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I use Humbrol Clearfix, but that Glue & Glaze looks like it’s probably the same stuff but cheaper. https://uk.humbrol.com/products/clearfix-28ml-bottle-ac5708

Your problem sounds like one I was suffering recently. In my case I discovered that the antenna wire inside the transmitter (where it connects to the pcb) had come loose. I refitted it and added a blob of hot glue to keep it in place. Oddly, though, despite using the same transmitter for all my cars, it effected one car much more than any of the others.

Yes! Thank you! They are exactly what I was hoping to find. I’m sure Mad Max wasn’t overly inclined to crack out his scale rule whilst being chased down by a spike encrusted monster truck.

It is, and has been in my wish list for ages, but I was hoping to find it in plastic (plasticard?), and a bit cheaper. I’ll have to go for it if I can’t find it in plastic.

I have a Lunchbox that needs a bit of work and, while I am working on it, I thought I might replace the very, very battered body. Rather than just throw the current one away, I thought I would Mad Maxify it. I can make or find just about everything I need. The thing I am having trouble with is finding tread plate (either single or double diamond) in plastic. The lunchbox is 1/12 scale, but the closest I can find, in the tread plate, is 1/50. So, the question is: Where do people find theirs? Or, if I can’t get it in the exact scale, what scale - that is more easily acquired - do you think I can get away with? Thanks.

I can recommend the Futaba T4GRS as well. I got mine second hand for £100 (with metal carry case and two receivers). If it was ever stolen, though, I would pay full price for another if I couldn’t find one used. You mentioned a problem with your hands; one of the things I love about this receiver is that you can alter the angle that the sticks travel, so you can set them to more naturally fit your hands.

I have a 1991 Raleigh Kandara that I love to bits. Unfortunately, about 18 months ago my spine/nerve damage took a massive turn for the worst and I haven’t been able to ride since. According to the doctors, I may never get to ride it again. But I love it too much too sell it.

I was thinking that it might be fun to have a double wheel setup on my crawler, for no other reason than I have a spare set of wheels. But I don’t really know how to go about it. I am thinking that there must be an adaptor for just such a thing, but if there is, I don’t know what it’s called, so searching for one is proving difficult. I suppose I could do it with a short coupler and a piece of threaded rod, but I have a feeling that that wouldn’t be terribly secure. And since I would have to buy those parts anyway, I might as well try to get the proper parts in the first place. Anyone know what I am talking about from my probably way too vague description? If so, what is it that I am looking for, exactly?

You could measure the bed, make a template out of paper to be sure, and then make an actual wooden bed out of lollipop sticks or coffee stirrers. You can score them with a fine toothed saw blade or a hobby knife, for a better looking grain. Then use a wood stain, or make one from acrylic paint and water, to make it pop.

Have you tried cleaning the contacts in the battery holder? If it’s an old set, then some corrosion may have happened at the terminals. Just scraping them with a small file would do the trick. If you're going to be one opening it up I assume you own a multimeter. If it is the kind of battery holder that connects with a couple of wires and a plug, just take a quick measurement across the plug terminals. Eliminate the simple things first.

Thanks guys. Unfortunately I don’t know anyone, other than my wife, that has RC cars, so I couldn’t even give it away to someone that would use it. I just don’t want to end up with a pile of transmitters that I can’t use, because both my wife and I use sticks. We already have one wheel type transmitter that came with my wife’s Bugsta.

I’ve got something like that. It has the folding Stanley style blade, plus a normal stainless steel pocket knife blade. Like this one: https://www.powertoolsdirect.com/sealey-pocket-knife-locking-twin-blade I can’t find the exact version I have, I got them (I have 3 of them because they are so handy) from a local shop for £7.49 each.

I am considering buying an Arrma Granite but as far as I can see, you can only get it in RTR. I’d prefer a kit version, but that’s a problem I am prepared to ignore for what looks like a fun truck. The problem I have is that I have absolutely no use for the transmitter and receiver. I have avoided buying cars in the past for the same reason. It just feels like wasted money. I don’t really want to have to go to the hassle of selling the parts I don’t need, but I suppose that if I don’t, I am going to miss out on a lot of stuff. The thing is, are they actually any use to anyone, would anyone actually buy them? And if they did, would they go for a price that makes the bother worth while? They would be in a completely unused condition.

I, too, use scalpels. I have several handles with different shaped blades for different jobs. Couldn’t be without them. Something also worth picking up, if you decide on scalpels, is a blade remover. It is so much safer and less hassle. This one keeps the used blades in an attached bin: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Swann-Morton-Blade-Remover-Unit/dp/B00B5NSLZ2 I have just ordered one myself because the remover I have been using for the last few years doesn’t have a retainer, making disposing of the blades annoying.

One of my other hobbies is painting toy soldiers. I sometimes drive my wife mad when I start naming the colours of the more unusually coloured cars when we’re out and about. I always use the current Citadel (Games Workshop) system. I would say that what you used, going by the photo (which may look different in person but I can’t adjust for that), is something like Lothern Blue. What you needed was something more like Sotek Green, perhaps mixed in with some Vallejo Metallic Aluminium. This might sound like useless information, but you can often get equivalents in ready made airbrush colours. Or it is easy to thin them yourself. I have had quite a bit of luck using Vallejo paints on RC car bodies, both clear and hard bodies. The Sotek Green equivalent would be Vallejo Falcon Turquoise. I prefer the Vallejo Metal Colour range, as opposed to their straight Metallics. The metal colour are more expensive, but you get a bigger bottle and they airbrush like a dream. I back all my painted bodies with it and have had no cracking or anything bad. I am going to do some experimenting with inks for making unique metallic colours. Would be handy if it worked.

You’re not alone, I have had the same problem on a couple of cars. I hate it when the little rod falls out when changing wheels, and I have found that plastic hexes are prone to sticking in the wheel, replacing the hexes with aluminium ones, with grub screws, fixed the problem. While I can’t see how dodgy fitted hexes could cause a wheel to come off, it can’t hurt to ask questions to try to get a more complete picture of the problem; especially as the op actually mentions hexes in the thread title. Though that seems like it’s probably a beginner’s mistake, how can we really know for sure unless we get more information?

I had a similar problem. I used a stick transmitter when I briefly took up the hobby in the mid 90s. Coming back to it and finding wheel transmitters everywhere left me somewhat dismayed. I got myself a cheap Carson stick tx to start with, and was happy with that. Then my wife bought an FTX Bugsta with a wheel tx, so that we could try it. I hate it, I just can’t do it. I understand that people feel that using a wheel is more natural (but then I never learned to drive a normal car...) but it is the trigger that I really can’t get on with. In the end, I got myself a second-hand Futaba T4GRS, which I adore. My wife also dislikes the wheel tx (even though she genuinely believed that she would prefer it, so no bias against it) and I ended up buying her a Carson tx that has multi-model memory, and she’s very happy with it. There are stick options out there, so don’t feel you have to force yourself to stay with a wheel type. If you enjoy tinkering, converting one of those £50 FlySky aircraft transmitters to a car type, with tons of extra channels, could lead to all sorts of possibilities.

Took me a moment...

Two tanks. One for me and one for my wife. What’s a marriage if you can’t find fun and legal ways to hunt each other to the death? Preferably one would be a Challenger II, and the other a Leopard II. Either 1/10 or 1/8, proper scale Rollin’ Thunder monster truck (which was my favourite when I was a kid). Which I would have to find some way to build from the ground up, and somehow get a body made. I have actually been wondering if it would be possible to fit a Proline Rock Van body to an existing monster truck. I just want a bigger Lunchbox, basically.

When I was 12 the one thing I desperately wanted, more than anything in all the world, was a Tamiya Lunchbox. But my dad had other ideas. He had decided he was going to get rich managing a band made up of my 3 brothers and me... He had decided I was going to play drums. I wasn’t going to let him get it all his own way and, being a huge Iron Maiden and Motörhead fan, told him I would play bass. He hadn’t thought about bass at all and was happy to go with it. I still play to this day, along with guitar, banjo, mandolin and the penny whistle. It was probably the best thing he ever did for me. Being a musician made a huge difference to my teenage years. None of my brothers kept up playing. Anyway... In 1995 a friend of mine, whose whole family were into racing RC cars, gave me a broken Schumacher Cougar 2000 to fix up, along with a transmitter. So my wife could join in we got her a Mardave Meteor (I think that’s what it was called. It was electric and ugly). We both really enjoyed it but a couple of years later we were rather financially fragile and we sold both our RC cars. We were gutted. Fast forward to last year and I finally did it, I got my Tamiya Lunchbox!! I loved building it and modifying it. My wife really enjoyed driving it, too, so I bought her a Tamiya Racing Fighter, which she absolutely adores. I got a Tamiya TT02b and she got an FTX Bugsta. Then I got a Carisma Coyote, which I didn’t think she’d really like, but it turns out that she does, so her next car will be a crawler. My next car will, hopefully, be a 4wd monster truck (I’m rather picky about how I think a monster truck should look, there’s a chap on here that has a Traxxas Stampede that looks ace, like an actual monster truck, but I can’t find one that looks the same (I think his might be 2wd). The trouble is that I can’t really afford to spend much more than that on one, so my choices are limited); after that I’d like to try an RC sailboat. Sorry for the rambling.

Sorry for newbie questions, I am still quite green when it comes to RC... Is the yellow one the Traxxas Stampede? Do you have a build thread for it? I have a Tamiya Lunchbox, but I would really like a 1/10 scale monster truck, and your yellow one is what I think a monster truck should look like. But the Stampedes that I have looked at don’t appear to have the ground clearance that yours does, they don’t seem to look quite right. So, if you could tell me more about yours, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks.

I have both of those things. The mat I use for when I am soldering (guitar effects pedal building being another hobby of mine). The only problem with it is that those flaps over the top left compartments won’t stay closed for love nor money. I even tried putting heavy weights on them and leaving them for a few days, but to no avail. Other than that it is fine. I just had a bit of a look around, and I don’t think you can get one without the flaps any cheaper. So if you have the same problem as me, and they’re in the way, just snip them off. The turntable I use for when airbrushing models (another hobby of mine). It’s cheap for a reason. You can’t take it apart to grease it to make it turn easier, and I don’t really think it’s big enough for RC cars 1/10 or bigger. You’d be far better off with a proper car stand. I own this one: https://www.modelsport.co.uk/fastrax-rotating-car-and-damper-stand/rc-car-products/11849 The shape of the stand top is a bit awkward. Should I need to buy a stand again, I would spend the bit extra and go for something more like this one: https://www.modelsport.co.uk/duratrax-pit-tech-deluxe-car-stand-orange/rc-car-products/445801 I hope I have been of some help.

Mine is stock. Brushed, torque tuned motor with nihm batteries.

If you buy the G Parts bag for it, you get all the gears including the bevel gears that go on the ends of the prop shaft, the spur gear, the gear part of the diff case, all the bevel gears that go inside the diff case, plus the little cross piece they fit on. All times two, so you get everything for both transmissions. The whole bag is only about a fiver, and it’s handy to have spares. The metal bevel gears, for the ends of the prop shaft, come to about £40. I have had to replace the same gears recently (a couple of days ago). I couldn’t justify the price of the metal gears for this car, and just figured that for a fiver, I could just replace all the gears when I run into problems. This way, going on current experience, it would take me about eight years before it cost me that £40.

I would probably go to the expense of the metal gears if I used the car more often. I love it when it’s working, but something seems to break every time I take it out (even with the stock motor and nimh batteries. So it’s not fast and I try to be gentle with it). Which is particularly annoying with the way Tamiya stocks have been lately. I have spent quite a lot (for me) on my crawler, but that thing is bulletproof, I have literally driven it off cliffs onto rocks (my favourite place to drive it is on the Black Mountain), so I don’t mind upgrading it. I’ve not had to replace any broken parts, yet, just pure upgrades for handling and capability. I have a relatively small hobby budget, which has to cover all my hobbies. Covid has rather limited what I can spend my money on, which is actually kind of relieving. The lockdown has meant I have spent more time on playing and upgrading my musical instruments, and building guitar and bass effects pedals. I have also been playing PC games more often (especially World of Warcraft and Jurassic World: Evolution). Right now I really need to save up for restocking model paints so I can finish some of my Warhammer AoS models. At the moment I am pretty crippled, I severely damaged my sciatic nerve about a month ago and can only get up and walk with the aid of a walking stick. I can’t walk far, just a few metres at a time, and even just sitting up for any length of time is painful. It feels like ropes of molten metal going from my lower back (which is where I damaged it when I was a kid), to my testicles, across both buttocks and down both legs. The skin down the back of my left leg and most of my foot, is completely numb, so I have to be careful what I do in case I cause more damage without realising. So the thing that I am dearly missing, that I can’t do right now, is going fishing. Haha, sorry, that wasn’t meant to turn into such a pitiful ramble!