken I really wanted to get the car running again.  First thing was ordering several batteries. For the transmitter and receiver, and for the motor on the Falcon. Once the batteries arrived I had quite some work cleaning all the contacts and stuff, but the transmitter and receiver, a very old Robbe Compact 27Mhz, still worked! so there was a first run! and it felt great! after a few minutes though i had a runaway. The falcon was still equiped with a fysical speed controller and the receiver apparantly went out of range, so without safety measures built in the old 27Mhz equipment the throttle kept open and the car went away, unfortunately crashing into a wall.\

I did some searching into the new stuff, and am still not sure why the old 27Mhz equipment only works for about 70Meters, but i did find that a modern ESC could help me implement some easy safety measures. I bought a Hobbywing 1060 ESC. This will stop throttle once the receiver is out of range. (more about the hobbywing in a next post).

Some of the things to do are finding or making new rear rim's (i think i will try to 3d print one). I want to find some tyres that have grip on asphalt as the current ones are slicks with no grip at all anymore.
I want to fix the steering. There is a lot of free play in the steering, like in the balljoints. But also a lot of free play on the axle and the bearings of the frontwheel. The wheels have been upgraded with steel ballbearings at some point, but the axles were never replaced so the old nylon bearings really have worn those down.

If anyone has suggestions or advice, please let me know!   

Edited May 19, 2020 by steffiemorris
typo's

[steffiemorris 14]

About the wheels of The Falcon. It seems very hard to get the original wheels. They don't have a standard connection on the hub. They use 4 knobs instead of more modern hex connection. (Does anyone know what the proper name for the old type connection is?).
One of the wheels on the falcon is broken. Somehow the hole for the axle has become much bigger, and a piece of the frontside has chipped off. This means the rim can''t be mounted straight on anymore. When tightening the rim it gets pushed to the side a bit.

So i was thinking of 3d printing them for now, so i can at least do some testdriving. And once i get the wheels correctly, I could change the outer diameter to be able to fit other tyres that can be bought while still keeping the style of the Falcon.
If anyone has suggestions for tyres or rim's?

When printing the wheels they need quite a bit of support material during printing to support the flanges on the wheel. I added a photo of my first attempt. I am quite pleased with the result and looks. And don't be scared by the color of the print material  This is the cheapest PLA and I use it for drafting and prototyping objects   On the left is an original wheel, backside with the 4 knobs, the rightside is the first attempt of a 3d printed one. It still has the support structure that needs to be cut away.

[Garyrc01 9]

Welcome to the forum!  Nice to hear that you are resurrecting your childhood Falcon.  For the issues you mentioned (wheels, tires and worn out front upright), these parts are compatible with the ones from Grasshopper ii, re-released in 2017, so you should have no problem finding those spare parts on places like fleabay, plus price should be reasonable.  The only difference is that the Grasshopper ii's wheels come in white instead of yellow, so you may want to dye them yellow to match the original wheel color of your Falcon.

As for play in the steering, perhaps the steering adjusters are worn out?  May need to replace them with new ones.

Hope this helps!

[steffiemorris 14]

It sure helps! I was looking online, but in The Netherlands, or Europe, haven't found much yet. Or not at a reasonable price at least. So probably making a list and ordering in from US maybe. So for now my 3d printed stuff will keep me going in the short-term I guess

As for the steering, the ballbearing play on the axles is the worst. Next are the steering adjusters in the servo plate. It is just a 2mm rod that hooks into the hole of the servo plate, and a balljoint on the side of the wheels. Maybe some ball-joints on both ends there would be a better way to go? Does anyone have experience with that?

[jlcox7 16]

Falcon is my favorite kit from Tamiya, great to hear you are getting it ready to run again. The design made the car very brittle in the front to begin with, and now the plastics are all 30+ years old, compounding the issue. I found some hope from a Youtube channel called Ampro Engineering - (Search Ampro- Falcon on youtube) they have 3D printed some replacement parts for the falcon, redesigned the front end and year arms- along with the battery mount/shock tower. You should check it out, the guy sells the parts, and they are a bit pricey - but if I ever plan to run my falcon again, I will be getting the front end chassis re-enforcement for sure. Let us know how it goes, always good to hear from another Falcon lover.

 

[steffiemorris 14]

As of today, with some stagetape and some new components it was a runner  I am not yet ready to invest large amounts of money. I still have to find out for myself how much i like it, and how much i can spend on a hobby like this. So could well be that i have to do with DIY parts for the time being. I did find the ampro yt channel, and his shapeways store and of course bookmarked them!!

 

[steffiemorris 14]

So, a little update in chronological order. First thing i did was buying a battery and an ESC. After i ran it for the first time with an old battery and seperate (new) batteries for the receiver the car lost reception of my old transmitter and i had a runaway. That hurt a bit, since it took some extra damage.
So i ordered a Hobbywing quicrun 1060 ESC and connected it.

Unfortunately, for my old-style transmitter/receiver it was working the wrong way around. Throttle was actually braking and braking was throttle. There was no way to turn this around on the ESC since forward and reverse apparently have different resistance. So i had to take a look at the transmitter to fix this. My old Robbe Compact doesn't have any switches to reverse the signal, but after opening it up, turning around the stick was quite easy, so that was a quickfix. Now the motor turned the right way and the next step was to get a new rim for the car to be able to drive a bit.

Some photo's down below, and the first photo of how the car survived 33 years of following me in boxes while moving to several locations in my career.

The car after a bit of cleaning and the new battery and ESC

The ESC. (I do have to find a good mounting position. The cables are to short to actually put it somewhere else i guess).

My Old Robbe Compact transmitter

Below the original position of the throttlestick, with the trim on the left side.

 

I could do an easy rotate of the throttle stick. The trim is no on the rightside, but with a modern ESC the trim is not needed. (The ESC "selfcenters" on each power-up).

[mongoose1983 3334]

Welcome to the Club. I once had a Falcon. It's a nice chassis.

Oh, and I have the exact same radio. I love it. And my cousin had that one too, back in the day. There is a Futaba version of that radio, too. Great stuff.

[Falcon#5 591]

Great to see some love for the Falcon!

[steffiemorris 14]

On 5/23/2020 at 2:54 AM, mongoose1983 said:

Welcome to the Club. I once had a Falcon. It's a nice chassis.

Oh, and I have the exact same radio. I love it. And my cousin had that one too, back in the day. There is a Futaba version of that radio, too. Great stuff.

I do have some challenges with this radio. The range is only about 50 metres. 30 years ago it was 100+ metres without a problem. Not sure if this is fixable

[Falcon#5 591]

2 hours ago, steffiemorris said:

I do have some challenges with this radio. The range is only about 50 metres. 30 years ago it was 100+ metres without a problem. Not sure if this is fixable

2.4GHz will fix that, piece of cake.

[slimleeroy 241]

What is the blue cloth in there for? 

[Problemchild 2147]

I loved my falcon build - managed to build 3 from 2 ebay purchases

the one I’ve kept is pretty much made from all brand new parts 

JJ

[steffiemorris 14]

 

Quote

What is the blue cloth in there for?

 

It was a bit of protection cushioning around the receiver. Has been in there for 30 years

 

[mongoose1983 3334]

19 hours ago, steffiemorris said:

I do have some challenges with this radio. The range is only about 50 metres. 30 years ago it was 100+ metres without a problem. Not sure if this is fixable

Check the antenna cable for creases or other problems. Also, keep it away from the modern ESC you're using.

If damaged, you can change the antenna cable for one with the exact length to keep the thing receiving signals as back in the day. But the cable must be the very same type. I've done that in the past with success.

[steffiemorris 14]

On 5/25/2020 at 7:05 AM, mongoose1983 said:

Check the antenna cable for creases or other problems. Also, keep it away from the modern ESC you're using.

If damaged, you can change the antenna cable for one with the exact length to keep the thing receiving signals as back in the day. But the cable must be the very same type. I've done that in the past with success.

Antenna cable still looks perfect.  I will try to route it as far away from the ESC as possible, though it is in the same car, so not sure how far away is possible

I do have another receiver, and a few other sets of crystal's maybe that can help a bit. I'll first try everything out of the car to see how far the actual reach is.

[steffiemorris 14]

On 5/24/2020 at 8:31 PM, Problemchild said:

I loved my falcon build - managed to build 3 from 2 ebay purchases

the one I’ve kept is pretty much made from all brand new parts 

JJ

nice! do you have a photo of your car in current state?

[steffiemorris 14]

This evening I started detaching the front shocks to inspect them a bit better. I did drive the car yesterday although it is holding together with some ducttape here and there.
The front shocks still look ok visibly. No real wear on the outside. The dampener rod though doesn't run as smooth as i think it should. The last 6mm don't extend themselves just by the power of the spring when released slowly. It feels like all the oil is still inside.

Before i open them, potentally ruining the o-rings that are inside now, where can I get replacement parts? I did some searching, but couldn't just find the rubber parts as replacement.

And more of a tuning question, when i did some reading-up i saw there are different damper discs (different size of the holes) that could be put in when building the Falcon. What is the most preferable setup? Right now it al looks quite stiff. When driving over bumps, the car bumps a bit as well. I would imagine the shocks need to absorp some of it? When jumping from a ramp it looks like it uses most of the suspension travel.

and 3rd. What easy dampening oil can i get to fill the shocks with, once i open them up? are there alternatives to tamiya shock oil? is the current tamiya oil still the same viscosity as back in the 80's and usable for the falcon?

I forgot to take some pictures when i disasassembled the shocks, so i quick last picture when i put them back in for now.

 

 

[steffiemorris 14]

So, Time for a new update again. I am very happy that I have found several parts new or used via E-bay. This took quite some time, so i didn't have an update earlier. I did manage to drive the car a little bit with all the old parts but a new radio. I wend for a used Spektrum with an SRS6000 receiver that has AVC. (more on that later).
First some pictures of the parts.

New tyres, front and rear.
New aftermarket balljoints
Shock o-rings and oil
Front-Uprights with axles
Rear axles and wishbones.

I am glad i was able to get the front uprights and the rear axles and wishbones, allthough my model doesn't need the rear axle and wishbones at the moment. (So maybe they are up for sale again). These parts are used in a demo model so allthough they look dirty, they don't have much wear to them. I'll give them i nice clean in the ultrasonic this weekend.

 

[TheOtherGuy 15]

You made progress... looking forward to seeing the fixed and ready Falcon...