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What is the "Pest" of your collection?

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I hope everyone is doing well and having a great start to 2021 so far.  A recent parts order made me ponder the question:  What model of your collection seems to require the most attention?  This would be the model that always seems to have something go wrong with it, or seem to be jinxed with bad luck somehow and find that curb or sign post by sheer magic. 

For me?  It's my XB Rising Storm.  Yes sure.. if I left it as an XB kit it would probably be just fine (womp womp).  But we can't very well have that, can we??  I've added upgrades, shims where tolerances could be better, new dampers and such.. but still there always seems to be something that requires more attention.  This time it was the esc.  I've been using an off-brand one due to the color and price.. but after switching to a new programmable radio/receiver it just decided to give up completely and cog like crazy.  So a Hobbywing120A brushless esc comes to the rescue!  I hope.  We'll see, but half the fun is trying to find out and get those last few gremlins out of this thing.  Care to share any of yours?

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It would have to be my Traxxas UDR. It under built for how fast it is so it’s easy to break.  on my second run with it. The plastic wheel hex’s flexed causing so much heat it melted the rear wheel off. 
 

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HSP nitro buggy. If you looked at it the wrong way a suspension arm would crack. It spent more time on the bench per run than any other car I have. It quickly become a torment to use/repair versus something to enjoy.

Was a good cheap way to taste nitro, but I probably ended up spending the purchase price again in parts over a 3month period. I got exactly what I paid for (AUD$195 for car/transmitter), so I know it  is not representative of all nitro cars and I would have been better off with a HPI/Traxxas/Habao/etc/etc... but the only way to find out for sure was to buy the HSP. 

All RC experiences are good, some you enjoy, others you learn not to do again (the HSP part, not the nitro part) :)

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Well if we're talking RC cars in general, my original E-Revo Brushless (yes, only running on 4S) was constantly getting new driveshafts, etc, but the 2.0 has been a lot better. My Traxxas mini E-Revo (MERV) is probably the main problem now. @Shodog my UDR has been pretty good, although once again only run on 4S. Tamiya wise, probably the Konghead, but only because it is driven constantly. If you look at repairs relative to time driven though I don't have anything in particular (any more) that gives me headaches.

That said... my HPI Vorza (yes, 4S again) spent a lot of time on the shelf - it chewed up drivetrains and then you'd have to wait 3-6 months for parts. Anything Hobbyking was horrendous, too. That's why those are no longer part of my collection!

If we're talking RC in general my Traxxas Spartans have been a constant source of frustration, but that's fast electric boats in general, I believe.

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Does it have to be a car? Can it be the TBLE-02S? I have(had) loads and really liked them, until they started breaking. A few have intermittent faults with the switch, others have lost the BEC. I have a lot of them, which means a lot to fail and replace. So annoying as I use them in my silvercan powered cars that I want to just work.

Otherwise my cars breaking tend to be proportionate to their use.

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I'll skip past the Kyosho Sand Master II that was my one-and-only toe-dip in the waters of Nitro back in the mid-90s, because it was a cheap ARTR nitro based on bottom-spec electric chassis and came with a plastic spur / clutch which shredded on day 1.  The grenading engine mount bracket didn't help either, with 6-week lead times on parts from Japan back then.

So I'll stop first at the Blitzer Beetle that has been one of my favourite runners and also the most unreliable car in my fleet.  Originally I had a Stadium Thunder which I bought new-built from another member over a decade ago, but no matter how many times I rebuilt it I could never get rid of the clicking in the gearbox.  Eventually I got fed up and sold it on, but I missed it, so I got a Blitzer Beetle which I run with a lexan HPI body.  I'm not superstitious, but there seems to be something about the rear left that is cursed.  I won't say it breaks every time I run it, but it breaks enough.  Probably every time I take it out anywhere.  When I first built it, it would constantly lose the rear left wheel nut.  This leads me to believe it is not the turning force of the motor that loosens but the braking force of the wheel spinning in the air hitting the ground - there may be something about my suspension setup that is promoting these breakages.  Things seemed to get better when I fitted knurled nuts instead of locknuts, but then axle sheered off during an Iconic bash at Broxtowe.  I replaced that, then it managed to strip the hex out of the back of the wheel, so I had to buy new wheels.  Next it took the entire centre out of the wheel.  Lucky I had a spare.  Finally, last time it was run (Feb 2020 at Tamiya Junkies) it flipped over while I was heading back to the barn, I picked it up and threw it down wheels first, got my aim wrong and it landed on a fallen fence panel and snapped the rear upright.  Took me until mid 2020 to get a replacement, but that's OK because I haven't been anywhere to drive it due to the pandemic.  Will be nice to get some airtime on the garden track as the weather improves, though, so we'll see what else I can break on that corner.

But finally, I'll park beside the Mod Clod and go through the history of this failed attempt to build a fast monster truck.  This rig is currently in pieces pending yet another rebuild, and I am determined - determined, I say - to actually get through a single 3S LiPo before it breaks.  One day.  Maybe.

It began when I built the axles from am NIB Super Clod kit with the intention of making a stick crawler, back when they were still a thing, but never finished the chassis.  When I got fed up with my TXT-1 torque-twisting everywhere and generally turning itself upside down every time I breathed on the throttle, I pulled off the TXT axles and fitted the Clod ones and shoved in a 14.4v setup using a HPI ESC and GT-550 motors.  What I had was a super-short, super-tall truck that flipped and wheelied all the time, which was cool but was basically a very expensive and glorified Lunchbox.

So I bought some extended lower link with integral shock mounts, made some new top links, and built what should have been a perfect truck.  Except this was around the time my NiMH packs were past their best, and they couldn't cope with the power requirements of the GT-550s.  2 minutes was about as much as they could manage; more often, they would dump as soon as I hit full throttle.  Also it had a tendency to break the rod ends - I remember walking 10 minutes across the fields to get to a little abandoned BMX track we'd found out in the hills near Bath, I drove it over one jump and it broke, and I had to carry it all the way back again (which took way more than 10 minutes given how heavy it was).

After that it spent many years in a box in pieces, and got put together again about 5 years ago with a lighter K2-3S chassis.  By then I'd raised funds for a used Traxxas EVX-2 ESC and some new Traxxas Titan 550 motors to replace the ageing HPI GTs.  But I didn't realise until after the EVX-2 arrived, there are two versions - one is LiPo-safe and one isn't.  Guess which one I got..?  So I had to run with LiPo alarms.  Well, it turns out the conventional plug-in LiPo alarm emits some kind of interference when it goes off, because after a 2-minute test-run out the back of my place one of the alarms went off, at which point the truck went utterly insane.  ESC and both servos were juddering madly from one end to the other, the truck flipped over and started doing pirouettes in the middle of the road, ripped up the custom body I'd spend days working on, nearly crashed into the neighbour's new car and took a layer of skin off my hand when I picked it up.

So, back to saving, and a few months on, a later-model EVX-2 with LiPo cutoff arrived.  Aaaaand, it turns out there's a common fault with the LiPo-safe EVX-2 where the LiPo cutoff is way too sensitive.  As in, give it full throttle and it immediately goes into cutoff mode.  Maybe the 550s and gearing is an issue here too - perhaps I'm putting more current through the ESC on full throttle than I would in an E-Revo or something where the EVX-2 was fitted as standard?  It was only driveable with a pair of my very very best 2S LiPos installed and even then, not for long.

And, dagnabbit, those rod-ends!!  I'm sure I've asked multiple times for advice on rod ends that won't break.  I don't know what you guys who do monster racing are using, but I've tried Traxxas, G-Made, and my current favourite, RC4WD (mostly because they're well-stocked in the UK).  I took the Clod to a Tamiya Junkies meet back in Feb 2020 after yet another rebuild, and after 2 minutes just racing around the field with absolutely no hard obstacles to run into, it snapped another rod end.

After that I started work on some chassis extensions to alter the lower link geometry, but other projects got in the way so it's currently shelved.  It's part of my Lockdown Contingency plan to rebuild it again with an all-new chassis design, which will hopefully reduce the loading on the lower links, but I'll be giving it some punishment over my garden ramps to see how it holds up.

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@Mad Ax Re your Mod Clod issues, and the rod ends, I built this 10 years ago. It went to another TC member, but it ran fine on 550 motors and 2 7.2 NiMh running in series.

img33435_12062010155632_1_1100_.jpg

img33435_12062010155632_3_1100_.jpg

img33435_12062010155632_7_1100_.jpg

As you can see from the pics, the side plates for the axle guards are what the 4 links connect to. I used automotive throttle linkage rod ends, they're readily available from Ebay for about £4 each, but I've never broken one. I based the side plates on TXT-1 plates, and then modified the design accordingly to fit the clod axles. As it sounds like you've got left over TXT axles you could maybe do something similar. I might even have some prototype side plates in the scrap box I could send you do use as a starting point. There's even room for a monster servo. 

Re the pest of the collection, mine was my 2 vintage king tiger tanks. I was always having issue with the turret rotators, or track pins coming out.

 

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My Avante2001 - I think it is jinxed! :D

 

 

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2 hours ago, MadInventor said:

I used automotive throttle linkage rod ends, they're readily available from Ebay for about £4 each, but I've never broken one. I based the side plates on TXT-1 plates, and then modified the design accordingly to fit the clod axles. As it sounds like you've got left over TXT axles you could maybe do something similar. I might even have some prototype side plates in the scrap box I could send you do use as a starting point. There's even room for a monster servo. 

Automotive throttle linkage ends - now there's a thought!  I wonder what the racing truck guys are using?  They break axles and lose wheels all the time but they must have some fairly chunky rod ends, I don't see them breaking as often as axle parts in the Trigger Kings vids.

Thanks for the offers of prototypes but I drew my new chassis plates in CAD back at the start of this year, I just haven't got around to cutting them out yet (or sending them to fibrelyte to have them cut in CF).  My last effort still had a monster-style lower linkage angle, so the front axle needs to go forwards (or the chassis backwards relative to it) under articulation.  I guess this puts a lot of load on the lower link ends when driving over bumps, as the forces are being concentrated.  In theory this affects any monster with an angled lower linkage but maybe there's something else at play, like maybe at certain angles the rod ends are being levered against part of the mounts or the motors to exert a side-loading?

My new design is more racey, with the middle of the chassis extending lower for under-slung battery mount and horizontal link mounts.  I believe somebody here referred to my CAD file as a "thong buster" thanks to its somewhat underpants-like shape.  It'll be fun to see how well it works, and if it's a complete flop, maybe I'll make it as an underwear fashion designer :)  (in fairness that can't be an entirely bad job)

2 hours ago, mud4fun said:

My Avante2001 - I think it is jinxed! :D

No, it's just an Avante2001 :D

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It would be my FTX Outlaw which, according to the internet, melts motors and chews up spurs every time it goes out. It also has a tendency to lose driveshaft pins and break suspension mounts.

Maybe that is why I have only run it once..I'm afraid of the disappointment!

Things is, it just begs to be driven in a full throttle / full stop manner with its tremendous chassis twist on take-off and ability to **** a wheel. Refined it is not.

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It was always my Re-Re Sand Scorcher, when I ran it something would fall off or break :rolleyes:

The most frustrating Tamiya I have ever own and tried to enjoy/run. 

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The Carisma SCA-1E Coyote scaler. It was an absolute chore to build, for a start. Each axle housing is six pieces of rubbery plastic, held together by approximately seventeen thousand 2mm screws that thread directly into the plastic. And the hardware quality is awful: hex-head screws that were a very sloppy fit with my drivers. Building the CVDs (six of them, because the driveshafts use them too) tried my patience as much as it bruised my fingers.

Once I got it together, the fun continued: I had built up the rolling chassis without a motor, because I hadn't decided what to use yet, and then discovered that you can't install or remove the motor with the gearbox in place (which you can in most Axial/RC4WD designs I was used to). Both axle pinions have come apart while running because the normal blue threadlock failed; I had to resort to the super-strong red stuff. And it had a terrible case of bump-steer as built according to the manual. I managed to alleviate most of it with some spacers, but it's still not quite right.

Since I got all that worked out, it has been a fairly decent performer, at least, and nothing has broken yet. But maintenance is still a chore, and it's not really worth anything, so I'm kind of stuck with it. Should have just gone with my gut instinct and bought the Axial...

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This time of year in North Dakota , anything I run outdoors will Be a best. Not only will I have the extra maintenance associated with post snow driving, but Omar these temperatures there is always a risk of mechanical bits snapping. 

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11 hours ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

Otherwise my cars breaking tend to be proportionate to their use.

This is pretty much it for me. All my cars are old, so stuff breaks all the time. But I don't consider any of them pests because I like working on them.

The biggest annoyance currently is the stupid brittle old plastic Traxxas ball/rod ends... I've broken a shock end twice in the last 4 drives from seemingly light impacts.

I'll be going overkill with aluminum ends now :angry:

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Anything nitro!

I had a HPI Savage that I sold on, as I was sick of having to get the thing running right, new plug - set up, new fuel - set up....🤬🤬

Same with the Schumacher Fusion, although it seems a bit more forgiving,  but it's an on road, so hardly anywhere to run it!!! 

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1 hour ago, Wooders28 said:

Anything nitro!

I had a HPI Savage that I sold on, as I was sick of having to get the thing running right, new plug - set up, new fuel - set up....🤬🤬

Same with the Schumacher Fusion, although it seems a bit more forgiving,  but it's an on road, so hardly anywhere to run it!!! 

I have a Savage XL and it was the best RC I’ve ever owned, utterly superb until I hit some rugby posts at high speed 🤦

As for the up keep, well I had no idea how to set it up and run properly but while it lasted it was just brilliant 😊

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the kyosho dbx, things always went wrong with that, i just call it the db fail now  :P

a mention to my tamiya durga, the drive train is very high maintenance and it does my nut in lol

 

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1 hour ago, Grumpy pants said:

I have a Savage XL and it was the best RC I’ve ever owned,

I had a 2nd hand 21, so may have been underpowered, or seen better days. Either way, I had it a year, and made a tenner when I sold it.....😁

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I don't have any "pests" in my fleet, but I think this is largely because of my acquisition process.

Before buying a model or adding it to my birthday/Christmas wishlist, I typically do months of research in order to identify its known issues and the fixes for them. If any of the issues have no reliable fix, or if I can't get hold of the necessary bits, I wait until I can before I buy. I also don't buy new releases, preferring to wait until any big issues have been identified and fixes found.

I am also usually quite conservative with my motor choices. That is not to say that I don't enjoy brushless and LiPo power, but I reserve such things for the chassis that can handle them. 

If I didn't follow this process, the title of "Top Pest" would probably go to the CC-01. With dodgy steering, binding suspension and several drivetrain issues in stock form, it would probably have given the most trouble had these not all been addressed at the outset.

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13 hours ago, Wooders28 said:

I had a 2nd hand 21, so may have been underpowered, or seen better days. Either way, I had it a year, and made a tenner when I sold it.....😁

You did well to make a tenner!

Mine was used but really decent, it was only after the big smash the costs starting mounting and the frustration set in.

I would have lost  money on it, but I think the sting of my poor driving skills was the main disappointment 😂

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My tamiyas are mostly pretty trouble free, its my Traxxas & HPI cars that are always been pests, I guess its cos they are so hyper seppd that they fail a lot.

The Tamiya pest for me out of my collection would be my Mazda MX5 euro which ive stuck a stupid speed brushless in it. So thats my own fault.  🤣

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My OG Tamiya Fox, namely the transmission and rear A-arms. I keep breaking and rebuilding stuff on them.

I have a Novafox in its box, and I intend to donate that transmission and rear suspension to the OG Fox.

If I had any sense, I'd build the Novafox and use the original for parts or as a shelf queen, but I am sort of sentimental that way.

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22 hours ago, Wooders28 said:

Anything nitro!

I had a HPI Savage that I sold on, as I was sick of having to get the thing running right, new plug - set up, new fuel - set up....🤬🤬

Same with the Schumacher Fusion, although it seems a bit more forgiving,  but it's an on road, so hardly anywhere to run it!!! 

I was gonna say the same about my TMaxx . Not as much about the trouble getting  it running but also the post run maintenance. 
man’s the Traxxas radio was fiddly

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On 2/5/2021 at 9:43 AM, Mad Ax said:

I'll skip past the Kyosho Sand Master II that was my one-and-only toe-dip in the waters of Nitro back in the mid-90s, because it was a cheap ARTR nitro based on bottom-spec electric chassis and came with a plastic spur / clutch which shredded on day 1.  The grenading engine mount bracket didn't help either, with 6-week lead times on parts from Japan back then.

So I'll stop first at the Blitzer Beetle that has been one of my favourite runners and also the most unreliable car in my fleet.  Originally I had a Stadium Thunder which I bought new-built from another member over a decade ago, but no matter how many times I rebuilt it I could never get rid of the clicking in the gearbox.  Eventually I got fed up and sold it on, but I missed it, so I got a Blitzer Beetle which I run with a lexan HPI body.  I'm not superstitious, but there seems to be something about the rear left that is cursed.  I won't say it breaks every time I run it, but it breaks enough.  Probably every time I take it out anywhere.  When I first built it, it would constantly lose the rear left wheel nut.  This leads me to believe it is not the turning force of the motor that loosens but the braking force of the wheel spinning in the air hitting the ground - there may be something about my suspension setup that is promoting these breakages.  Things seemed to get better when I fitted knurled nuts instead of locknuts, but then axle sheered off during an Iconic bash at Broxtowe.  I replaced that, then it managed to strip the hex out of the back of the wheel, so I had to buy new wheels.  Next it took the entire centre out of the wheel.  Lucky I had a spare.  Finally, last time it was run (Feb 2020 at Tamiya Junkies) it flipped over while I was heading back to the barn, I picked it up and threw it down wheels first, got my aim wrong and it landed on a fallen fence panel and snapped the rear upright.  Took me until mid 2020 to get a replacement, but that's OK because I haven't been anywhere to drive it due to the pandemic.  Will be nice to get some airtime on the garden track as the weather improves, though, so we'll see what else I can break on that corner.

But finally, I'll park beside the Mod Clod and go through the history of this failed attempt to build a fast monster truck.  This rig is currently in pieces pending yet another rebuild, and I am determined - determined, I say - to actually get through a single 3S LiPo before it breaks.  One day.  Maybe.

It began when I built the axles from am NIB Super Clod kit with the intention of making a stick crawler, back when they were still a thing, but never finished the chassis.  When I got fed up with my TXT-1 torque-twisting everywhere and generally turning itself upside down every time I breathed on the throttle, I pulled off the TXT axles and fitted the Clod ones and shoved in a 14.4v setup using a HPI ESC and GT-550 motors.  What I had was a super-short, super-tall truck that flipped and wheelied all the time, which was cool but was basically a very expensive and glorified Lunchbox.

So I bought some extended lower link with integral shock mounts, made some new top links, and built what should have been a perfect truck.  Except this was around the time my NiMH packs were past their best, and they couldn't cope with the power requirements of the GT-550s.  2 minutes was about as much as they could manage; more often, they would dump as soon as I hit full throttle.  Also it had a tendency to break the rod ends - I remember walking 10 minutes across the fields to get to a little abandoned BMX track we'd found out in the hills near Bath, I drove it over one jump and it broke, and I had to carry it all the way back again (which took way more than 10 minutes given how heavy it was).

After that it spent many years in a box in pieces, and got put together again about 5 years ago with a lighter K2-3S chassis.  By then I'd raised funds for a used Traxxas EVX-2 ESC and some new Traxxas Titan 550 motors to replace the ageing HPI GTs.  But I didn't realise until after the EVX-2 arrived, there are two versions - one is LiPo-safe and one isn't.  Guess which one I got..?  So I had to run with LiPo alarms.  Well, it turns out the conventional plug-in LiPo alarm emits some kind of interference when it goes off, because after a 2-minute test-run out the back of my place one of the alarms went off, at which point the truck went utterly insane.  ESC and both servos were juddering madly from one end to the other, the truck flipped over and started doing pirouettes in the middle of the road, ripped up the custom body I'd spend days working on, nearly crashed into the neighbour's new car and took a layer of skin off my hand when I picked it up.

So, back to saving, and a few months on, a later-model EVX-2 with LiPo cutoff arrived.  Aaaaand, it turns out there's a common fault with the LiPo-safe EVX-2 where the LiPo cutoff is way too sensitive.  As in, give it full throttle and it immediately goes into cutoff mode.  Maybe the 550s and gearing is an issue here too - perhaps I'm putting more current through the ESC on full throttle than I would in an E-Revo or something where the EVX-2 was fitted as standard?  It was only driveable with a pair of my very very best 2S LiPos installed and even then, not for long.

And, dagnabbit, those rod-ends!!  I'm sure I've asked multiple times for advice on rod ends that won't break.  I don't know what you guys who do monster racing are using, but I've tried Traxxas, G-Made, and my current favourite, RC4WD (mostly because they're well-stocked in the UK).  I took the Clod to a Tamiya Junkies meet back in Feb 2020 after yet another rebuild, and after 2 minutes just racing around the field with absolutely no hard obstacles to run into, it snapped another rod end.

After that I started work on some chassis extensions to alter the lower link geometry, but other projects got in the way so it's currently shelved.  It's part of my Lockdown Contingency plan to rebuild it again with an all-new chassis design, which will hopefully reduce the loading on the lower links, but I'll be giving it some punishment over my garden ramps to see how it holds up.

Ah yes the sand master. You kind of forgot to mention the electric chassis it was based on would flex that much it would acually separate the pinion from the spur at the slightest hiccup in the road. I got one from ebay thinking the same as yourself that it would be an easy entry into nitro. Ended up spending more time trying to brace the chassis than it did running

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I've had vehicles break immediately during their first run but few "pest" over the years. My Aristocraft Dolphin (RIP) from BITD and CC01 Unimog both broke knuckles probably 15 feet into their maiden runs. I suppose my worst offender was the second used Monster Beetle I ever bought. It broke a part every other run for no apparent reason while its Blackfoot brother I had was fine. I eventually took it apart and boxed it away. Over a decade later I put together a rag-tag Blackfoot and mistakenly used most of those parts again. The curse came back as the parts continued their apparent goal of transforming themselves into ABS plastic dust. At least it pushed my interest into the study of plastic degradation and impact failure. Re-re parts were cheap enough, so I rebuild it completely and now (again as a Monster Beetle) it runs breakage-free (with the old parts properly labeled "for shelf use only" this time).

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