ABC HOBBY 'SUPER HAWAII' MONO HULL
I added this to my original showroom on November 1, 2013. This is an old ABC Hobby 'Super Hawaii' electric v-bottom r/c boat that I paid too much for on Ebay. Offshore powerboat racing has always been a favorite of mine as has the livery on this scale version of the 1:1 Midnight Express hull made famous by the late Italian Fabio Buzzi of FB design in the late '80's/early '90's. It first raced under several different names including 'Nitro', 'Rolly-Go' and 'Group Luchiare' with limited success before receiving its most celebrated name 'CESA 1882' after which it became the italian, european and world champion of both the U.I.M. (U nion Internationale Motonautique) and A.P.B.A. (American Power Boat Association) in 1988. In 1989 the name was changed to 'Gancia dei Gancia' and it continued to win until its diesel engines were penalized in 1990 which marked its end. That same year it was then sold to a Japanese owner (Yoshiro Kitami) who raced it under the name 'Tecno' in the first Venezia-Montecarlo winning ever leg but one before it made its way back to the USA where it was raced in the Superboat class under the name 'Super Hawaii' (changed from the Honolulu-based company's name 'Super Hero' due to a naming rights conflict with Marvel comics, I think). It was ultimately left for dead in an american shipyard only to be reacquired and restored by FB design in 2006. It's still in action and currently races under the name 'Red FPT.' ABC Hobby paid homage to the CESA 1882, Gancia dei Gancia and Super Hawaii with models in each livery but interestingly only the 'Super Hawaii' version received the stepped hull like the 1:1 which increases top speed. This one arrived in excellent shape with the box, old Futaba radio, stand and most of the original running gear but was missing the original dual-motor transmission (has custom-made single motor mount instead) and two-speed MSC so I purchased a second parts donor which I've since harvested those parts from and sold on. I'm not planning on using the original inefficient, high-heat MSC but wanted it in order to have all the original hardware. The boat comes from the factory with a nice dual-motor, single screw surface drive set-up in order to maximize weight-reduction, run-time, speed, etc but I am contemplating converting it to a quad-motor, twin screw set-up (which is actually pictured on some of the boxes) in honor of the original 1:1 that had four 900hp turbocharged diesels. Getting hold of a second original transmission may be difficult so in the meantime I've set the boat up using the existing single motor/drive set up to see how it runs and then I might install the stock twin-motor transmission with single drive to compare. I decided to use a relatively more modern Futaba Attack-II radio rather then the older Futaba radio it came with because it didn't have the newer and more-versatile 3-pin connectors. Keeping heat under the cowl to a minimum is important with these old plastic boats for obvious reasons so I went with a new Tamiya TEU-104BK ESC and a Team Orion 17T 'Havok' brushed motor I had laying around which should provide decent speed/run time and more importantly reliable/safe operation. The only minor fabrication work needed was the flex cable/coupler assembly which I made using a spare cable cut to length and two new beefy collet couplers from ebay. Thanks for looking and hope you enjoy.
If you liked those pictures, you should see these...
ABC HOBBY ^SUPER HAWAII^ MONO HULL