Nitroholic

The RC world does seem to currently be full of people trying to sell stuff for WAY more than it should be worth. New stuff, Brexit, import issues, supply chain problems and a million other lame excuses has seen the price of new stuff climb, so folk assume their rusty, beat up old buggy is now worth £500. You will eventually find a genuine seller with a relaistic price, but it's getting harder.

just use any rear upright complete with bearings and axle/12mm wheel hex. If you are planning on a proper swing axle and shock setup, then you need to do some more fabrication. I have used offcuts of Acetal / Delrin which you cna get off E-Bay for not a lot of money. It's fairly simple to duplicate the setup of real world 3 wheelers with that layout like the BMW Isetta or Messerchmidt KRs. If you don;t need suspension on the rear end, it's dead simple. Just attach the rear suspension upright directly to the chassis, and install the axle. Take something like a TT02 Tamiya rear upright, and mount it horizontally...not in its usual orientation, and you have 2 bolt mounts to fix it to the chassis. Pop in bearings and an axle with 12mm hex...job done. If you are mounting it to a swing axle....bolt it to that. As I mentioned, flat 5-7mm Delrin will work really well and can be cut with basic hand-tools, and drilled for pivots.

'budget' is a very relative term.

New clutch looks good. I reckon that bolt had started to work loose, and the stress snapped it. Fully home, the 'shoulder' on the bolt should be up against the carrier, meaning the thing shopuld shear close to or at the shoulder....not where it did. Good job getting it off, as the bolt holes were not usable. Making a puller is a lot better than the screwdriver/prybar alternatives I have seen used. Couple of slices off some box section. Good idea to 'hook' the ends of the carrier.

no UK shops stocking MCD stuff these days. Market is small... Really you are stuck with the importers: https://www.kingcobra.co.uk/petrol-rc-cars Haven;t owned or run one for a number of years, and back then....the only stockist was Rossendale Models, and they were basically, from what I gathered, the importers as well then. Great cars to drive...but utter money pits.

Its far from witchcraft ..... and the only things liable to get burned for it are ESCs! It's like anything, really a question of how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. But as you have already found out, there is limited use in this for the hobby, as you simply will not find the necessary specs on a lot of motors. Same goes for ESC. Castle famously used to keep their max ampage on the ESCs a secret. Probably becuase it wasn't enough to make them sound good. If you find specs for a motor, they will tell you it's max amps....but knowing a max amp draw doesn't tell you what load they measured it under. Over gear a motor, and it will struggle to spin, pulling more current from the ESC as it tries. Pull enough current and the wires will melt from the heating effect....but your ESC will die before then. So really...the max amps your motor can draw would be a fairly big number....but not in normal usage. The Kv rating is based on no load rpm ....but you never run it that way. Its only useful to make comparisons and to predict likely performance and gearing needs. Then, of course, these are 'manufacturers figures' which are liable to be inflated for sales reasons... So, by all means jump in and do a load of research, but do it for the interest. Don't expect it to be all that useful in the hobby. You can use the knowledge to compare relative products, and to get an idea of what will be suitable for what model.....but there is still a big chunk of trial and error left for all of us. You get a feel for which makers give good data and which ones give a load of rubbish. Lastly....I would suggest you broaden your research if you want to know more about brushless motors and how they work. They are used in a lot more applications.....but the principles remain. You will also find more solid articles about motors, magnetic fields and how the ESc works to drive the motor. Its a very different thing compared to a brushed motor....and probably help to make the motor stuff more understandable too.

No..... you want the RIGHT length can for the use. Not the biggest. Let me tell you a cautionary tale....learnt the hard way. I was converting a Hobao truggy to brushless, and I wanted to make it a beast....so I fitted the largest can I could get in there. A 4082 Leaopard motor. 150A ESc and planned to run it on a mix of 5S or 6S packs. Sweet, I thought. MAde some careful gear calculations, bought the right pinions...and took it for a spin. Ate the centre diff on first pack. Rebuilt the diff...shimmed it....tyres ballooned, and came off the rims. Re glued. Shredded the diff again. This time it got so hot internally, it melted the plastic diff case. Rebuilt with a locked centre diff filled with epoxy. Shredded front diff. Just because it fits, doesn't mean its right. I ended up with a car that wheelied constantly, turned its tyres into pizza cutters, ate diffs, and could crash in a straight line. Fun....nope. After the ESC blew I sold it on as a roller.

Not exactly. The diameter of the motor will give you an idea of hte power output, but the length of the can is nothing to do with the Kv rating. If you think about it, what does a longer can actually mean? In simple terms......longer magnets and more of the wire coils in the magnetic field. This gives more torque....and Kv is not a measure of that at all. The Kv rating of a brushless motor is the ratio of the motor's unloaded rpm to the peak voltage on the wires connected to the coils. So basically....if you multiply the Kv rating by the voltage, you get a theoretical max rpm for the motor. Lower KV motors do tend to have more torque, but thats more to do with the current draw through the wiring than the length of the can. You can have a short can motor with a low Kv. I have upgraded motors to get more torque ..... and I have upgraded motors to get more 'poles' ..... as that gives a smoother power delivery with less cogging. It really depends on what you were missing in the original motor and certainly for me....it was rarely just to go faster

I buy to keep .... usually because I like to modify things, so after a fairly short amount of time the vehicle has become fairly well tailored to what I want, and you never get back the time effort and money you put in if you sell on. So, things either get kept....or as has happened a couple of times....get sold on fairly quickly if the thing just failed to impress or become part of my RC family

Dyno curve tells you many things. Not just peak power.....but how well the motor gets there and how gearing tolerant it will be. As an example, I had an Oddified unit, good old red-head job.... 6hp max on the dyno from a 26cc unit. Not bad...but the dyno print showed a really smooth and progressive power delivery. Anyone can grab a file and open up ports. You can get peak power that way....but end up with a narrow power band and a knife edged peak. You want the peak to hold up and not just drop, as if you slightly under gear and rev past peak power....you will run into instability. Similarly...an all or nothing 6hp will get you wheelspin or bog down...usually resulting in owners fitting stupidly strong clucth springs so the engine is screaming when it bites. It takes a lot more skill, patience and time to get smooth power delivery with a broad peak....and I don;t know to what extent either of the motors in the OP post cover those bases. For most uses, peak power is relative. As long as it feels fast enough, then it is. But if I was going to spend a lot of money on an engine, I would want to know more than just a max power figure plucked out of thin air. I have seen a lot of power figures plucked out of the air for various kits.....and often the results didn;t match the claims.

I take any power claim with a MASSIVE pinch of salt, unless a dyno printout is supplied.

It won;t really matter. The 5.9 motor is not really a truggy motor, not to my mind anyway. It makes less power than you would think from the size, but drinks the fuel. It produces plenty of torque, which makes it a good choice for a truck, but less so for a buggy or truggy. I would run it on the stock Trophy pipe, and look at the gearing to get the best speed I could from it.

1C .....is basically a relative term. It's a safe baseline charging current, which varies depending on the pack. so...for a 1000Mah pack, 1C is 1Amp. For a 3000Mah pack, 1C is 3Amps. Your 2000Mah pack is safe to charge at 2Amps. Some packs can handle a higher charging current, but I wouldn't unless it states it is OK to.

charging at 1C ( 1.0 and 1.6A ) should be fine. Its not stressing the battery, and if the LiPo is in good condition, its fine. Whenever you charge a battery, though, ALWAYS monitor it, and never leave it unattended.

Won't hurt it in any way ..... but don;t expect it to run the same. You will need to tweak the needles....but the first thing you will notice is the much lower level of smoke. Tuned correctly, you will still see a smoke trail, but it will be a haze not a thick fog. If you have a temp gauge, I would advise using it while you get used to the race blend fuel, so you know your tune is on point while you get used to the new blend. If you don;t have a temp gun, its worth getting one. Don;t buy an RC branded one though, any IR thermometer will work fine, just as long as it covers the 60c -140c range. which works for both nitro and electric motor 'good' temps. An RC branded one will cost about twice the price of a generic one, and can be had for about £10 off E-Bay. like this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393679023338?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20201210111314%26meid%3D09d7f97ddb0141a58eee127a18898de5%26pid%3D101195%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D402763429312%26itm%3D393679023338%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DSimplAMLv9PairwiseWebMskuAspectsV202110NoVariantSeed%26brand%3DUnbranded&_trksid=p2047675.c101195.m1851&amdata=cksum%3A39367902333809d7f97ddb0141a58eee127a18898de5|enc%3AAQAGAAACIOMtV3VpB54Dz1cPtxa%2F8o6j%2FiuHEEQcy%2Bue919tDFtx6STNLqxKkmASWpoxpuuULlrenk%2F2cuSSlfUSvVZzZCpum%2Fyef%2Bwj08MkYzsTVV5%2B%2F02lAZpPZacuuV8SAjeB3oNnG651WB6XGpgKo494MdnQnb%2FReKbO%2FIwpT1TnGRxCVKRI394ErD%2Be5A9KXk5qTVzyj%2Fck3qUoySB6kdHEn%2B5OT5elP5E0aLnvlUoTNZiMZI0am72bJeRIYexdNhgJboIkyyIuGMbKF8u6XiGgO50Z1KpXoVquX6yJp3WLXDqxr5NsTheMA2qrbRuPewa3f2Um7c9XK34aCPX2VwwFO5%2FXjGFAS81pVlWHoeh0mpiajpekIGzZiPgc1MH1KevuYDCCrtZhh0bTEiB3%2BRH6hdXU7vfwUUaVpjUlNE1z1uAj39PCTB9cxy9BOGUrjyE4CreO%2FsvwUeAcEVoDojHtnOgIhhkjBzuwUr4fzz4ODQAhpjoYMx%2Fk3JmkbmiK093mko%2BpCRyjf%2BEox16FF9RuLbp%2BcaWerBCC2W0o5RDmbHAlbN07Vpo3qbR7L2%2FkeqntmT1rKY5%2Bu1Nr34CjCRDDQQLf%2Fc6llFo3t17YowR%2Fx62YMX4pjY2lP2C47DYnt%2BegJWkJMy2mQCsFaIl3gKIUSr%2BQ23JSyq15ufLlxsA7tAuh81ujsQAmk5DryHcC86VCiOWaS3xJdOO%2FNYLFzXJW1u0%3D|ampid%3APL_CLK|clp%3A2047675 Then....stick with the race blend if you can. Its a better fuel. I switched to it when I got fed up of paying a fortune for a smaller bottle of Byrons, and got really good results from this. Both are sold in 'gallon' containers....but Byrons is a US gallon...so nearly a litre less for the same price.

Depends what you are trying to achieve. There is nothing wrong with the stock setup, but any truck can be made to go faster. Add a longer can motor ( if there is room) and you will get more torque, allowing higher gearings and more speed. It will also put more stress on just about every part of the drivetrain. When you upgrade a motor....do not expect it to stop there. As an example.....I put a 4282 motor into a Hobao truggy. A truck wioth a rep for being bulletproof. A 4078 would be more normal....but I wanted POWAAAA!!!! Centre diff stripped on first pack. Rebuilt and shimmed it. Stripped it again and tore 2 tyres off the rims. Locked up the centre diff....then blew a front and twisted a driveshaft. The diff had got so hot the plastic case had melted and the oil dribbled out. Rebuilt it ....then fried the ESC. I think there had been another driveline fail, which had taken the ESC over the edge and volcanoed it. Repaired the driveline...and sold the car as a roller. I had managed to kill it every run in less than a full pack. Running 5S....not the 6S I had planned. To make it work, I would have needed to rebuild and shim front and rear diffs with alloy cases, swapped the centre for a 6 planetary spider setup, fitted new wheels and tyres with heavily banded foams, and then...just maybe...it would have been usable. But, even when it did run..all it did was wheelie under power and cartwheel all over the place. It just stopped being fun. Since then, I have been careful to keep the car perfomance in a comfort zone where it can be run as long as I want, and where the handling and power are matched. So...basically....carefully consider what you want to end up with. It may be a lot less fun than you hope.

Yes. There is a noticable difference. The RTR has a much higher oil content than the race, mainly as it is designed to cater for folks who may tune the motor badly, where the extra oil gives a margin for lean tunes. Probably helps engine life too..... but a study I read basically said on a correctly tuned motor, excess oil does nothing except make smoke, hide the true state of tune...and the car.....in a smokescreen a WW2 Destroyer would be proud of. I think the race blend is about 9% oil...the RTR 16% oil. As the nitro % is the same....it means less methanol, so technically a bit less power as the total fuel component is less in RTR.

Filled in the form ...but.....here's some extra advice! Large scale RC generally means 1/5 scale. These are large and heavy vehicles powered either by 20-30cc petrol engines, or large brushless systems. As a result....bodies need to be pretty tough. Same goes for 1/8 scale too really. This is why the material of choice is generally Lexan.....(OK..polycarbonate...other brands are available.. ) Some manufacturers have used ABS plastics, but these are at the budget end of the market, and the shells are prone to fracture. When the shells are made, they are generally vaccuum formed, which as a process gets harder to do as the finished item gets larger. Thicker plastic is needed to allow for the stretching around the corners, which needs care when heating. Costs tend to rise massively as the size of the product goes up. Your highest price is basically what people are currently paying for good 1/8 scale shells. I would back up a little of your research here with some general market research on what is currently in the marketplace, what scale and designs are catered for ( and NOT catered for ) and then also look at what models are common in the scale you want to build. So...for example...if you wanted to cater for a 1/5 scale HPI Baja .....the wheelbase and suspension width would have a major impact on what would work. But get something good...and there are quite a few out there and the market is potentially quite good. Choose something more niche.....and things may not go so well. Offer an Escort Mk1 or Mk2 shell that fits an HPI Baja....and I think you would get a fair bit of interest!

Plenty of parts available online, though high street shops are now pretty scarce. Any reasonable pull-start big block motor will slot in your hyper, assuming its actually broken. This first job will be to work out what's wrong with it..then we can suggest what to do to fix it up. My Hyper 7 got a brushless conversion too, which was fairly simple to do. I got a bit carried away with the modding though....

9.6v lithium ion batteries are pretty common. These are not the same as the LiPo's normally found in RC, but if you look up 9.6V Lithium ...they are pretty common. There are spare batteries sold on Amazon, E-Bay etc. which may be a better bet. You pack may not last long enough for you..so maybe charge up a couple of spare packs and swap them out to run longer. Larger batteries are probably available, but a bigger battery takes up more space, so you may be stuck for longer runtimes. The cells seem to all be the same, so they would basically just taking more cells and building a pack in parallel to give longer runtimes. I suspect the makers are repurposing readily available 3.2V cells....and they are not really intended for RC use. If you are handy with a soldering iron ..... maybe make up your own pack? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/362771570190?epid=1274696968&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item5476dede0e:g:jhwAAOSw72xg5pl7&amdata=enc%3AAQAGAAACkPYe5NmHp%2B2JMhMi7yxGiTJkPrKr5t53CooMSQt2orsSlMTIifhgHFhC0bSIKdFeu4CTMaj6q8oBUVSCvrJ%2Fqrsn3I4nufrWz23qW2%2FpZt1To9LEFMvo9oDhokLGZhDTY%2B9misBq2o0wh7Su8x2Mr7uh2X1awG0zXzH%2Fb95zgOBjLvlLBvoO3ndSFMmvdCknke0pDFj%2BaJQx6%2FLmCxpBAErpnTZSYrySdX4vC%2B3rw6K3nQcKZ1azC9q9zZHeNv3p2sSrEIkXcQUB9iFaqrBOGtP8ICuQ%2B1FtBIF1TVojw7AM401gmyljMTLa44zuQCgXbDJHx2YqTOBHoiJh8XXI7PKv5Ay8h80I1evKRqeIKttXTg5PiscxVyHh3QrMsI%2BiH1wh9HmFgVtXiVXN6xzhPgw%2F7D2sId7lhZRQO%2FBuIb3JIs53%2BFp6tojdFPK6eFcxHKsFrxmpXcUTtZV9kgCrI0xaoT13HARrrtsrkXn91llL2hKgteVzsSJYNhRpTEe1D21YM36DVnutuCiuIS3iDnwmLbRBblHUNjH5zcZTV%2FGVQ1BvS9Y15ZPq5xPt1ddpK7vMYCda1OssrRPrjTzfVQMGMIyUWBD7VHG%2BX55j4twmvjBvbXdMPTM2DUmusNPjugD7l01iON5FIGa%2FvXraGAeQ%2BByzmDRqZX3hXUtHul%2B36vie6ViYBr8JOzCpZ6bXG5o%2Bey9zaU4X%2BWHOxDd8Fnph4qVkZ3DoFczIh46Fi37dc7l3aOfO3rVNuOfp3I4lIVn7TLqcUWlQsbWx1f%2F8d823nTkfX%2FoXNNJvNmCkJrV8QKtPuV%2FDn5QoPFwLlCI8z6PLdlGTVjr3mm4ppaa1xiL%2BCeTvS93zlLlSjvVF3Bb0|clp%3A2499334|tkp%3ABFBM6tiw5adf The description includes the cell size....so you can work out if 3 would fit. Just google/search E-Bay for 3.2V lithium ion cell .... there are lots. Buy 3 ....solder them up....and connect to your existing plug...or fit a new plug as suits. ( you may not be able to easily source a plug as fitted to your car...but other RC plug types are out there that would work just fine

https://store.rc4wd.com/rc4wd-124-trail-finder-2-rtr-w-mojave-ii-hard-body-set-yellow.html

The actual colour you see can be toned a little depending on what you back it with. A black backing v a white backing does make a difference. PS54 might give you the colur you want with a black backing

same here. You can go LiPo with SOME of the HengLong electronics. You need to know what version of the controller and radio you have. I upgraded the board on mine, for a number of reasons....one of which was a better choice of batteries....losing the silly recoil 'roll back' thing, better sounds, proper controls for elevation and turret traverse...plus a few other things. Oh...and to allow me to use a normal radio kit.

Sometimes bearings can wear out...more usually...it's corrosion getting them after storage in less than ideal conditions. After the oil dries out and the nitro residue evaporates. Personally..I don;t like the top video 'blow torch' approach to heating anything. He talks about distorting the cases....then uses a very localised hot spot method of heating. Ovens and hot air guns are better....as they warm up the whole thing. I have always used an oven...as you have a thermostat to control the heat...and its heating the whole thing evenly.

I've had good results with Answer RC clutch bells. Seemed to weasr pretty well. For clutch shoes, I swapped to ally ones, as they gave good feel and wear...but I was running those on fairly heavy monster trucks....rather than a truggy, so thats not really going to apply to your needs.