Clogger

Hi, do you know if the Losi shocks will fit a Traxxas Rustler? I've checked online and some pages suggest they do but other pages suggest mods required. If you don't know is it possible you could measure them? Thanks.

Hokus, I've been away for a few days, how did you get on with the cars?

Thanks Sean, that looks very tempting at that price. VP Master Basher 20 RTR just under 1litre for

It's just clicked, I was thinking 'gallon' almost 5l but it's a US gallon so it's less than 4l. Thought everything american had to be bigger and better

Thanks for the replies, thought it might've stirred up a bit more discussion! Been looking around the internet, Dynaglo seems very difficult to find, Byron seems to be a similar price (maybe

Hi all, I realise this can be a very personal decision, what fuel to use, and it all depends what I want for the car but I'm new to this and looking for advice on fuels to then make my decision. What would people recommend as the best fuel that is easily available at a reasonable price (ie. not twice the price of other fuels) for a Thunder Tiger Tomahawk BX with what I believe is a .18 TT Pro engine? As advised in the Beginner's FAQ and elsewhere I think I'll stick with 16% but which Brand and specific mix. The car was bought second hand and came with almost a gallon of Model Technics Qwikfire 16%, I have been using this fuel to get the car running. I started tuning and the car was going reasonably well when I messed up and adjusted the wrong needle so I'm going back to factory settings to start tuning again. As I have proved that the car will run and due to various comments/answers previously this seemed like a good time to get new fuel. I have been advised that Model Technics aren't good fuels except for a couple of varieties, and I've been advised to get Byron fuel. Is the Qwikfire range one of MT's good fuels and worth sticking with? Locally the only brand I can get is MT Qwikfire and according to the previous owner the car was always run on this fuel. I have shopped around online looking at whats available, Byron Gen2 was tempting but Modelsport have stopped it, does this mean MS think it is a bad fuel and/or it could disappear everywhere soon and therefore it's pointless tuning an engine to it now. All that MS stock in 16% is Optifuel Optimix Rtr, is this a good fuel? Thanks for reading. Edit - Sorry, should've stated what I want from the car, I'm not interested in going in as fast as possible just general bashing use and as easy as possible to tune!

If you don't mind me asking, how much are they charging to set each car up?

Was all going fine for about 10 mins then, looking back, I think I over adjusted the HSN but I mistook it dying and then failing to start for an idle problem Had adjusted the idle a few times to try to stop it creeping, then adjusted the HSN twice and it died whilst accelerating. My son was asking for a go so I tried restarting it, it wouldn't start, without thinking right I went straight for the idle and started adjusting that, idiot!!! It would start but every time I took the starter off it would die within a few seconds. Looks like it's back to stage 1 next time, factory settings. Didn't notice any excess fuel/oil around the silicon exhaust pipe today, perhaps I should've changed those cable ties earlier. Took my Rustler for a spin with my 10yr old son and his ECX Circuit, had a nice walk in the sun with the cars kicking up loads of dust and no puddles to worry about. His ECX Circuit has proved to be a good cheap car (touches wood), it's not too fast for him and it's taken some abuse, jumps that used to pop my Rustler's shocks, landing on all sides, lots of dust, etc and all I've had to spend was for a better battery and 2.4 radio system (original was very short range), the only repair was one drive shaft twisted which luckily with very slight modification the Rustler ones fit and I had an old spare set. Going to be a few days before I can get the Tomahawk out again, I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks all. 1. It looks original, it's a Thunder Tiger engine, I've just downloaded the instructions and apart from the colour of the cylinder head it looks a perfect match. 2. The fuel is Model Technics Qwikfire 16. It is of an unknown age but the car appears to be running ok with it. Is this one of the better MT fuels? 3. I take it the engine burns the fuel but the oil gets expelled with the gasses, makes sense now that I think of it that way, where else would all that oil go! 4. I've had to replace the cable ties holding the silicon exhaust pipe because the ones fitted had gone brittle and broke, I've used more cable ties and made sure they are tight. Nitroholic - hadn't occurred to me that the jubilee clips would cut into the silicon, very good point. 5. I'm hoping to get out with it today so I'll try lowering the idle again and see what happens. I'll report back later on today's developments, hopefully I'll get further than yesterday when the exhaust manifold decided it wanted to stay where it was as the car drove away!

Found this video, it'll give you an idea of what is possible with brushless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dax4Yb_VSyY

Hi all, Some questions that got missed in my other post if anyone can help. I recently got a second hand Thunder Tiger Tomahawk BX, I've had a couple of problems, broken brake linkage, failed servo and a loose drive cup. All problems are now sorted except the biggest one, I haven't finished tuning the car as I need to find a bigger suitable area. The questions:- 1. How can I identify the engine, all I can find is a TT plane symbol and the word 'PRO'? How do I know if this is the 0.18 engine or not? 2. QRC advised me to get Byrons fuel due to the unknown age of the fuel that came with the car, the car has been run on Model Technics 16%, is this a good enough fuel to stick with or should I change to Byrons and brake the engine in again with that? 3. There is LOTS of waste fuel coming out of the silicone exhaust coupling, am I right to assume this is a sign that the car is running too rich and it will reduce as I tune the engine? 4. The silicone exhaust coupling is held on with a cable tie at each end, would jubilee clips be better or do they present other problems? 5. The car tends to creep forward (approx walking pace) at idle, seen as though I have already set the idle could this be caused by the LSN or does the idle need adjusting again after tuning the HSN & LSN? Thanks.

Whilst electric is easier, nitro has the advantage that to an extent you can look out your window and if the weather looks good off you go where as electric you have to check the weather forecast (we all know how good they are!) and if it's going to be nice tomorrow you can put your batteries on charge. Also, once your battery has died you either need another one or you go home, nitro you just refill the tank. The modern brushless cars can be very fast, there are videos on you tube of some doing more than 100mph. My Rustler is brushless and it's pretty fast, it wheelies every time I touch the throttle, change a couple of gears and it should easily do 65mph. The downside is a

For my Rustler I found an old one locally on ebay that I managed to get for

Roller is a rolling chassis, no engine/motor and no electrics unless stated otherwise hence the good prices. Usually they include all the other mechanical bits such as diffs, gearbox, drive shafts, etc (please correct me if I'm wrong) so you need to factor in the cost of an engine/motor, servos, esc (if electric) and tx & rx unless of course you already have these parts from another car or spares.

I'm the same, as honest as possible when selling. I'd feel so guilty knowing I'd ripped someone off, pity there are so many out there who just don't care.

They run them into the ground then sell on ebay stating 'running well last time out' and hope someone will bid a good price. They don't care how much it'll cost you to put it right, or even that they might be selling to someone wanting to try rc who knows next to nothing about it. My Rustler was advertised as a VXL by a woman selling it for her son, it has an aluminium chassis, a Castle motor and ESC, a Losi tx & rx and Losi servos, about the only VXL bit left is the body! I saw VXL and the price and thought I was getting a bargain, luckily it runs well and survived being submerged in a small pond but it aint VXL even if all the extras are worth more.

I paid

I don't know anything about the eb4. My nitro car is a Thunder Tiger Tomahawk BX, they look similar, maybe the eb4 is the more up to date version. I've only had mine a couple of weeks now and it was second hand so it had already been run in. I'm still in the process of tuning it, I didn't realise how fast it would be so I've run out of space on my drive and cul-de-sac! One little squeeze of the trigger and it's 100ft away and that's with very little tuning. Took it up on to some waste ground today and within 1 minute the manifold had fallen off that was the end of that. The car seems well designed and built, what problems I've had can be put down to it's age and previous owner hopefully. About to go look for a screw to re-attach the manifold and hopefully I'll be back out with it tomorrow. As far as I'm aware Thunder Tiger have a pretty good reputation and parts are quite easily available. Is that

How did you get on? Any joy?

If the glow plug is only glowing red it isn't getting hot enough. Is it glowing red when attached to the glow starter? If so, make sure the glow starter is charged/got good batteries then try it again, it should glow white. If it still doesn't glow white then use a spare plug or take one from one of the other cars. Here's a youtube video showing how to test it and what you should see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noCY53hy7bU

Hi all, some questions that got missed if anyone can help, please bear in mind that I haven't finished tuning the car as I need to find a bigger suitable area:- 1. How can I identify the engine, all I can find is a TT plane symbol and the word 'PRO'? How do I know if this is the 0.18 engine or not? 2. QRC advised to get Byrons fuel due to the age of the fuel that came with the car, the car has been run on Model Technics 16%, is this a good enough fuel to stick with or should I change to Byrons and brake the engine in again with that? 3. There is LOTS of waste fuel coming out of the engine end of the silicone exhaust coupling, am I right to assume this is a sign that the car is running too rich and it will reduce as I tune the engine? 4. The silicone exhaust coupling is held on with a cable tie at each end, would jubilee clips be better or do they present other problems? 5. The car tends to creep forward (approx walking pace) at idle, seen as though I have already set the idle could this be caused by the LSN or does the idle need adjusting after tuning the HSN & LSN? Thanks.

Just double check because I found that once the idle was adjusted moving the throttle could result in the gap changing, take the air filter off, turn on your transmitter then the car (don't start the engine we just need the electric bits). Look into the carb down the hole you took the filter off, is it still a 1mm opening? If you operate the trigger on your transmitter does the carb open fully? Release the trigger, does it return to a 1mm opening? Repeat this a couple of times to make sure it always opens and closes correct, whilst you're doing this you might as well check that your brake applies when you push the trigger. Assuming that the carb/servo/transmitter are all functioning correctly then you may need to adjust the idle to give a smaller gap than 1mm to bring the idle speed down. If you have a printer print off the document I linked previously (http://radiocontrol.wikia.com/wiki/Nitro_engine_tuning) and refer to that, note though that your idle screw may be in a different position as on my engine it sticks out in front of the carb. Turn the idle screw counter clockwise to close the gap, take it down to approx 0.5mm opening, try starting the engine. It may need a little manual throttle as you start it. If it won't start turn the idle screw about 1/16-1/8 turn clockwise and try again, if it starts and runs too fast at 0.5mm turn the idle screw about 1/16-1/8 of a turn further counter clockwise and try again. Repeat until it starts and stays running with the glow starter removed. If it's too slow it will stall when you remove the glow starter/starter box/roto-start, if it's too fast the wheels will be spinnig. Keep going, you'll get there in the end and you'll feel great then and your boys will be impressed that you did it. I was so happy when I got mine working and that was second hand with what turned out to be a defective throttle servo. She won't admit it but I'm sure even the wife was impressed because I did it without spending more money.

Be careful with the heat gun not to melt anything, hairdryer worked fine for me and no risk of melting bits (my car is 2nd hand so had already been broken in at least once though). I think the secret is to have a large open area and lots of patience when making the small tweaks. If the car is running at up to 60 mph for example then that's 1 mile a minute, allowing for braking and turning if you run at full throttle for 5 secs that's a distance of approx 1/10 mile or approximately the distance you walk in 1-1.5 mins, that's a large open space needed for tuning. I've got mine as far as I can on my drive and the cul-de-sac but I need more open space where I'm not afraid of hitting a curb with a little touch of the steering. Hope you get them sorted, you've probably thought of this but just in case, concentrate on one car and keep a record of the settings and tweaks you make. Hopefully you'll be able to transfer them to the other cars, they might each need little tweaks from there according to the slight variations in manufacture but at least they should be somewhere very close. Good luck.

I'm afraid I can't offer much more advice, this is my first nitro car and I haven't fully tuned it yet. All I can suggest is check the electrics by disconnecting the linkages and testing that both servos work correctly, if they do then if you have the original settings for the needles and linkages reset them, take the air filter off and operate the throttle to make sure it operates correctly from approx 1mm opening with no throttle to fully open at full throttle. Warm the engine with a hairdryer for a couple of minutes, turn the flywheel by hand to the point of least resistance, if the fuel isn't up to the carb the best way I've found is to remove the fuel line from the exhaust and blow down this tube (I use a length of aerial tube inserted into the fuel tubing so I'm not getting any fuel in my mouth) till the fuel reaches the carb, re-attach the fuel tube to the exhaust and try to start it as normal. Here's a link to what I've found to be a pretty good instruction for tuning http://radiocontrol.wikia.com/wiki/Nitro_engine_tuning hope it helps. My Thundertiger handbook recommends 1/4 turns of the needles compared to 1/16 turns in the linked instruction.

I had similar problems last weekend with a second hand Tomahawk I'd just bought, sometimes it would stall but most times the revs would just keep climbing. I solved it when I thought maybe it's electrical and I checked the servo, with the throttle and brake linkage removed it was very erratic, moving randomly left and right, replaced it with a spare and everything is fine now (well it will be when I find somewhere big enough to run it!).