horatio

Where have these 4 channel receivers gone?! 🤔🤷 No one seems to stock them any more. TFR6 can be found, but these are 7 channels - excessive for an RC car as 5 of the channels are redundant.

Kev seems to have fingers in different pies and he stated that he made his living from eBay sales. He clearly had welding/fabrication skills and his own workshop. I'm taking from some of his previous videos that his YouTube channel was a supplementary income, which only recently became his main living. Hats off to anyone getting views on YouTube. I've posted videos - they have 100's of views....🤣 To make it viable like you and KT have done, you need 100's of thousands of views. Video editing is time consuming. Getting licence free music that isn't rubbish incurs costs. Producing videos every couple of days and keeping people hooked is a talent. The rivalry story between you and KT was interesting and I found the race challenges interesting videos to watch. Turns out Kev has good thumbs! Flying Heli and fixed wing, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. I like your reviews though and subscribed a long time ago. One of the first videos I watched had GPS and compass insert on the video as I recall. As for wealth and shopping - I've experienced both financial hardship and bouyancy. I think once you've learnt to be thrifty, it stays with you regardless of how wealthy you get. Nothing wrong with Aldis/Lidl. We occasionally shop at M&S if we're feeling decadent. No Waitrose where we live, being out in the sticks. Good farm shops though! 😁😎

Would a 4292 squeeze into a Kronos XTR? And would the Torox be enough @ 150a to handle it? It must be right on the limit. I'm supposing the 4292 would have more torque than the 2050kv Kuron 825 (4274). 🤔 Rated at 4200 watts, that's 1200 watts more than the Kuron 825!! 5.6hp Vs 4.0hp. 😝 I want to beat my PB of 0-60mph 3.8secs. I see a 1780kv which I was thinking might work well on 13, 14 &15 tooth pinions. Too much torque will just light my tyres up, but I can gear up and pull some higher speeds to compensate, or adjust punch on the ESC. A major limiting factor - besides mitigating additional heat produced - will be traction (or lack of it). I'm using Jetko belted tyres, but I think I may need to try and find an even softer compound on colder days when I can't get enough heat into them. The ones I've got now get grippy during the summer, but not so much at this time of year. On the other hand - power wheelies. They also destroy your chances of getting a good time! 🤣 It's a minefield trying to nail 0-60mph times under 4 seconds. That's why I'm aiming for 0-60mph in under 3 seconds in 2024. 😝 Help! 😅

But if you sign up, he'll show you how to give up your day job.....😝

Yeah, I've not been out for while with mine either. The weather has been terribly wet. Perhaps I should take up RC boating....🤔

So - what's happening to all you Kronos/Shogun/XTR owners out there? You all still driving or is the platform yesterday's news?

There used to be a shop called 'Kev's Racing Bits' and I often wondered if it was the same Kev....

Tomley - your videos are great and I like your collaborated efforts as well. Your balanced and pragmatic reviews are most welcome. I think it's pretty commendable how you've grown your channel and got past certain....'challenges'. KT and yourself have shown how home grown content providers can readily produce RC car based entertainment - and arguably the most viewed in the world. 🇬🇧 It's awesome that you've found the formula that empowers you to make your hobby work for you. Well done! Kudos.

That would explain why I'm a bit of a C***! 🤣🤣😝

And now for balancing wheels - we can use these!

That's not a bad turn of speed for out of the box! 😎 I'm considering some higher gearing on my Baja 5B for when I'm in large open spaces. Otherwise, the stock 17/57 works well on my old 26cc fuelie which is still keen to rev. What gearing do you use on the Electric SBK?

That's a great idea - effectively after run oil (or before run oil 😅) - what better oil to use than your choice of 2 stroke oil. 👌 I think my Baja had such a spell in the garage that it had air in the fuel line and I'm not convinced my primer bulb was pushing anything but air through the carb. I think my next job will be a fresh set of fuel lines, a new bulb and fuel filter/clunk. Might go crazy and fit a new tank too. Then try another speed run. 😝

As an aside, after a winter in the shed, I found starting my Baja 5B SS was easier with a little helping squirt of petrol directly into the cylinder. I removed the plug, used a syringe with 2.5ml of petrol and just squirted it in. I'm wary of getting too carried away with pressing the Primer bulb much, as this can flood the engine if you're not careful. Generally, the Fuelie 26cc is incredibly easy to start. But if the engine is left to get dry, direct injection into the cylinder saves alot of stress on your pull starter. 👍

For the avoidance of any doubt - this is how cool a Fuelie 26cc engine is.....

Youtube video of speed runs and general hooning around should be visible before 5pm. See here:

14 Year old Baja 5B SS, running Fuelie 26cc engine. Perfect conditions, 60 degrees and dry. Strange light in the sky is also known as the sun!

Totally agree with the above, but a torquey engine can be geared right up. My CY 26cc engine with super loud, shiny, curly SS pipe was super fast in a straight line. Cars modded with a lot of heavy alloy will no doubt benefit from tuned engines - and the bigger they are, the more potential there is for higher HP. "ain't no replacement for displacement" 🤣

The engine you've shown looks like a bargain. A chrome version was sold (new other) yesterday on Ebay for £144 before shipping. There are all sorts of top end options for the 4 bolt engines, but it will likely be perfectly fine as is. 👍

Well even if your engine is toast, the replacement engines are unbelievably good value from £139. IMO much better value than your typical glow engine. Hell - you can get a Zen G320 for less than £289 and they produce great torque. 👍 Hopefully you'll get a few more miles out of the one you're getting. 🤞 Let us know how it goes.

Here's a link to the CY 26cc engine - this one is a 4 bolt engine though - my Fuelie CY 26cc is a 2 bolt. IRC CY 26cc Engine There's also the CY 29cc engine here: RC Modelz CY 290 Is just me - but my CY 26cc engine seemed to get stronger as it aged. I'm 100% expecting the piston/ring/cylinder to need changing, but it just keeps on going. And that curly wurly silver tuned exhaust with the SS might be loud, but it rips!

I have to agree - the CY 26cc Engine that I had in my Baja 5B SS is 14 years old, on the original clutch shoes (inside a TR enclosed clutch case) - and it's never missed a beat. It's such an under rated engine. People were always in such a hurry to swap it out for this that or the other - but I never saw the replacements they shelled out on resulting in better running. My CY 26 always starts using the same procedure. 3 presses on the bulb. 1 pull on the cord with the choke closed. Then usually 1 or 2 pulls on the cord with the choke open. On the curly silver tuned pipe, it rips and sounds like a MX bike. It's bonkers. Gotta love 2 stroke petrol engines!! 😍

Visiting this thread having just gone over a few sets of my 1/8th wheels. There is nothing to lose by balancing your wheels, though it gets increasingly difficult to balance wheels the smaller they are. IMO, it's better to take reasonable steps to ensure your wheels are as balanced as possible, because besides the obvious improvement in performance, having a car that has less vibration will also reduce wear and improve bearing life. To do a good job, you need a wheel balancer, blutac, pen, golfing lead tape and a digital balance (scales). I use blutac on the rim - in the usual way - putting the right amount of blutac opposite the heavy side of the wheel. Mark this with a pen. (often on off road tyres, you'll notice the heavy part of the wheel is where the manufacturer drills the vent hole in the rim) Once the wheel is balanced as accurately as possible, I then remove all of the blutac and weigh it on the digital balance. I replace the blutac with the same weight of adhesive lead tape. After a bit of experience, you get to know how long a strip of lead tape you need for any specific weight. It's just a matter of practice. If I'm dealing with very small amounts, I often leave the blutac on the scale - let's say it's 2g. I'll add my length of lead tape to the scale and until I get the length I need to total 4g in total - then put the 2g of lead tape on to the wheel. The reason why I prefer lead tape on the rims is because blutac and putty attract a lot of dust and crap. Also, because lead is denser, you require less volume of it to achieve the same result over putty. It's neater and less likely to fall off. Some of my wheels require 8g of weight to balance them! On a set of wheels hurtling at 60mph - that's a lot of unwanted vibration if it's left unbalanced. My truggy wheels have been balanced with a putty that sets hard and this has also worked well to be fair. However, I still prefer the the lead tape - it's cheaper and readily available.

I kinda get that for the RTR stuff - "let's not keep having warranty claims on the $15 servo we supply - so we'll put in a spring so weak that it doesn't have to overcome anything greater than 1kg/cm". With predictable results! But why supply the same spring for rollers like the XTR and EXB, which isn't supplied with any electronics? 🤔 To be fair, the spring on the XTR was OK for stock tyres on loose stuff.. But take it on grass or tarmac with big sticky on road tyres - there's an obvious problem with vague, wandery steering. I have night/day difference on my XTR now. So much easier to keep it tracking in a straight line, which for me is important if you run next to kerbs or within the confines of a track. Steering that centers is important! Another slightly weird thing was the excessive amount of toe out the truck came with - mine had 3-4° which is waaaaay too much. This combined with the soft servo saver meant that high speed runs were a wing & a prayer job! I've set mine now for 1° toe out, for responsive steering at the entry of corners, whilst still having consistent straight line tracking.

Yes. None more so than the pitiful arrangement that Savage had out of the box. It literally had no steering at all. Steering more series of suggestions - it was implied rather than actually applied to the wheels. To get steering, you literally had to take an OFNA monster pirate steering assembly and use that. Yet before getting the servo saver changed - everyone put in super duper high torque servos. They even used 2s Lipos to up the voltage. Result: zero difference. So why is this? It's the same for Arrma Kratons as well, only for them they don't have the luxury of an adjustment collar. It seems like such an obvious oversight. You never have this problem on racing buggies or truggies. Perhaps bashers don't need to steer? 🤣😂

So it's been a while since I posted here, but I've had some decent sessions with it over the past couple of months. It's a ton of fun! One area of the truck that needed a tweak was with the servo saver. It becomes quite apparent with big, grippy tyres that the servo saver spring is too weak to achieve consistent steering. Yes - you can tighten it up, but then there's very little (if any) saving action left in it. Frankly, the spring rate is just not optimal for this weight of truck. What to do? Replace the spring. Over on another forum, a bunch of us discussed this problem and I suggested we look for getting a spring made to spec, with a higher rate. That's exactly what we've done. The stock spring was tightened about as far as it could go for on road use. This offers little little give, because there was no space between the coils. I can compress the stock spring completely with my fingers. The new spring on the other hand looks like this: The spring shown here has a much firmer rate, it's slightly longer, the music wire is thicker and it's an interference fit into the composite servo saver arm. Stock spring on left, bespoke spring on right. The specs for the new one were carefully considered following careful measurements of the stock item. With these dimensions, we could figure out how much bigger and thicker we could make the replacement. During testing, it became immediately apparent that the steering now was not only more positive, but more predictable, faster and centered with more precision. The result is 100% consistent lock. See here: My first batch are now virtually sold out. If people want the same - just let me know. I'll get another load soon. When you consider how much money people spend on fancy steering servos, with mega torque and speed - it seems futile when the servo saver wastes any effectiveness the servo may have. You need this spring!