After having my Marder clone (I think it's a Hobbypro Mutilator, thanks to MSUK members' help identifying it ) for a week or 2 now, I had been keeping my eye out for another largescale RC car in better condition than mine... Last night, I found a chap just up the road from me that used to own a model shop and he had a brand new, ex display Smartech Spider sitting in his garage. It didn't have a box, but it came with the large jiffy bag that contains the manual, few tools etc. I bought this off him at a great price and went down to my garage this evening to set it up, but I need help with a few things..
1.) Air filter
The air filter on Spider has a cover on it, but when you remove it, there is some sponge, but there is obviously something else supposed to be part of the filter. See pics below with cover on (first pic) and cover off (2nd pic). Should there be something else I should have got with the buggy for the air filter? I ended up just swapping the air filter off my Mutilator onto the Spider. The pic of this air filter is in pic 3.
2.) Choke
The chap I bought my mutilator off told me that you push the choke switch down (perpendicular to the chassis) to activate the choke and you should keep the choke on until you hear the engine fire, then turn it off (parallel to the chassis) and the engine should start after this... This always worked on the Mutilator. However, from the manual I got with the Spider, it seems to be telling me the opposite. It says the choke is closed when it's perpendicular to the chassis and it's open when it's parallel to the chassis. Is it common that this would be reversed on some carbs/engines? The engine on the Mutilator is a 30cc 'Fuelie' engine and the Spider has a 23c 'G230RC' engine. I imagined they would all be the same? Then again, the manual with the Spider is a very poor translation from it's original language, so it could be that I'm understanding it wrong.
3.) Missing bar for suspension at the rear of the buggy
My Mutilator has a little metal bar that runs from one suspension arm to the other at the rear of the buggy, but this is missing on the Spider. From looking at the exploded diagram in the manual, I don't think this bar is something that comes with the it, but should it be? See the pic below for the empty space where the bar would be
4.)Breaking in the engine
Pretty much all of my nitro/petrol cars were bought 2nd hand, so I've never had to break an engine in. I'm aware of the process, but want to do it right. As mentioned previously, the manual is a crap translation into English, so I'm not 100% certain on how to go about this. Part of the issue is the position I need to keep the choke in, as I mentioned above. I'm the breaking in process has been covered elsewhere on the forum, but I couldn't find any good posts, so if you can link another post here, that'd be great.
I started the engine earlier, but it was a bit difficult to start (as I expected with it being a new engine). I eventually got it started and let it run for a few minutes with no throttle input from me. There's only been maybe 1/8 tank of petrol through the engine. In a worst case scenario, I could swap the 30cc engine from my Mutilator into the Spider or even the spare 26cc Carson engine that I got with the Mutilator, but I didn't really want to start swapping engines etc. at this stage.
As always, any help would be greatly appreciated. I can't wait to get her set up and running