Nitroholic

Very much a matter of personal opinion. I don't like EP cars as I can't be bothered with all teh batteries etc. and love the smell and sound of a nitro engine. For your budget... petrol power is out. Bear in mind the extra cost of a nitro startup when deciding what to buy. You will need fuel, a glowstarter, a failsafe and probably a recharchable pack and charger to power the servos. This will be on top of hte cost of the car. Additionally, to buy a decent car, you are really looking at spending around

This thing must be driving you absolutely crazy. I admire your patience for not just parking it in the middle of a busy main road and walking away. Assuming you have the carb set at 1mm open on idle, and that all is well with the rest of the car, you may end up having to go back and re-tune from basic. The car was not trying to move at idle, so idle speed is not too high, and nothing is binding as you rolled the car with no issues. The fact that a change to the idle settings improved things suggests that there is a need to re-tune ( again..... ) Also, it took a lot of pulling on the pull-start to get it going every time. Once I prime mine, they usually start or try to start within half a dozen pulls. My ST1 can be a pig to start when hot and needs the throttle trim up a tad or use of the auxiliary throttle control system ( son...hold the throttle open a bit for dad....thanks) I start my tuning with getting a stable idle then work from there, but you need to get the motor warmed up first. Changing a glow-plug can result in a need to re-tune especially if you tuned to the old one.

I think the camera being on the ground doesn't help the clarity. Can you get someone else to hold it at a better height to film it? I can't see much by way of smoke, but if you can see it with the eye then it may well just be the camera angle making it hard to see.

Motor sounded good, but may be running a tad lean on full throttle. I couldn't see much by way of a smoke trail in the vid in a straight line, though there was some on the donuts... might want to richen it up a fraction on the HSN. Better to be slightly rich than lean.

The .28 motor will give you noticably more punch than the .21 sized equivalent. Should go well. Also, whilst I have never owned a Hyper, there are lots of people on here who do own them...so practical advice should be easy to come by if you get stuck with the thing at a later stage. Should provide a lot of fun once you have it broken in and tuned. For the tuning stage, there is a useful flowchart on here that really helped me get the low and midrange dialed in on my ST1 : http://www.rcnitrota...g-flowchart.pdf

I don't think the glowplug would improve acceleration. More likely poor midrange performance is down to the carb tune. You say it takes longer to 'get screaming' which implies that it does eventually. As long as the glowplug is in good shape I doubt that's the issue. Assuming it idles well and runs well at high speed, you may need to adjust the LSN to improve pickup. It's hard to diagnose something like this, as lots of factors can be at play. It may be the motor in your maverick is less powerful, the gearing may be different, the tune could be wrong. You don't say if this has always been like this or something that has recently started. Also, the temperature outside can have an impact. The glowplug may be worn or need replacing.... Having a few spare glowplugs is never a bad thing anyway since they are pretty cheap compared to the other things you can break on an RC car

I can appreciate the desire to build a buggy yourself, and the pleasure of seeing a buggy that you bolted together from a kit of parts. In the main, though, that's not how things tend to go. Most of the 'kit' buggies out there are aimed at the top end of the scale for racers who would only have ripped out the motor, servo, radio gear etc. so the manufacturers sell them without any of this. They still are not cheap as what they DO include is going to be aimed at a serious racer. You would be better off getting a good ready to run package which you would still need to do some tweaking and tuning on ( so there is still opportunity to play about with the build ) but would be a lot cheaper for a first buggy and less prone to complications. Nitro takes a bit of getting used to, and requires a fair amount of owner input to get the best out of it but it is worth the effort. There are plenty of good 1/8 scale off road buggies in the

There are plenty of really good 1/8 scale buggies around just over the

Thanks for the tips I'll search out the mod and see what it entails. I like My ST1 despite the issues. It is a decent piece of kit once sorted.

I'll give that a try. If I give it a boost on the EPa one way, and reduce the other way a little I should be able to get a balance so the steering lock is the same both ways. I compared the full lock turn with my XT2, and it looks like it turns a LOT further one way...and the XT2 seems to turn pretty well when I am driving it.... so it's not a major issue really. Soon as the rain stops pouring down I plan to give it a proper run out.....

hmm...not going to be that simple, I can see. There does seem to be an issue with the amount of total movement each way. It actually moves further on full travel one way compared to the other. Is there a simple way of telling if the servo has reached it's full range of movement? Should it stop and go no further?I am going to do some more testing tonight, but if I don't cure it i might just have to live with it. From a general point of view, how much steering lock is considered 'good' and how much is too much. It occurs to me that the thing could be steering too far the other way....and anyway, full lock is only really used at lowish speeds anyway. At higher speeds you have to get it sliding and break traction before you can use hard lock to slide her.

It's an interesting idea. Don't know if they would generate enough heat to make a difference. Gives me a wacky idea though. When I was clearing out the shed a while back I found an old spare from a VW Beetle we had many years back. A common fault with beetles was carb icing, or more specifically, the long inlet manifolds. Pressure drops caused cooling and this lead to poor throttle response. The cure was a 12V heating jacket around the centre section of the manifold. It's a tie on heating element around 1.5" in diameter ... perfect to fit around the fins on a nitro motor. Hook it up to a 12V jelly cell and you have a cylinder warmer. Can tolerate a reasonable heat as it lived in the engine bay of an air-cooled VW.

Not seen any way of cleaning them ... or in fact needing to. Glowplugs don't last for ever, and it is not unusual for them to fail during the initial break in. Just consider them something you need to keep spares for ... like lightbulbs Those who keep spares are seldom in the dark for long.

Personally, I would look to start with the basics first. Pop off the airfilter etc. so you can check the carb opening at idle. Set this to 1mm. Also make sure the throttle servo is not pulling the throttle open at zero throttle. Before you refit the filter, it is worth giving it a clean and re-oil just because you can! Check you have a good seal on the filter and that all is well there. Once you know the idle is set where it needs to be, then start tuning the low speed needle so you can get a stable idle without stalling or revving up. I know from first hand experience that a buggy can be made to run with the needles WAY off where they should be...and when I tuned the LSN on my ST1 I had to turn it out 1 1/2 turns to get the idle to sit stable without revving..it was miles off! Make sure you know your starting point in case you need to back-track. Adjust in 1/8 or a turn, and just check how many turns you made clockwise/anticlockwise. Also make sure the car is warmed up before you try and tune....a cold engine won't behave the same as one that is up to temperature, and you may find that your tune goes haywire after a few runs otherwise!

thanks Creamsoda, the steering servo horn will be off tonight I probably won't bother with the throttle one as I adjusted the linkage already. I might fiddle with it more later, as I am not 100% sure it will be giving me all the throttle opening. that's one to play with over the winter in those quiet moments as I dream of Baja's and the smell of 2-stroke. I will also check with the steering that I am getting the same amount of movement each way. If this is not even then moving the servo horn may not be the whole answer, unless of course, it was hitting full movement in one direction. Still..it's only one screw to undo!

Having just invested in 2.4Ghz for the RC fleet, I spent a happy weekend swapping out the old RX's from both cars to put in the new Spektrum kit. The XT2 was pretty straightforward, aside from it having RX connectors that were oddly fat and not able to fit in properly... nothing that 5 minutes with an old connector, soldering iron and heat-shrink sleeving couldn't fix. Fired up the kit to bind it, and it worked fine. Everything seemed pretty much as it had been before aside from my aeriel now being teeny and there being far more space in the rx compartment now that the failsafe is part of the RX. So..I moved on to the TT ST1. hmmm Now, whilst I like this truggy a lot, it has been somewhat of a problem child from day 1. If this had been my first buggy, I would have kicked nitro into touch and gone and spent my wages on something else...Suffice to say, the thing arrived with the idel set to fully close on dead throttle so she stalled every time hte brakes went on. The LSN needed to be wound out 1.5 turns before it would stop winding it's idle speed up to dangerous levels if you paused for 30 seconds ( once I had stopped it stalling ) and last ...but by no means least....I found the throttle linkages snagged on the brakes at full throttle and would apply the brakes. I wondered why the clutch was overheating .... Anyways....that's all in the past! Now, she has some new things I don't get. 1) I had to reverse all the servos to work with the DX3. Is this indication of something in the way the servos are wired? I think I read somewhere about US and EU kit being different in this respect. Do I have 'US' servos or is this just one of those things that happen? 2) The throttle linkage now sits at a different start position even though it was in it's correct 'neutral' position when the new RX was put in and the binding process done. Easy enough to adjust...but gave me a surprise when I started it up. Rrrreeeeeevvvvvvvv! Fortunately I always put her on a block when startinng up. 3) Steering. I now have stacks of full left lock, and limited right lock. I can even it out with te Spektrum using the end-point adjustment, but the steering servo does not seem to want to behave as it did before. I had trouble with the start point being wrong, manually set the wheels straight ahead, then re-connected and re-bound it and that sorted the middle...just won't behave on the turns. I know the RX/TX kit is good as I swapped them over onto the XT2 and they behaved fine there. At this point, I did what any sane man would do, and headed off with the XT2 for a bit of bashing. I assume this is something in the way the thing was set up or something I skipped on installation, as the servos worked OK before and the RX/TX is fine. Just not sure exactly hos I should go about setting this up so it works PROPERLY rather than with reduced steering.

Yes.... I was joking. I am ALWAYS careful of bystanders and the like when out with the buggies. Most uninitiated onlookers have no idea how fast a nitro buggy can go, let alone a hulking great petrol job. With a second hand Baja, what should I be looking out for in terms of spotting a genuine one as opposed to a clone, and what should I watch for in terms of wear and tear? Marders seem to go for a lot less on E-Bay but I don't like the look so much. Also....a lot of the ones I have seen have damaged bodies or ones cut for custom pipes. Really has to be a Baja for me.

Like all overgrown boys, I want bigger toys Nitro is fun, but I have the urge for something bigger and badder to blast round the park terrorising the dog-walkers. The question is, how best to dip my toes in the water. Currently, the sluch fund for toys is running at around

I don't think there is a definite yes or no to this. It's all a question of dimensions. Assuming the inner bearing diameter is the same, and the clutch inner diameter is the same, all you need to do is make sure the gears are the right pitch.... If life were simple they would be standard. Best bet would be to head for your nearest hobby shop with your clutch bell, and measure up the options.

That's it exactly. I wanted the one with the extra rx unit which is why I paid a bit more. If you don't need all the extra toys, then this is a great way to get quality at a giveaway price

No probs. I'll leave them in the spares pile and stick with the current setup.

Have you tried here? http://www.lstshop.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=391_395&products_id=2682&osCsid=9c251c21acefe00e1fcab85122d8ee04

Having dodged the postal strikes my Spektrum DS3.0 arrived this morning. And it looks lovely I ended up getting it from Bolton Model Mart, and I must say I can't fault the service at all. Polite and efficient, box was well wrapped, anddelivered exactly as promised. I would happily buy from them again without hesitation. Anyway....I digress. Opened up the box, and not only do I get the Tx, RX plus free Rx ( all for

If pure straightline top speed is what you want, then the 2 speed will give you that. Most of the time, though, it will just be a pain. For general mucking about, a tuned pipe will give you a bit more power and that will probably give you more enjoyment more of the time. Of course...you can always look at 2-speed later on.

I have an ST1, so if you need any bits measured or photographed, let me know.