Tiny Nitro - 1/16th Meteor 2020

[hedge 314]

I seemed to remember back in the mid 90s a small 1/18 - 1/14 scale nitro Losi but for the life of me I cannot find any details on line. However since that day I have always wondered what they would be like. There are a number of clones that have come and gone (NB, Meteor, Acme etc), however recently there was either a re-release or a new batch or some new old stock that hit the shelves of Nitrotek UK. Given my recent enthusiasm to try a few cars I missed / want I grabbed one.

Yesterday I spent an hour or so running through the engine break in so we are ready for a bit of faster action on the next outing. Its a real shame, but the instructions are very poor, a single booklet covers 3 scales, 1/16, 1/10 and 1/5th electric, nitro and petrol cars. In addition to being brief and light weight, they are also contradictory. In one paragraph they state to break the engine in carefully, then in the next it states that the engine is broken in at the factory. I can assure you all it was not broken in. Also given the size and cost of these cars they will appeal to first timers but the instructions are so poor that anyone new will most probably have a very tough time which is a shame.

Finally its a gem of a car, even in the slow driving of the break in I can tell it handles well. I run it at the same place the TGS 1/10th and Mardave Marauder 1/8th run and it handles it no problem in fact of the four cars I run there (TT-02s, TGS, Mardave and this) I expect this to lap the quickest. The car is like a watch, I can't believe there is enough room for all the kit! It comes RTR just add batteries and fuel, however I put my own receiver in so I can use my normal radio. I then tweaked the set up of the throttle, brake and steering to make sure nothing binds as I am sure the servos will benefit from as little binding as possible.

Can't believe how similar it is to my 1/8th scale Losi 8ight, looks like its it child!

 

Edited August 26, 2020 by hedge
Added search relevance to title.

[Collin 1956]

I had the electric version of it for running in my flat, just for fun in winter. No, it was a Kyosho mini. Anyway, I sold it very soon. I thing 1:10 ist a very brilliant scale, everything else is to tiny or to big.

[hedge 314]

23 hours ago, Collin said:

I had the electric version of it for running in my flat, just for fun in winter. No, it was a Kyosho mini. Anyway, I sold it very soon. I thing 1:10 ist a very brilliant scale, everything else is to tiny or to big.

I have lots of sizes of the same stuff, cars bikes and helis. While I find the small stuff harder to work on, when its good quality kit the performance is there and makes it worth while. My Micro RC bike is probably the most used piece of RC I have due to the accessibility of running it. My big helis are nice but the batteries to power them are insanely dangerous, so unless I have time to monitor charging I just default to the Nitro stuff.  

Any how this is a quick run, I was at the flying field and back to back driving - flying - driving and stupidly did not do a sanity check on this "new built" model for loose screws and stuff soooo after four runs, on the third lap there was only one half backed out screw (one of four) holding the engine to the engine block which of course did not end well for the spur gear although I managed to partially save it, its been well shaved! Grabbed a back up just in case. My fault entirely.

Nearly tuned in, high end seems OK, need a few more runs to get the low end back to where it needs to be and then polish off the high end.

 

[Collin 1956]

Wow,... tiny but really agile.

[hedge 314]

I am a bit torn. I find it hard to recommend this car, yet I really like it. Ive been running it for a little over a week now and in that short time there have been a number of issues that needed addressing one of which may well be the nail in the coffin for this car. 

I will run through the issues, some may well be localised to my car, but hopefully one day someone will find this thread and get a small piece of value out of it.

1) The throttle linkage at the carb end is the old Z bend, but the carb arm is so thin the Z bend rod does not form a tight connection and can slip through the carb arm effectively jamming the car into a jogging speed idle. I added a small O'ring to pad the connection and stop the slop / slip. Ultimately the best solution would be proper rod ends and ball joints.

2) The steering circle is huge, not just for a small car but actually huge, my 1/8th scales can turn in a smaller circle. Easy fix right... well I made it tighter by extending the steering linkage connector out one hole on the servo horn. I then promptly lost a drive shaft - I know I should have checked! Luckily it was in my small garden so said shaft was easily found. I have now padded the drive cups with neoprene spacers like you find in some Tamiya builds, no more lost drive shafts.

3) The engine mount bolts holding the engine to the mount unscrewed themselves and disappeared. My fault entirely but worth checking before each run.

4) Not such an issue more an observation. I always use 25% buggy nitro across all my land vehicles. I also always use OS#6 hot plugs in land based stuff (OS#8s in helicopters) however the #6 seemed to be too much for the little engine, swapping the #6 for a cooler #8 seemed to do the trick.

5) The steering was tight, real tight. There where two prompts, first when setting the steering for a tighter turning circle I realised the steering was tight - hard to move, the second prompt was I went through the RX battery really quick. Thankfully, and this is a credit to the car, the Steering servo did not burn out during this period. There where two problems, the fuel tank was tight up against the steering pillar on the left, it was actually acting like a brake. Now the tank is between this column and the spur gear! Yikes. So I carefully removed some material from the tank seam where it goes around the steering pillar - check, file, refit, check file.... etc. Eventually with not much material removed we had clearance. The second rather non issue was the ball joint was very tight on the right hand side. A quick resize with a ball reamer and all was nice and loose. Also the ackerman steering bar dos not allow full movement of the steering, the raised stoppers on the bar require shaving by about half a mm each side to achieve a good steering lock.

6) I lost the tune, the manual does not have factory settings but I found someone online who had a similar engine and said...

HSN flush with brass tube then in one turn (360degrees)
LSN flush with tube then in half (1/2) a turn (180 degrees)
Throttle stop screw approx. 1mm gap

Seems to work ok, back to a rich but running car working just as you would expect.

7) The biggie! Now the car is able to happily run in 1/10th - 1/8th territory, that is to say I run it where I run all my cars and on the whole its 100% fine. Except its not. The size of the car means that it gets caught up on sticks that a 1/10th or 1/8th would not notice. In a few cases this means the whole drive train is stopped in an instant. On one of these occasions after clearing it the car would not run well - it was now FWD only. On stripping it down the bevel gear that connects the main drive shaft to the differential was free to move on its shaft - it should be solid. Now there is no upgrade part for this, just a few spares, they are not expensive but they are absolutely critical to the car moving and like most novelty vehicles I cant see the 1/16th Meteor spare parts being supported for any length of time. Soooo I am looking at an alternative as we speak. There is a 1/16th buggy called an NB that appears to have a similar gear albeit a single piece of cast metal - can't see that stripping. Problem is I dont know how many teeth it has, so, if this is not right (I'll return it) then there is a further 1/16th model which has a metal cast bevel of the same teeth count (11t). In either case I am happy to shorten and flatten shafts and change bearings to fit the new shaft diameter, I just hope the teeth mesh well. The reason I went the NB route first was its UK shipped, whereas this other vehicle comes from banggood so will take a while to get here. In the meantime I have a couple of spares to keep me going.

However I do love this little car, it starts really well and in general is fun to drive as its quite snappy and well planted. However unless I am just unlucky then the issues I've had would lead to many just giving up and selling it on or worse, leaving it in the cupboard getting dusty, hence I would not recommend it. Shame really.

Edited August 27, 2020 by hedge
Added pictures

[hedge 314]

 Can’t believe I’ve had this almost a year now. I stuck with it and ordered the metal 11t drive shaft to gearbox gears. They are not an aftermarket part or indeed even for this little car but the pitch and teeth are what I needed. The shaft on one is twice as long as the other so that was dremmeled and flattened off. 
 

Have not had much runtime on it but broke it out a couple of weeks ago and been running it since. The gears are all holding up so far which is great. There is only a single bearing guiding these into the gearbox and I don’t like the slop but I’ve tightened the drive cup as much as possible to reduce it. 
 

The radio gear is powered by a little AAA 4 pack RX battery harness. I had wanted to put a 2s LiFe in the radio box but it just would not fit so I had left it. Fast forward to today and I’d got a 3D printer for Christmas so I made a new radio box lid that was slightly taller and allowed the 2s LiFe to fit. This is actually lid #3 with the relocated switch. All works really well, very happy.

It’s such a cool little nitro, I just hope it continues to work :-)

 

 

[hedge 314]

Got a new shell for the pocket nitro. It’s the electric version but with a bit of cutting out it fits ok. Also worn drive cups anyone :-)

[hedge 314]

Well I got around 30 runs out of the gearboxes before the new metal drive pinions shaved the tops off the plastic teethed diffs they meet with. I found these while searching for 1/16th stuff. Not for my car but  they look really really similar in design so I will take a punt. It will mean metal to metal, although I still think I need to remove slop from both the diff gear itself and the drive pinion.

They are for a ZD Racing RAPTORS BX-16 which looks just like another clone of this car, although to be fair I am not sure who the original is Raptors BX-16, Wind Hobby or Meteor. Or perhaps they are all clones of the Acme NB16, or all clones of the old hard to even google Losi Nitro??

Fingers crossed this solves the gear stripping drive issues.

 

 

 

[hedge 314]

Unfortunately they don’t fit, c’est la vie. Going to go back to the plastic diffs but shim them even tighter. Such a shame.

[mtbkym01 4008]

This is cool, I was eyeing off one of the Kyosho Mini’s years ago, this has me interested in one again

[hedge 314]

On 8/17/2021 at 11:33 AM, mtbkym01 said:

This is cool, I was eyeing off one of the Kyosho Mini’s years ago, this has me interested in one again

Its a lovely little thing, its like a watch... but its also a pain. Currently the metal drive gear stripped the plastic main diff gear! Quite common when addressing an issue you simply push the fault down stream to th next weakest link. However I have recently received a set of shims that are the perfect size to sit between the drive gear and sit on the ballrace race face. This will allow me to tighten the drive shaft to the drive cup without friction. The net effect should be a more stable slop free drive gear coupling to the plastic diff gear. Hope to test in the next few weeks.