allan1010

My experience of Hobbythek is that they'll NEVER try to sell you junk. It'll be well up to the job, reliable and not overpriced. They also sell Ace, Sanwa, Futaba, and a bunch of others. But they recommended the Thunder Tiger. Why do you think they did that? The problem with asking everybody's advice is that all the opinions are different. All you do is change from having to decide which servo to buy, to having to decide whos opinion to trust the most!! Whichevcer servo you get, enjoy!

Depends on your budget. I've toasted 2 hitecs now on my marder brakes. So i decided to try a cheapie. Asking around both towerpro anbd Blue Bird have mixed reputations but I discovered the hard way that many people who you hear knocking things in forums don't actually have experience of them, they just think theirs is "better" , whatever it is. So my next servo will be a Blue Bird 621 or 631 MG. Dinball's ebay shop has a pack of 5 631's for under US$95!!!!! http://cgi.ebay.com/Blue-Bird-BMS-631MG-x5...9QQcmdZViewItem

Sam, the 26cc has a noticeably better take-off and better bottom end pulling power. But you can take them all out to 27 or 29cc. I believe the CY motor will go out past 30cc.

I've also heard nothing but good about vapextech. I'll be using them for my next cells.

Yes, the capacity of the battery (the "mAH" number) will determine the run time and the relationship is linear... double the number, double the runtime, give or take some small discrepancies in batteries themselves. Is it worth the additional cost for you? Only you can answer that! Maybe you would like to compare the "pence per mAH" between two makes of battery to find the one that gives the biggest bang for the buck? I've never done that myself but just divide the cost of each pack by the capacity in mAH to compare. Somebody else will have to answer that one for you. I've never counted but well into the hundreds of recharges if you look after them. You're welcome. Enjoy!!

NO!!! Hobbythek are in the EU. When you ship from within the EU you have already paid EU VAT, and there is NO import duty from EU member state to EU member state. So Mr Parcelforce will knock and just hand you the package. Job done, nothing extra to pay. That disclaimer on their website applies to shipments that they export outside of the EU only. Enjoy your new FG.

Hi Neil. The thicker the wire, the more current it can carry and the lower it's resistance while carrying that current. Matching it with what's on your ESC is a good idea because, unless you change the ESC wires as well your performance increase will be severely limited. Think of the wire as a hosepipe, thicker hosepipes can carry more water at the same pressure (think of the voltage as the "pressure"). You'll have a "thick hosepipe" joined to a thinner one (the ESC wires). Sure you can change the ESC wores as well but then the bottleneck occurs INSIDE the ESC at circuit board level so it's not worth it. Your ESC should already have good wiring fitted as standard to give low resistance at the current it can handle. This will make a performance difference so unless it's a cheapy ESC the manufacturer's reputation will be on the line here. You should expect it to be fine for it's intended use. The battery capacity is like the size of the fuel tank in a car. the bigger the battery capacity the longer your run time, just like if you could fit a fuel tank in that was twice the size. Your stock electrics can handle any capacity of battery, it's only when you change the "water pressure" (voltage) by running more cells that you might start to have overheating and damage issues. Hope this helps.

Sam, you're doing fine with it. I think your first tank of fuel was WAY too oily and this will still be giving you problems for a few reasons. The engine always "breathes in" a fixed volume of air for every stroke of the crank. Lets say 100cc's for example (just to make it easier to work out. It's nowhere near a real world figure). With a 25:1 oil mixture that will be ABOUT 96cc's of fuel and 4cc's of oil. If you have twice as much (or more) oil in the mixture as you should have (which is very possible from your original description) you can see there will be 8cc's or more of oil going in and still only 100cc's in total so the amount of fuel is reduced to 92cc's or less. This affects the engine in 2 ways; first of all there is less fuel so less power. Also the extra oil in the engine actually cools the cylinder. This in turn makes up a 3rd side effect; as the engine is running at low power it makes less heat and it can't burn all of the oil so it condenses into a mess running out from the exhaust! As you've fixed the oil mixture problem it'll take some time for the old, unburned oil to be flushed and burned away from inside the engine where it would have condensed out into all the nooks and crannies in the transfer ports etc. You're doing the right thing by running it in properly both for engine life and maximum performance during it's lifetime. I ran mine in, in this way and it's an excellent performer: No full throttle for the first full tank. VERY short bursts of full throttle (2 or 3 seconds max with several minutes at low or moderate throttle between each blast) for the secind tank. Longer (bit still not sustained) bursts of full throttle for the 3rd tank I find this works for me but in essence the FG leaflet just says "don't thrash it for the first couple of tanks". Don't worry about the carb settings until you have it run in. Generally you don't need to keep messing with the carburettor unless you change an air filter or fit a different exhaust, and as your engine is still very gunked up with old oil, lets see how it goes as the old oil is burned off first. Tuning it now would just give a false result later when the eingine is running cleanly. So from your posts, I think you can go out and give her a few short bursts of full throttle. the big thing at this stage is to avoid putting a lot of LOAD on the engine, which in turn will create too much heat, by running it for long periods flat-out. Give it a short blast, let it cool off for a few minutes by running it around on a moderate throttle and give it another blast again. Enjoy!!

A wider track width will give you better cornering stability and make it less likely to grip-roll. I don't think it'll make any difference to traction in the slippy stuff.

If the bank told him the DD was monthly then he was misinformed. Now he has a problem as soon as paypal realises he's stopped the DD as they're not likely to allow any debits from the account as long as they don't have the backup option of retrieving the money from the current account.

Why strange? They're following the banking regulations, they have no choice. Same with any other benk but it's easier for them as they can deal face to face with you and ask for ID.

**** !!!! That's a shame. Still I believe everything happens for a reason. You'll end up with the car you were destined to have! I hope they sort your ca$h soon.

Why the change Vectra? I thought you loved your carson! Just curious.... You know i went the marder route solely because of parts commonality with my mates, otherwise I'd have done the same as you.

Try this: http://www.autoanything.com/air-filters/50A7A117A1.aspx Scroll down to "A tutorial on performance air filter materials" near the bottom. Enjoy!

I understand smallman, no problem. Just going from my personal preferences, I'd rather not have to clean up a measuring jug afterwards but you're right, you can overdo it if not careful. I just take it easy as I approach the mark and pur a small amount at a time & put the oil bottle down on a level surface to check. Both methods have upsides & downsides. A little too much oil never hurt an engine but it can make it difficult to work out the dosage for the next gallon, then I don't have the jug to clean afterwards!

AIUI = As I understand it. Sorry foir the confusion and YES you do need to oil the element. The foam element is actually only a carrier for the oil. About the only debris the foam will block on it's own is the stuff that's big enough to see. It contributes very little to filter the micon-sized stuff that does all of the damage to your engine over a long time, the oil does all the work there. so the better oil you use the better the result. After what I said earlier, I don't know of any better oils than K&N, and I have over 2 million miles of personal experience using it on their filters since 1978 in EVERYTHING I own (including 2 trucks that cover 120,000 miles a year each) except the marder, and you know the reason I don't use it in that.

I saw your other thread on your FG troubles. Castrol TT is an excellent choice although you'll always see lots of preferences when you ask "what's the best..... anything?" on forums LOL. About the most popular is Castrol 747 and the one that most people seem to get with a new FG is King Cobra "Racing Venom" but that seems to have a bad reputation for leaving residue in your engine over an extended period of time. You'll see the measureing scale down the edge of the bottle so you don't need to mess on with measuring jugs.

AIUI the speedograph is a foam filter element where the K&N is cotton fabric. But both need oiling, and the K&N oil is one of the best on the market. It has special additives to make it super tacky and this helps it trap more dirt. Plus the K&N oil is what gives their filters the distinctive red colour (the filter cotton is white when you clean it). This helps you see that you've oiled it evenly and thoroughly. Can you tell I LOVE K&N? I run 2 HGV's and I took the 500,000 mile old K&N air filter from my old Volvo artic and carried it across to my new one at trade-in time. 200,000 miles later (and only 2 cleans since instaling in my new wagon) it's still doing an excellent job. The engine oil analysis is showing zero signs of filtration failure. EVERYTHING I own aprt from my Marder has a K&N air filter. My Marder doesn't because the heavy clay track I run on tends to check wet mud onto exposed filters in the rain, so I run a new style FG foam filter with their new enclosed airbox. But it still gets K&N oil! Enjoy!

Sam, you should have received an A4 sized leaflet on the engine with your new car. If you didn't, you can download it here: http://www.rc-car-online.de/motormanual_eng.pdf Apart from the idle adjustment you should be good to go. Make sure you reset the idle to somewhere near to where it was if you remembered to count how far you adjusted it. If you can't remember how far you turned it, make sure that you don't drive the car off until the engine is running properly and warmed up so that you can get the idle adjusted to where the car will stop before you put it down to drive it. It's safer that way than having the idle too high and the car not stopping when you want it to although it can be a pain to have the engine keep cutting out, however once you've cleared all the old oily residue from the engine you'll be able to reset the idle to a reliable level. Don't try to set it befopre the engine is running cleanly as it'll change as the engine settles down. If you buy a bottle of 2 stroke oil you'll see a transparent panel in the edge of the bottle that has a scale measured in ml on it. It's easy to measure the amount of oil you want with this scale, no need for measuring jugs. Enjoy!

No matter what anybody's opinion there's only 1 way to find out! Go with your foams, if you thrash them then they've learned a lesson. If they thrash you, you've learned the lesson.

Nick, I don't think Taras is associated wth the outfit on Dragons Den this week. I just watched the repeat of the programme and the guy on there was a dsitributor (can't remember the company name), working with a Chinese designer. Taras doesn't sound like a Chinese name! The Dragons' Den guy was a bit cheeky, trying to get investment and patent expertise to overcome his reliance on the Chinese designer and develop the original idea to a new level whilst cutting the Chinese guy out of the equation. His product was a very low powered AA or AAA sized water-activated battery suitable only for appliances like digital cameras and calculators. His display incuded a very toy-like car (no idea whether it was r/c or not) that seemed to be the size of a micro; maybe 1:18 or 1:24 but he didn't show it running. It might even have been non working and only included as an example of "what might be to come" if he got the ca$h.

TomTom are great, and you can do all kinds of things to customize them if you're into that but their customer care is pants. If you ever have a problem than you do have a big problem in my experience. I'll never buy another TomTom (but millions do and are happy with them). Garmin use the same mapping bought in from Navtech and their customer care is second to none.

Second one down: http://www.vapextech.co.uk/acatalog/High_P..._Batteries.html

You shouldn't need to switch it off. My 2 in the office are on 24/7. The fan's there to keep it cool. The machine I'm on now hasn't been switched off since last November, and then just because I was on holiday. When my CPU fan was on the way out my machine kept crashing, and as the PSU fan was a mess of accumulated crud as well I just replaced both while i was in there.

You got money to burn ziggy? Just replace the fan if the PSU isn't burned out, it's only a few screws. No matter what the make or price of your PSU, the fan'll get gunked up over time and run slower and slower, allowing your PSU to get hotter and hotter. The dust in the air that the fan moves gets deposited on the blades and (most importantly) in the bearings of the fan hub. It's a £6 or £7 fix and 10 minutes' work. Or you could blow some of your modelling budget on a new PSU.