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The 800 pound gorilla

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11 hours ago, markbt73 said:

Ha! Well, if that's the case, then they certainly shot themselves in the foot by making products that are so standardized and modular and take advantage of parts-bin engineering. They're just crying out to be modified. Or cannibalized for other projects.

Like I sort of hinted in my post, it's more of a feeling - I have no evidence at all to back up what I posted, but maybe in my isolated state I'm starting to build narratives that support what I want to believe rather than what's really going on (just like the people in any group whose political views don't align with mine do ;) )

I was interested to see what some of the responses would be so thank you for being one of them :)

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Well, for me there is a huge difference, i like building models, paint models, design (i must like the look of it).

TraXXas deliver ready to drive Clones (also the design shout to younger generations), its all about competition and driving, so at the moment they do not speak to me at all, same with Schumacher, ofc all this can change if i get more into just driving, but i do not see that happen if not one off my daughters drag me in there :)

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15 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

Unfortunately this is at odds with the state of today's world.  We keep building bigger, faster trucks to sell to people who wouldn't know they wanted them if they weren't there; meanwhile we're rapidly using up our natural resources and destroying the environment we depend on.  But it doesn't matter, because it's tomorrow's problem - let the scientists figure that out, meanwhile we'll keep making / selling / buying faster pickups and all the other things we don't really need.

But can we put the brakes on this?  Do we tell our children, hey, sorry, but when we were growing up we had pickups with 6 litre V8s that were faster than anything you can buy in today's showroom.  To an extent it's already like that - we had a supersonic airliner, we put people on the moon, even in Britain we had a 3 litre musclecar that a working class kid could afford - now we've got none of that.  It's too expensive, too costly to the environment, too dangerous to insure.  OK, so we've got a lot more that we didn't have - smartphones, wi-fi, self-piloting drones, but isn't it all a bit sanitised now?  A bit lifeless?  Maybe I'm just too old to see the interest in it.  Everything gradually becomes homogenised - the only way to put your identity on something is to paint it a different colour or put some stickers on it.

I appear to be one of the few that doesn't comply with the majority of modern folk.

I still use, as a daily driver, a 40yr old leaf sprung classic Land Rover. It probably has the lowest HP of any car on the roads (just 30hp measured at the rear tyres) and a top speed of 60'ish mph with the wind behind it. However I have rebuilt it and it is mechanically excellent, the old engine and injection pump have been timed to run nicely on synthetic diesel (eg. Shell VPower) so it gives good fuel economy driving locally and runs smoke free. It is very basic, doesn't even have wind up windows (they slide), has no electronics, the A/C is actually two flaps that open up on the front bulkhead. It is noisy, smelly and slow. I was probably one of the only people to be overjoyed when the local council lowered all the local speed limits because it meant my old Land Rover was suddenly able to keep up with modern traffic and I no longer had people constantly up my backside trying to overtake me. But my kids and I love it. It can do everything we need whether that is driving through deep snow, wading flooded roads, carrying mountain bikes on day trips, carrying our RC cars and boxes of tools, acting as a mobile dry workshop or just doing the dirty jobs like collecting logs and carrying building materials for the house renovation or landscape gardening etc. I also have a modern car but that is only used for longer motorway journeys where it is safer, faster and gets better economy. For the majority of short local journeys or when doing pleasure activities we'll use the Land Rover.

In my view the Land Rover is very eco friendly as it has lasted 40 yrs with only worn out parts being replaced as needed instead of an entire new vehicle being built. The difference in fuel economy between it and a modern car in short local trips is minimal and the overall emissions over such low annual mileage compared to a modern car are also minimal, especially when whole life emissions are taken into account. The Land Rover is also very adaptable and engine changes (to different types) are far easier than modern cars. There are even electric conversion kits available now using Tesla batteries that bolt right in with no major modification required.

The only problem we have with it is speed. It is too slow to be safely driven on busy motorways and national speed limit A roads (as in very slow acceleration, it will finally get to 60mph but just take a minute to get there....). However as we've found, many speed limits are being reduced and this is making the vehicle far nicer to drive than the modern car. The Land Rover may have a low top speed BUT it has very nice gearing at lower speeds so it required far less gear changing when driving on our local rural roads than our modern car and actually gets better economy. A trip to our local town 5 miles away is now a pleasure because the maximum speed limit is 50mph and most of the journey is now 30-40mph. I must be the only person to think this is a good thing LOL. Having a modern car capable of 150mph is now largely pointless up here. 

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I have never been interested in buying a Traxxas RTR. I am also odd in that way too, I see no attraction in RTR. I just built my own crawler using bits of aluminium bought from a local DIY store and used thundershot gearboxes and suspension. It works great and has now been in regular use for 15+ yrs. It was fun to design and build my own and the whole thing was very cheap, a fraction of the cost of buying a new RTR or even a new crawler kit. Curiously though it does use Traxxas propshafts!

 

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So my kids have learnt that you don't need to go fast to have a fun journey, that good basic engineering works great in tough conditions and can withstand considerable abuse without breaking and building or working on your own vehicle means you can fix it cheaply and don't need an expensive garage mechanic. They also love the home made crawler and youngest mudlet is currently building her own.

 

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47 minutes ago, mud4fun said:

I appear to be one of the few that doesn't comply with the majority of modern folk.

I still use, as a daily driver, a 40yr old leaf sprung classic Land Rover. It probably has the lowest HP of any car on the roads (just 30hp measured at the rear tyres) and a top speed of 60'ish mph with the wind behind it. However I have rebuilt it and it is mechanically excellent, the old engine and injection pump have been timed to run nicely on synthetic diesel (eg. Shell VPower) so it gives good fuel economy driving locally and runs smoke free. It is very basic, doesn't even have wind up windows (they slide), has no electronics, the A/C is actually two flaps that open up on the front bulkhead. It is noisy, smelly and slow. I was probably one of the only people to be overjoyed when the local council lowered all the local speed limits because it meant my old Land Rover was suddenly able to keep up with modern traffic and I no longer had people constantly up my backside trying to overtake me. But my kids and I love it. It can do everything we need whether that is driving through deep snow, wading flooded roads, carrying mountain bikes on day trips, carrying our RC cars and boxes of tools, acting as a mobile dry workshop or just doing the dirty jobs like collecting logs and carrying building materials for the house renovation or landscape gardening etc. I also have a modern car but that is only used for longer motorway journeys where it is safer, faster and gets better economy. For the majority of short local journeys or when doing pleasure activities we'll use the Land Rover.

In my view the Land Rover is very eco friendly as it has lasted 40 yrs with only worn out parts being replaced as needed instead of an entire new vehicle being built. The difference in fuel economy between it and a modern car in short local trips is minimal and the overall emissions over such low annual mileage compared to a modern car are also minimal, especially when whole life emissions are taken into account. The Land Rover is also very adaptable and engine changes (to different types) are far easier than modern cars. There are even electric conversion kits available now using Tesla batteries that bolt right in with no major modification required.

The only problem we have with it is speed. It is too slow to be safely driven on busy motorways and national speed limit A roads (as in very slow acceleration, it will finally get to 60mph but just take a minute to get there....). However as we've found, many speed limits are being reduced and this is making the vehicle far nicer to drive than the modern car. The Land Rover may have a low top speed BUT it has very nice gearing at lower speeds so it required far less gear changing when driving on our local rural roads than our modern car and actually gets better economy. A trip to our local town 5 miles away is now a pleasure because the maximum speed limit is 50mph and most of the journey is now 30-40mph. I must be the only person to think this is a good thing LOL. Having a modern car capable of 150mph is now largely pointless up here. 

612555737_barton_rc_cars_20150831(18).thumb.jpg.5fa2e0d031e20ec5c27061edbb2c75f6.jpg

I have never been interested in buying a Traxxas RTR. I am also odd in that way too, I see no attraction in RTR. I just built my own crawler using bits of aluminium bought from a local DIY store and used thundershot gearboxes and suspension. It works great and has now been in regular use for 15+ yrs. It was fun to design and build my own and the whole thing was very cheap, a fraction of the cost of buying a new RTR or even a new crawler kit. Curiously though it does use Traxxas propshafts!

So my kids have learnt that you don't need to go fast to have a fun journey, that good basic engineering works great in tough conditions and can withstand considerable abuse without breaking and building or working on your own vehicle means you can fix it cheaply and don't need an expensive garage mechanic. They also love the home made crawler and youngest mudlet is currently building her own.

 

The smiles speak volumes and that's the important thing.

A couples of years ago me and my son went for a pleasure flight in a 1940s Dehavilland Dragon Rapide. It was the first time he'd ever been flying. We were sat up front in line with the wings, and once we were up in the air he had a wall to wall grin for the whole time we were flying. We didn't go far, or up high, and it was noisy inside (Being straddled either side by 2 straight 6 aero engines with no silencing and no noise insulation) and you could feel the vibration of the engines through the sides of the fuselage and up through the seat. You had to climb up a slope inside the aircraft to get to your seat with it being a taildragger as well. However, my lad absolutely loved it. Would he have enjoyed a first flight in airliner as much? Quieter, more comfortable, faster, flies higher, don't have to climb to get to your seat. I don't think so. :)

The land rover might top out at 60mph, but at 60mph I bet you feel that you're doing 100mph. In a modern saloon car you have no sensation of speed because you're divorced from the wind, and the noise and heat and vibration from the engine, it's like driving a living room on wheels, and where's the enjoyment in that. It's just detaching you from reality.

For what it's worth, I totally agree with your thinking on the land rover. In the years before I met my other half (BC - Before Commitment) I wanted to buy a classic american car. Why, when I could have had something like a modern 4wd subaru instead ??? Because when I looked under the bonnet of a 455 formula firebird, I counted about 7 wires total under the hood. Modern cars are wonderful until they go wrong (And by that I mean an intermittent electrical fault, mechanically most new cars are very reliable), and then you end up with monster garage bills, if they can fix it at all. There's a lot to be said for older, simpler vehicles from a reliability and environmental perspective (as you say, through life environmental impact). I wonder how many cars have gone to the scrap yard because of intermittent electrical faults.

 

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Very interesting thread with a lot of super informed opinions. I've learned a lot reading them. 

Let me offer a layman's point of view. 

Even though I never had a tamiya growing up (I had a knockoff hornet) I still lusted after them in Beatties like everyone else. Fast forward 30 years and I finally treated myself to a lunchbox for Christmas 2019 and the year that followed proceeded to splurge on a grasshopper, racing fighter, some Chinese rtr and an ftx carnage. 

 

I look at my tamiyas now and that's just about it for me - I love them all and unfortunately my tamiya nostalgia journey will most likely end with the holiday buggy I bought a couple days ago. That's it for me. Job done. 

 

I look to the future and nothing new from tamiya grabs me at all. There's no nostalgia in anything for me from the last 10 or even 20 years either so I'll look elsewhere and that leads me to other companies, like traxxas. 

I think it's fair to say, from my point of view at least, that the younger generation have absolutely no interest in tamiya (outside of fathers like myself pushing it on them) and the next generation will have even less and I understand that completely. 

In another 20 years there'll be a generation of kids that have both nostalgia for traxxas AND will be able to look at their new models and technology/engineering and stay within their favourite brand's warm embrace.

Can't say that for tamiya and as I see it, you couldn't say that for tamiya for the past 20 years. 

 

 

 

 

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52 minutes ago, MadInventor said:

@mud4fun PS, what are those axles on your crawler ? Are they thundershot gearboxes ?

 

Yes, they are Thundershot gearbox/suspension assemblies locked into full droop to give good under diff clearance. The 'axles' are Thundershot front gearboxes and I use a thundershot rear gearbox mounted vertically as a transfer box. The cordless drill motor drives through an airplane propellor reduction drive into the Thundershot rear gearbox which then outputs drive through Traxxas props to the axles. The only mods needed where to the shaft that runs through the diff in the 'transfer box' and the input shafts on the front gearboxes to allow the Traxxas UJ's to fit nice and secure. It is 65:1 overall reduction from memory.

It is not really a rock crawler because CoG is too high however it crawls up railways sleepers edging our lawn, drives through deep muddy puddles, works on deep snow and can even climb our staircase. It was thrown together in a few days with offcuts and spare Thundershot parts, was dirt cheap to build and the kids love it. It also has insane run times, typically 60-90 minutes from a 2000mah NiCd. Just a good basher crawler for general use and having fun.

And thank you, yes my kids adore the old Land Rover. It is part of the family, has oodles of character and oddly enough is our most reliable vehicle! And no I'm not joking... The 3 year old Nissan has had literally dozens of faults with its electronic systems and is currently out of action due yet another engine management system failure.

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1 hour ago, mud4fun said:

I appear to be one of the few that doesn't comply with the majority of modern folk.

I still use, as a daily driver, a 40yr old leaf sprung classic Land Rover.

I'm the same in terms of cars and other stuff - I only have a smartphone because it was given to me by my previous employer, it's several years old and still does everything I want it to do.  The staff at O2 seem baffled when I tell them I don't want to get a shiny new phone even if it does only cost £25 per month.  My camper is 20 years old and passed its MOT with a clean sheet (although last week all the brake fluid had mysteriously disappeared, so it's not without its faults).  Our daily driver Kia Ceed failed its MOT catastrophically so it has gone to the great car park in the sky and we've replaced it with a 12-year-old Yaris which cost less than 2K.  It's space-aged compared to your Land Rover (it even has a hologram dashboard!) but it's about 8 years older than anything my friends are driving, because they always buy new or nearly-new on finance.  Having done the finance trap when I was younger, the only finance I now have is my mortgage.

Also I was brought up in a Land Rover - for a decade my mum's daily was an '84 110 County V8, which we racked up tens of thousands of miles in, and apart from it always pinking (because my mum probably always filled it with 2-star (mum economics - "it's exactly the same, it's just cheaper" - also applied to batteries, trainers, clothing, food, in fact anything except Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Heinz Baked Beans)) and always leaking around the sliding windows in the back and once overheating while towing a horse trailer back from Cornwall in a heat wave, it never went wrong.  Later we had another 110 County, this time a diesel, which had a full rooftop terrace - that was excellent for watching motorsport because we could put our deckchairs up there and have the best view in the venue.

13 minutes ago, MadInventor said:

For what it's worth, I totally agree with your thinking on the land rover. In the years before I met my other half (BC - Before Commitment) I wanted to buy a classic american car.

I've always wanted a classic Yank musclecar.  At the time my daughter was born, my colleague had just stumbled on a 1979 Camaro Z28 being sold off cheap by a deceased's family.  He'd previously owned an 80s Firebird, had a Corvette Stingray in the shop being slowly restored, and a 600hp Mustang motor sitting on the bench waiting for something to go in, but the Camaro was so cheap he couldn't pass it up.  It had been subtly period modded with some super-fat wheels, lowered springs and a burbling exhaust and when I saw it for the first time, I completely fell in love with it.  We'd just had to reorganise all our finances to handle reduced working, increased costs, I was barely getting any sleep and life was an endless juggle of work, nappies, feeds, and bottle washing - dayum, was there a lot of bottle washing!  Yeah, it took me a while to fully get the wonders of parenthood ;)

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@Mad AxAx @MadInventor I do all my own maintenance and repairs on the Land Rover. When we bought it, it was in a sorry state having been used to launch boats into the sea. Thankfully it did have a galvanised chassis. We could have just fixed issues as they cropped up but I decided to spend a year stripping and rebuilding it so that it was then a reliable daily driver. I stripped and rebuilt the axles with new bearings, seals, stub axles and brakes, stripped and rebuilt the engine with new pistons, rocker assembly and bearings and even honed it myself in situ on the drive. It was also fitted with new parabolic 'lifted' springs and new gas shocks.

That was 10 years ago and it has since done 40k miles with only one major fault and that was a failed rear crank seal. Only other faults have been side and indicator light housing filling with water due to brittle rubber seals and blowing bulbs but they only take 5 mins with a screwdriver to fix and a new bulb is 50 pence.

In total the Land Rover has cost me about £11K to buy, rebuild and maintain over 11 years. It also only costs £150 a year to insure and has sailed through the last 10 MOT's passing first time. In comparison my modern car has cost me £5000 in repairs in just the last year and in total has cost me £30K to buy and maintain over just 3 years.... If I didn't need a fast motorway car for going to meet clients around the country I would happily just live with the Land Rover and save myself a fortune in new car debts!

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5 minutes ago, mud4fun said:

@Mad AxAx @MadInventor I do all my own maintenance and repairs on the Land Rover. When we bought it, it was in a sorry state having been used to launch boats into the sea. Thankfully it did have a galvanised chassis. We could have just fixed issues as they cropped up but I decided to spend a year stripping and rebuilding it so that it was then a reliable daily driver. I stripped and rebuilt the axles with new bearings, seals, stub axles and brakes, stripped and rebuilt the engine with new pistons, rocker assembly and bearings and even honed it myself in situ on the drive. It was also fitted with new parabolic 'lifted' springs and new gas shocks.

That was 10 years ago and it has since done 40k miles with only one major fault and that was a failed rear crank seal. Only other faults have been side and indicator light housing filling with water due to brittle rubber seals and blowing bulbs but they only take 5 mins with a screwdriver to fix and a new bulb is 50 pence.

In total the Land Rover has cost me about £11K to buy, rebuild and maintain over 11 years. It also only costs £150 a year to insure and has sailed through the last 10 MOT's passing first time. In comparison my modern car has cost me £5000 in repairs in just the last year and in total has cost me £30K to buy and maintain over just 3 years.... If I didn't need a fast motorway car for going to meet clients around the country I would happily just live with the Land Rover and save myself a fortune in new car debts!

For £30K you could have bought some classic american muscle. Fast comfortable cruiser, you could maintain it yourself, clients would never forget your visit,  and the £5K repair bill could have gone on the petrol bill.

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5 minutes ago, MadInventor said:

For £30K you could have bought some classic american muscle. Fast comfortable cruiser, you could maintain it yourself, clients would never forget your visit,  and the £5K repair bill could have gone on the petrol bill.

Trust me, I have been very tempted by that thought many times. My dream would be a Dodge Charger. Not because of fast and furious though but because I'm old and that means I grew up watching the Dukes of Hazard! :) (The original series not the naff remakes)

I'd even have the rebel flag on the roof to put two fingers up to the woke brigade.....:D

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1 minute ago, mud4fun said:

Trust me, I have been very tempted by that thought many times. My dream would be a Dodge Charger. Not because of fast and furious though but because I'm old and that means I grew up watching the Dukes of Hazard! :) (The original series not the naff remakes)

For me it was a Cobra replica. I just loved the 'huge engine, no frills' approach. Closest thing to a Spitfire without the wings. Ended up with a black 5.0 V8 Gen 3 Firebird (Knight rider shape). Currently have no car at all, just drive my other halfs when I need to. Which is not very often now thanks to Coronovirus. Spent more on insurance and MOT this year than on fuel....

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8 minutes ago, MadInventor said:

For me it was a Cobra replica. I just loved the 'huge engine, no frills' approach. Closest thing to a Spitfire without the wings. Ended up with a black 5.0 V8 Gen 3 Firebird (Knight rider shape). Currently have no car at all, just drive my other halfs when I need to. Which is not very often now thanks to Coronovirus. Spent more on insurance and MOT this year than on fuel....

Hehe, yes, similar here, the modern car is more like a garden ornament, only done 200 miles in a year and still managed to break down TWICE.... The Land Rover has done more mileage during lockdowns and not suffered a single fault (touch wood).

I like the look of the little Morgan 3 wheeler in matt green with RAF roundels and markings. Surely the closest thing to being in a WW1 aircraft short of actual flying?

 

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I got into crawling at the start of lockdown as something to do in the garden. I had a second hand Carisma crawler, that was a great introduction, as I couldnt find a Tamiya that would do the job.

Recently I bought a Traxxas TRX4 kit, so I could enjoy building a crawler, and the quality is excellent. I've heard the electrics are awful, so I installed my own (the kit doesnt come iwth any), and its a joy to drive.

Traxxas have terrible ethics, but most of the companies that I buy from in my food shopping also have appauling ethics, so I spend my cash on what makes me happy.

 

Still wishing for a decent Tamiya crawler though...

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1 hour ago, mud4fun said:

Trust me, I have been very tempted by that thought many times. My dream would be a Dodge Charger. Not because of fast and furious though but because I'm old and that means I grew up watching the Dukes of Hazard! :) (The original series not the naff remakes)

I'd even have the rebel flag on the roof to put two fingers up to the woke brigade.....:D

Before I was born, my parent’s owned a ‘70 (same year as the ones used for Toretto’s Charger), it was a F8 Ivy Green R/T with white vinyl top and interior, basic steelies and dog dish caps, but also has the 440 6-Pack, A-833 4 Speed manual and Super Track Pack body and suspension upgrades that included Hemi car torsion bars and leaf springs and unibody reinforcements as well as a B and E Body specific version of the Dana 60 truck axle. Dad ordered it to look as basic as possible then had it detrimmed on arrival to look more like a lowly, 383 powered Charger 500 so it kept the police from thinking it was the factory hot rod that it was and if he lined up against somebody, they would think he’d be an easy mark.

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3 hours ago, mud4fun said:

I'd even have the rebel flag on the roof to put two fingers up to the woke brigade.....:D

The day my colleague got his Camaro, he drove it to the office and parked it pride of place out the front, opposite the main entrance.  It had one of those US fake front licence plates for the states that don't require front plates, which of course was a confederate flag.

It was pointed out (in good nature) by a Somalian colleague that the confederate flag really had to go 

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4 hours ago, mud4fun said:

I'd even have the rebel flag on the roof to put two fingers up to the woke brigade.....:D

NOPE. It's a symbol of hate and doesn't belong anywhere near a hobby that's supposed to be inclusive and fun. Or anywhere else for that matter, except museums, so we can remember how NOT to conduct ourselves.

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1 hour ago, Mad Ax said:

The day my colleague got his Camaro, he drove it to the office and parked it pride of place out the front, opposite the main entrance.  It had one of those US fake front licence plates for the states that don't require front plates, which of course was a confederate flag.

It was pointed out (in good nature) by a Somalian colleague that the confederate flag really had to go 

It is just a flag. People get far too sensitive and lose perspective and are also ignorant of history and facts. I assume the Somalian also wanted his own flag banned as they operate slavery even today? And if you start taking offense at things that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago then you'd need to ban every nations flags and wipe history. It gets silly. You can't apply modern standards and morals to the past. People need to stop being so easily offended. I'm sure the vast majority of people putting rebel flags on dodge chargers are doing so in homage to a kids TV show that rekindles fond memories of their childhood, not with any malice at all. 

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10 minutes ago, mud4fun said:

You can't apply modern standards and morals to the past.

People say this a lot but what "modern standards and morals" are you cherry picking here? Because I can find many historical examples of better moral standards than what I see nowadays. So is the past "more moral" or is the present? You can't have it both ways.

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14 minutes ago, mud4fun said:

It is just a flag.

A can of cola is also just a can of cola.  But if you're sitting outside enjoying a can of cola on a nice sunny summer afternoon, and a wasp comes along and gets a waft of that sugary flavour, he might decide he wants a piece of that can too, and he goes and fetches all his mates to have a taste of the sweet bounty within.  Before you know it, there's more wasps than people laying claim to that can, and if you ignore them and keep drinking, you'll get stung by the wasps, and all your friends will move to another table because they don't want be near somebody who is surrounded by wasps.

Sometimes it's prudent to put the can out of the way and let the wasps have it.  We can always get a new can.

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5 minutes ago, El Gecko said:

People say this a lot but what "modern standards and morals" are you cherry picking here? Because I can find many historical examples of better moral standards than what I see nowadays. So is the past "more moral" or is the present? You can't have it both ways.

Maybe morals was the wrong word, modern perspective better?

But my point still stands. You still buy Chinese products despite China having a less than perfect record on human rights do you not? Do we demand the Chinese flag be banned? How about the Japanese or German flags because of poor treatment of prisoners in the war or the English flag for attrocities committed a thousand years ago? My view is we forgive and move on. It would also help if people getting so offended by one thing then applied that standard to everything in their life instead of just what is the latest woke target. Anyway, I will go away now as I don't wish to upset you any more.

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41 minutes ago, mud4fun said:

It is just a flag. People get far too sensitive and lose perspective and are also ignorant of history and facts. I assume the Somalian also wanted his own flag banned as they operate slavery even today? And if you start taking offense at things that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago then you'd need to ban every nations flags and wipe history. It gets silly. You can't apply modern standards and morals to the past. People need to stop being so easily offended. I'm sure the vast majority of people putting rebel flags on dodge chargers are doing so in homage to a kids TV show that rekindles fond memories of their childhood, not with any malice at all. 

With the history of that flag, outside the DoH, in America until recently being a symbol of hate and nie being carried into the Capitol Building last week during an attempted coup as well as being adapted by nationalists in Germany, since possession of anything related to the Nazis is a crime there, I wouldn’t want anything to do with it at all!

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19 hours ago, mud4fun said:

I appear to be one of the few that doesn't comply with the majority of modern folk.

I still use, as a daily driver, a 40yr old leaf sprung classic Land Rover........

Ian... You're definitely not alone, others have chimed in as well - but I fear we are the last of a dying breed. 😞 

Yes, I have strong feelings about "Traxxis" (hmmm... Intentional misspelling is a great, non-vulgar means of showing my disrespect and disdain)  But the fact is that THEY are going to continue to shovel in cash hand over fist, regardless of how I, or anyone else feels about it. 

In my 38 years in the Hobby, I've only bought ONE RTR.... Ironically, a Traxxis!! 😜😖  I bought a T-MAXX in 2004. A Nitro Monster Truck with REVERSE!!??? 

They got me intrigued - and they HOOKED me. I am fine and happy with Kits. I get much more out of them! 

Same with 1:1 Cars. All I've ever owned was used - at LEAST 12-15 years old each. By choice. 

EXCEPT ONE!  In 1987, Buick closed its LONG Rear Wheel drive History with a very special version of their very special Grand National - the GNX!  I HAD to have it, I didn't care about any details!!! 

$28,000, when the average American Car in 87 cost $11,000!!! 😲😳 

And was I THRILLED!!!  23 years old and I had the fastest new Car on the PLANET!!!! 😁😁😊 After just a small investment in Tires, Bigger Injectors, a Chip, 3 1/2" Exhaust system and 4.10 Gears....   And I had a Bonafide 10 second Car, comfortable enough for a cross Country Trip!! 😎👍👍 

Then the reality check. I had a $343.00 Monthly Payment - and after the "secret" got out about this "V6 Buick Regal".... My INSURANCE Premium became $421.00 Monthly!!! 😖😞  Or, MORE than the cost of the CAR!!💲😭  So I was forced to sell her. 💔😳

Still my favorite Car EVER,  but it was back to Old Cars. I did have some Cool ones though.  Let someone else eat the depreciation and I had LOW Insurance Premiums!!! 😁

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15 hours ago, El Gecko said:

NOPE. It's a symbol of hate and doesn't belong anywhere near a hobby that's supposed to be inclusive and fun. Or anywhere else for that matter, except museums, so we can remember how NOT to conduct ourselves.

Keep politics out of the club!!

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