Popular Post ReggieC Posted August 5, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted August 5, 2022 (edited) Hi Guys, So it's been a long time since I started thread on here. I've been back lurking for a little while and still see there's a few names here that I recognise. I bit about me. I was really active on the forum circa 2009-2014, part of the 'chat' crew, regularly being the generally annoying teenager, thinking I knew a lot more than I did and sending low ball offers to people. Started off with a Schumacher Rascal that I ended up brushless swapping later on (Think I was the first to do that in the Uk that I'm aware of), spent most of my RC time racing 1/10 TC on carpet at my local club. My interest in RC's dropped off around turning 16 when i picked up my first car (1972 VW Beetle) which took most of my time and money. The RC's that I thought I'd use again got put in the shed at my parents and I sold the rest as a job lot for far too cheap to fund an engine swap. Since that point I started uni, graduated from uni with an Automotive Engineering degree, spent a couple of years working in motorsport, moved on to being a production engineer in a composites company and now an EV company, bought a house and have generally spent most of my free time playing rugby and playing with old VWs, all the while telling my parents that "I'll sort the rc cars out at some point" So that 'Some point' has come along! At the end of April I managed to completely snap the humerus in my left arm playing rugby. Suddenly ended up with a lot of spare time to fill and I moved back in with my parents so they could help look after me. So the plan was to get together the cars I still had, spend a bit of money getting them going and then possibly moving them on. So dug through the shed and found 3 cars that looked like I could get them going. I'll probably go into a bit more detail about what I needed to do with each in separate posts, so I'll just give a shot of each for now. Traxxas Slash 4x4 Ultimate edition. Pretty stock from memory, the ultimate edition came with all the major upgrades. There's a few RPM bits on it. Used to run this on 3s back in the day but just got some new 2s lipos and a new controller set because the transmitter had gone missing. Team Associated RC18B I remember buying this in anticipation for uni thinking I'd have time amongst studies, parting and sports to go out and find somewhere to bash a car. That never materialised so I've never ran it much. It's got a few alloy parts around the front suspension and a 12mm hex kit so it can run 1/10 TC tyres, which do look a bit comically big. Thankfully this was just the case of a lipo and receiver again as parts seem to be pretty non existent for them. SCX10/Losi Comp Crawler based scaler Bit of a home brew attempt at putting together a cheap scaler and not really succeeding. Again, next to no parts availability. Motor mount in the comp crawler gearbox went missing a long time ago and I couldn't source a replacement, 3D printed a replacement that worked well but ended up stripping an idler gear whilst running it around the garden and again, can't source a replacement. I've picked up a copy scx10 gearbox for it that I'll get round to fitting the driveshafts on to eventually. Concerned about the level of reduction it'll create with the LCC axles, making the car painfully slow so may end up changing axles. Another new receiver and a 17.5t Core RC motor was fitted but I've pulled the electrics out for now. So that got me to about what I was planning to do. But inevitably the bug bit me again! Scrolling through instagram I got a reel pop up of a car I wanted loads when I was younger but could never afford. With the arm break, It meant that all of my summer plans were down the toilet, Glastonbury that I'd had tickets for since 2019 and a 10 day surfing trip in Devon amongst other things. With the rest of my family still going to Glasto, I thought I'd buy myself said car and put it together over the Glasto weekend to keep myself distracted of the fun i'd be missing out on. A quick look on Modelsport showed it as being on pre-order and due to arrive the week before. So my first new RC in probably 10 years was... Tamiya F103 Tyrrell P34 1977 Argentina GP First time ever building a Tamiya kit. Was as enjoyable as I hoped. The car is very old school underneath, lots of the injection moulding sprues were dated back to the 80s/90s. Built up with all the standard Tamiya electrics. Had a bit of a nightmare painting the shell as the 'light key' I gave the body was completely visible through the paint and it trapped a lot of dust painting. Luckily the worst of it is hidden by the stickers and it still looks good on the shelf. Gave it a little run around the front room and it felt quite peppy, but won't be running it outside for fear of stone damage plus the foam tyres probably wouldn't last long. Maybe I'll take it to a carpet track at some point, but it was mainly destined for the shelf. Whilst looking for somewhere to run my Slash around I discovered that there's an offroad buggy club about 10 minutes away from where I live now that run 1/10 2wd and 4wd as well as 1/8. What started out as joining the facebook group to see if I could bring my slash down resulted in me getting back on forums and ebay browsing for a car to race with them. That ended up in the next purchase. Team Xray XB2 2021 (Apologies for the dirt, wet race day and still not properly cleaned it!) Found a deal for this XB2 that was a bit too good to pass on. Was originally a carpet spec 2020 car that had been upgraded to 2021 spec. Came with a decent spares package, a good selection of tyres and a couple of shells. I bought the necessary parts to convert it to a dirt spec car, mainly a ball diff, gearbox case and rear arms and fitted it out with some old electronics I still had. People who have been in the hobby a while might recognise the V1.2 Xerun speedo and GM 10.5t motor. The Xerun speedo was old when I got it around 2012 and the GM 10.5 was on the 2013 EFRA homologation list. They both still seem to work well and there's a couple of lads at the club who I think are definitely younger than these electronics! Fitted another Rx, an Etronixs low profile servo and picked up a couple of Sunpadow shorty lipos to use. So far I've done 1 race day with it, placing 5th, 5th, 5th in heats and 6th in the final of 10 cars which I was over the moon with. Lots of driving in the middle of the track and taking it easy on jumps to not need any marshal attention seemed to work well for me. Car is a bit slow on the straights but seems to handle to corners really well with the stock set up so I'm happy with how it is for now. Have got some Ballistic Buggy greens on the way for if it rains again. I think that's about it for now, sorry for the absolute wall of text! Not sure how often I'll update this, but thought it would be nice to get back into the community where it all sort of started for me. (Hope I've uploaded the photos correctly, the way of doing it seems to have changed since I was last here!) (Also, not sure if this is the right sub, didn't want to start separate threads for each car, so thought this would suit all of them) Edited August 5, 2022 by ReggieC 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.AJ. Posted August 5, 2022 Share Posted August 5, 2022 Welcome back mate 👍 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kpowell911 Posted August 5, 2022 Share Posted August 5, 2022 Welcome back mate 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted August 5, 2022 Author Share Posted August 5, 2022 1 hour ago, .AJ. said: Welcome back mate 👍 40 minutes ago, Kpowell911 said: Welcome back mate Cheers guys! 2 of the names I recognise from before! RC world doesn't look like it's moved on too much in my absence, a few new brands have popped up and imagine a few have disappeared too. Short Course trucks were the top dog when i was still about but now seems like people seem to have Arma everything? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormbringer Posted August 5, 2022 Share Posted August 5, 2022 Welcome back 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
53HRA Posted August 5, 2022 Share Posted August 5, 2022 I remember you - The old MSUK chat days till silly o’clock bring back memories Welcome back 😄 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rover Man Posted August 5, 2022 Share Posted August 5, 2022 Welcome back 👍 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bajadre Posted August 5, 2022 Share Posted August 5, 2022 Welcome back Reggie brother 👍 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted August 5, 2022 Author Share Posted August 5, 2022 19 minutes ago, 53HRA said: I remember you - The old MSUK chat days till silly o’clock bring back memories Welcome back 😄 I'm sure you don't miss all of us offering £5 for anything you had for sale?! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted August 14, 2022 Author Share Posted August 14, 2022 Should have been racing the XB2 today, unfortunately the meeting was called due to a clash with a regional round apparently. Had done a couple of bits in prep for the race day. First off was wiring up a 'spare' esc. The Xerun v1.2 that i'm currently running seems to work really well, I'm just nervous about how well a probably 12+ year old ESC Is going to hold up long term. It's also not got a lot of the modern features that are common on Race ESCs nowadays, which isn't much of an issue currently as I'm getting back into the swing of things, but I'd like to have the boost/turbo features available at some point. I have another older Hobbywing Xtreme Stock ESC that was in my TC that I had a lipo fire in. Case is a little bit bubbled in one place, but it seems to work okay. I think I need to get some different solder, I bought some from amazon a while back that was fine for smaller wire but on the larger wire I've used here I really struggled to get it flowing consistently, even with my 80w equivalent gas soldering iron. Joints seem solid on them and hidden them as best I can with heat shrink. Next job was to fit a chassis protector. It looks like it has never had one before and it definitely picked up a few scratches on the one meeting i've done with it so far, so I thought I'd put one on to stop it getting worse. Before and after.. A bit confusing that the servo bolt holes don't line up correctly, There's no difference in servo positions on the 20, 21 and 22 spec cars so It should fit. For £5 though, I'm not too fussed, Should help stop it getting too much more beat up. I've also got a set of stainless fasteners that I'm slowly replacing as I remove the old ones for other work, so it's a bit mismatched atm. I've also had some mounted Ballistic Buggy Green rears delivered for the pit box for if it rains again at a meeting, apparently they're the go-to tyre for wet racing on grass. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted August 21, 2022 Author Share Posted August 21, 2022 Made it to the track today! Got permission to use the track outside of race days for practice/testing purposes, which is great because it's a 10 minute drive from where I live now. So I took the XB2 with me as the main racer and the Slash to use in between runs of that. The 1/8th class is a bit of a free for all at the club in terms of Nitro/Electric and buggys/truggys all running at the same time, so I'm hoping they'll let me squeeze the Slash in at some point once I have it a bit more dialled as it's about the same size. Obligatory photo (Photos seem to lose a lot of quality when uploading via the attach function, is there a better way?) Xb2 had 2 batteries through it, probably about 50mins run time in total. It's a grass track but was really dry and dusty (isn't every bit of grass in the uk right now?). I was testing out some set up changes and trying to get a bit more pace and consistency out of it. I Ran Schumacher Mezzos on the rear last time out, they worked well enough but I had some options in the box of bits I got with it. I tried some Mini-darts that seemed to be a lot more predictable out of the slow speed corners so think I'll stick with them. The track is quite rutted in places so I put 2 turns more preload on the rear shocks to try get a bit more travel, it helped but would still get the occasional bounce related spin-out. Think that may just be nature of the beast with how the track is in this weather. I also tried some Fastrax tyres I had kicking around from a long time ago that were absolutely rubbish and unbalanced so think i'll get rid of them! I went up from a 23t pinion to a 26t, this has helped on the straights and clearing the big jump a lot. I don't think I'd need much more top end speed on this track, so my comments the other day about having an esc with more boost/turbo might not be required. I finished off the day with a probably 20 minute run, ESC came off pretty cool to the touch and I could hold my finger on the motor for 6-7s without it getting uncomfortably hot, so in a 5 minute race run I think there's definitely options for more gearing. The Slash was ran on the 1/8th dirt track which is the other side of the shipping container in the photo. Again, really dry and dusty track with a lot of bumps and ruts. Probably resembling the hard packed/dusty tracks that the Americans always seem to run on. A bit less run time with this compared to the XB2, the whole 'fall-over nature' of short course trucks was a bit frustrating having to go flip it regularly, but I got a bit better with not putting it on it's roof by the end. It was really struggling with the bumps on the track to start with and seemed to be bottoming out on the kick of every jump, so I put a fair amount more preload spacers on front and rear shocks to get a bit more ride height and it really helped with both. It's still got the kit wheels and tyres on it, which had a hard time hooking up on the surface. I've got some 17mm hex adaptors in the shed that I'm tempted to use with some 1/8 buggy tyres as I think that'll be better for using what everyone else runs there. One 'problem' I was encountering was seemingly heat-related cogging. It's still running the original VXL system that came with the car, I know they are common for running hot and not exactly smooth, but after about 5 mins the car would really struggle to get itself going. Motor and ESC would be really hot too. I can remember them getting about that hot when I used to run it, bit can't remember the cogging being as much of a problem. I'm using better batteries than I used to as well, so not sure if it's vxl combo getting old or if running in 25 degree heat was just a bit too much for them. It might be something I'll look into replacing if I do end up racing it, The Hobbywing SCT combos look like a good option. All in, a really fun couple of hours with the cars. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ReggieC Posted August 27, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 27, 2022 (edited) A broken spring on my Campervan means that I'm unexpectedly able to race tomorrow when I thought I'd be away. Spent a little bit of time prepping the cars this evening. XB2 just had a quick 'spanner check' to make sure everything was tight. Slash has had a few bits done to it though. I've gone ahead with the 2 things I mentioned last time that I wanted to do. I bought a Hobbywing SCT combo with the 4600kv motor that I've put in with a 15t pinion. I'll see how that goes tomorrow. I also have put on the 17mm adaptors with some knock-off Nanda blocks. I've bought some AKA impacts as well which is what most people at the track run, I want to make sure I can race it with them before fitting them though. A few pictures. I know the idea of the SC cars is to use similar wheels to the ones they use in Pro 2/4 but I think the racing dish tyres look good on it, especially with the white on the shell. I always found it funny how the scale designation of most SC cars is set at 1/10, there's a huge difference between the size of it compared to a 1/10 buggy Finger crossed it all goes well tomorrow, I'm sure I'll update in the coming days. Edited August 28, 2022 by ReggieC Pictures looked like they'd broken 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormbringer Posted August 27, 2022 Share Posted August 27, 2022 Good luck for tomorrow mate 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted August 27, 2022 Author Share Posted August 27, 2022 19 minutes ago, Stormbringer said: Good luck for tomorrow mate Cheers! Looks like it's gonna be small numbers so hopefully less people to get in the way of! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ReggieC Posted August 28, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 28, 2022 (edited) Good day today! First hurdle was to convince them to let me run the Slash in with the 1/8th class. There were only 6 of them with another one turning up late so they were happy to have me in! As I said the other day, My van is out of action so had to use the camping set up as my pit area, not quite the neatest pit area out there but I was most concerned about keeping my sandwich in the shade! We ran 4 heats and 1 final today. That's taking a little bit of getting used to as when I ran TC it was 3 heats and 3 finals, a bit less track time but it does mean it's a bit more relaxed between each time you're out. Conditions were much the same on both tracks, dry and very dusty and only really getting worse with more people on the track. 1/8ths were out first so I loaded up the Slash and got on the track for some practice before heat 1. The tyre change had made a huge difference in grip compared to when I ran it there last, could actually put a bit of power down without it just spinning out. This meant I could actually feel the benefit of the new SCT combo. It's so much smoother in power delivery than the VXL and noticeably faster. Temperatures felt good throughout the day, both components coming off after a run at 7-8s of comfortable finger contact. Generally, the Slash went around about where I was expecting it to be, last! It was getting thrown about by the bumps a lot more than the proper 1/8th cars, but I was improving through the day. I threw on the AKA Impacts for the last heat and it transformed the car positively again, felt like I had enough grip where I wanted it and could slide it a bit into/out of corners quite controllably. I managed to qualify 6th out of 8 for the final, purely down to a couple of other guys DNFing in the heats. I had probably a minute or so of the final running around in the pack, and I felt like It wasn't too out of place. Unfortunately, the weight difference meant any contact with other cars usually resulted in me coming off worse. I ended up coming home 7th, last of the runners. I had a huge amount of fun with it coming last and there's definitely room to build on. I'm thinking a LCG conversion might be working its way to me soon, as well as some new shock and diff oils. Spot the odd one out! The day with the Xray was pretty easy going, P3 in the first 2 heats, P5 in the 3rd through over driving. I tried to make a throttle expo adjustment just before the start of the 4th heat but in a rush I accidentally did it to the steering channel which resulted in a car that felt hugely different to drive and I really struggled but just about scraped P5, which qualified me in P4 for the final. After a messy start, which put me in last, I spent most of the race chasing down everyone else and trying to keep out of trouble. I managed to catch up with P3 going into the last lap and when his car decided it would be fun to perform a random cartwheel on the straight, I snuck in to grab my first podium of the return to racing with a P3. Chuffed to bits! Car felt really good all day, I think there's a lot more pace in the car than what I'm capable of extracting atm so hope that'll come eventually. Really good fun racing. Next race day is in 2 weeks, I'll try get over to the track before then though. Now to sort out these 2 dusty boys! Edited August 28, 2022 by ReggieC 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormbringer Posted August 28, 2022 Share Posted August 28, 2022 Well done mate 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMballistic Posted August 29, 2022 Share Posted August 29, 2022 Great read @ReggieC and glad you got back to RC again even if it was down to an injury that brought you back. That track looks like awesome fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted August 30, 2022 Author Share Posted August 30, 2022 15 hours ago, GMballistic said: Great read @ReggieC and glad you got back to RC again even if it was down to an injury that brought you back. That track looks like awesome fun. Thanks! It's one of those things I would have got back into eventually I'm sure, I've always revolved around hobbies so RC was going to get it's turn eventually. I'll try get some better pics of the layouts next time I'm over there, all 3 tracks are quite technical whilst also being pretty friendly on the cars which makes them great to race on. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted September 2, 2022 Author Share Posted September 2, 2022 LCG Conversion turned up today, that didn't take long haha. Similar to what @Kpowell911 was saying the other day, I'm enjoying working on the cars almost as much as I am actually using them. I'm also rubbish at the "I know I'm going to buy this eventually" wait to buy something. Spent the evening in the shed putting it on. Was a nice kit really, all parts in individual labelled bags with new fasteners and an exploded diagram with instructions on order. Height of the front and back of the car to start for reference. I make that 55mm front and 50mm back. After a couple of hours we ended up with this. And measured at the same points. About 39mm front and back? So a drop of roughly 15mm at the front and 10mm at the back, whilst retaining the same suspension travel. All the electrics seem to sit a lot lower in the chassis so I'm expecting some noticeable improvements in handling when it's next on track. The new chassis has interestingly sorted at a lot of slop in the steering which should be good too! A few things that have came out of the evening working on it. I really wish I'd bought a bearing set for when I was doing it, I've cleaned up and re-oiled the harder to reach ones and had a few spares from the XB2 pitbox that I subbed in, but all the outboard ones are pretty notchy. There's a lot more drag in the driveline than I'm really happy with, I think a lot of this is in the diff crown and pinons that I've re-greased so hoping that'll loosen up. The front bumper is pretty much about to snap along the skid plate. All the driveshafts are either slightly ovalled at connection points or twisted. It's got RPM front arms that have bent/warped around the shock, and seem to flex around the shock mount almost as much during suspension travel as it does compress the shock, which isn't ideal for racing. I'm not sure how much of that stuff was poor maintenance on my behalf 10 years ago or just it being sat for ages. I'm sort of thinking now that I just leave a lot of it be and see what breaks before anymore upgrades. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted September 2, 2022 Author Share Posted September 2, 2022 Just in addition to the last post, there's something else annoying about the LCG Conversion. The way the battery strap slots in from the side as apposed to dropping onto a post and being secured by a body pin. You can sort of see it in this photo, but with my lipos, if you have them with the connectors forward, there's no way of getting them in and out with out jamming into the power cables really hard. You also can't spin the lipo 180 degrees because then when the strap widens it clashes with the same wires. I've not seen this mentioned online anywhere but I might have to come up with something else 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kpowell911 Posted September 3, 2022 Share Posted September 3, 2022 The LCG conversion will be a night and day difference to handling. I cant even bash a HCG Slash let alone race one! Regarding the battery strap, everything Traxxas make is purely for their Lipos, which have side exit wires. Many other lipos have a side exit wiring so youre not limited to those, but you have two choices: New Lipos Velcro Strap Conversion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted September 4, 2022 Author Share Posted September 4, 2022 On 03/09/2022 at 09:29, Kpowell911 said: The LCG conversion will be a night and day difference to handling. I cant even bash a HCG Slash let alone race one! Regarding the battery strap, everything Traxxas make is purely for their Lipos, which have side exit wires. Many other lipos have a side exit wiring so youre not limited to those, but you have two choices: New Lipos Velcro Strap Conversion I'm hoping I'll be able to get up the track today or tomorrow evening to give it a go. Basically every set up sheet/set up advice I found for them said to not even bother racing without the LCG Conversion haha. Yeah I thought that's probably the case. They're pretty new LiPos so don't think I'll be replacing them. I'll try see if I can modify the strap slightly to clear where it needs to, can't imagine it'll take too much Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted September 5, 2022 Author Share Posted September 5, 2022 Made it to the track tonight! On 03/09/2022 at 09:29, Kpowell911 said: The LCG conversion will be a night and day difference to handling. I cant even bash a HCG Slash let alone race one! This turned out to be very true! Absolutely huge difference in handling. Car felt like something that should actually be on a race track. I was going to just go with the car, batteries and transmitter but just as I was about to leave the house I thought I'd take some basic tools and spares. Glad I did because this happened after lap 2. Had a spare so back up and running quickly. I mentioned I'd get some photos of the track next time I'm up there. This is the 1/8th track. Really fun track, although it's sort of at the end of season period and needs some attention. There's lots of ruts/holes at some pretty critical points which can really ruin your pace if you fall foul of them. The main table top jump and jump over the back are particularly bad for this with bumps literally on the bottom of the ramp. I ran 2 batteries through it without too much hassle. Had some nice laps going at points but the bumps are killer. I think I might put in some thinner shock oil to let it react a bit quicker. I also mentioned the other day that the front bumper looked like it was in its last legs, it's now looking like this. Looks like a bolt went missing too. I'll get an RPM bumper on order as I think they look a bit better. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormbringer Posted September 5, 2022 Share Posted September 5, 2022 Track looks ace mate 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieC Posted September 7, 2022 Author Share Posted September 7, 2022 (edited) Few more bits done. Changed the shock oil to 250cst. I was really surprised to see that what I assume was the original shock oil was still pretty much all in there. Not bad for 10 or so years! Suspension definitely feels a lot quicker to respond, will see how it goes on Sunday. There's an ever so slight bend in 1 front and 1 rear shock shaft, but they still seem to be working okay so I'll just monitor them. Had the RPM bumper turn up and also thought I'd try out the traxxas heavy duty A-arms for the front after noticing the RPM arms on the front were really bent. This was the better side! Annoyingly, the black arms weren't in stock, so I've gone for the blue ones. I'm not too fussed about it not matching, I won't see it when it's moving. Rpm bumper fitted too. I'm liking how it looks. Not planning on buying anything now apart from sorting breakages. Feel like I've definitely been neglecting the XB2, but that just works on the track! Edited September 7, 2022 by ReggieC 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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