Be Excellent To Each Other

Me too. Every year when we went to the Toronto Car Show, there'd be a room on the lower level where they'd be racing them around a little track.

Grasshopper kits with radio gear are luringly priced...

WANT
http://www.rccarsandtrucks.co.uk/468_1_105445815.html

This is the chap (not my photo):



Bodyshell's fucked, though, so will need replacing.

To be honest you'd probably be better off getting a new one rather than spending any amount of cash on that. Loads of second hand bargains to be had as lots of people buy them, race them around a car park for a bit and get bored or break a minor part and then just sell them.

That's much less fun, mind.

Hopefully all I'll need is a new nicad. It transpires he got a new Scooby bodyshell for it so that should be okay.

I'm looking forward to stripping it to pieces and rebuilding it, to be honest. I'll check the radio gear and engine, but I think it's unlikely that the receiver, ESC and engine have all gone, so if I just have to replace one of those for £20 I'm doing well compared to buying a whole second had car.

You mean motor!
[/electric car nerd]

True enough. I'm not sure about 15 years ago but certainly the Tamiyas I've built and messed around with didn't have ESCs but just a big coil of resistance wire with a little arm attached to a servo that swept along the top. If it has that I'd fuck it off and put a suitable brushed ESC in there. You might also find that rather than getting a new NiCad or more likely NiMh you can just stick one of your LiPos from a plane in there.

I only have nimhs from my Beaver and Super Cub - wrong connectors, too. So a new battery pack it is - but for a 7.2v 1400nmh it won't be shocking.

I've found a manual and it does have an ESC - massive bloody thing, too.

1400mAh is tiny, it may have been state of the art at the time but I guess you can get 2200 or 2400mAh packs cheaply now - lots more range.

Hey, electric boy! Who are you calling tiny? My flight packs are 900s, and I get 10 minutes flying out of those.

But yeah, I found 2400 racepack for £10, so that's the ticket.

Also see if there's room to fit a 9.6V pack, you usually can (motor just wears out a bit quicker) and the thing will be loads quicker.

Also you should buy a 2200mAh LiPo for your Parkzone plane. If you look in the book it will probably tell you how to activate the low voltage cutoff on the ESC. I have one of their Typhoon aerobatic things and it's lighter, faster and runs more than twice as long with the LiPo.

Nitro cars FTW, obviously.
I haven't had my Riot out since I started building the Tomcat

1.4AH, 7.2V? Pah. My car has 132V, 200AH. 2,640 times bigger.

My car is 10 times smaller, so you still win on power to weight.

Probably cost more per weight though (don't ask..)

Do the Electric Sipping Pocket Money Pits need their own thread? Seems to have been going on a while.

There's already an RC thread that a mod could split it into if they feel that way inclined:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=126&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=rc+planes

You need to combine hobbies and make sure that your Tomcat can be radio-controlled too.

Car should hopefully get dropped off by dad this afternoon. I've donwloaded a manual so I can work out how to put it back together again. Off to get racepack, lube and shock liquid at lunch. I'll see if they have any shells there, but as it's Antics I suspect not.

I'm inclined to do it as a pickup truck, using the shell for one of the monster trucks - I think the wheel base will work. Failing that I'm going to get hold of a Tamiya Humvee shell.

Heh!

I've found some LR bodies which might suit.

Apparently, having looked at the manual, it has a mechanical servo-driven switch and "resistor" for the motor (which sounds like the setup markg was on about) rather than an ESC, but it has space to use an ESC instead, I think. Hoorah!

Paging Zardoz. Zardoz to the thread please.

Bloody hell, the car works. 15 years old, and it works. Needs cleaning up and a new shell, and new wheels (the tyres have settled in a flattened state where it was sitting on them), but it works.

Fucking noisy bastard though - is that likely to be the motor, or the gearey bits?

Gearey bits, I'd imagine. It probably has a differential and they can whine a bit, just take it apart and put some grease in there.

Yeah, I had a look at the diff and it needs cleaning and regreasing. Antics had sold out of diff grease so I'll be picking some up tomorrow morning form the shop in Stroud.

I had a thrash round the carpark with it this morning and it went rather well. However, I shredded one of the tyres as it was rather decomposed rubber (or whatever the technical term is). So - this brings forward the conversion plan, which is to make it into one of these:



A nice company called Kemantec make the shells:



And I then need to find some nice wheels. I expect I may need to lengthen the suspension as well.

It will, of course, require a "Chris makes a Wildcat" blogo page.

Sod the car - make car-shaped jelly.

There will be a commemorative blancmange, I can assure you.

I bet you finish yours first

This made me laugh lots and lots!!

Er, if you're going to buy one of those shells you might want to do it quick. It would appear that QT Services (who own the Wildcat brand) know nothing about them, and somehow (ahem) just found out.

Snitch!

I only asked if they knew if there was a Tomcat one

You cunt!

Anyway, they're not in breach of Bowler's (or whoever) IP rights by making this. There have been a bunch of cases about toy car manufacturers, and the big car makers got told to GTFF when they had a go at the toy companies for breaching their IP in the car design.

As long as they're not holding themselves out as being part of Bowler or officially endorsed, they're doing nothing wrong.

Also - you twit.

Hmm. That would be tricky, as it's not the Bowler Wildcat any more. Accuracy be damned!

Well, who-the-fuck-ever owns the brand, it's still not a breach of IP unless they're claiming to be endorsed or licensed by or actually be part of that company. So QT Services can fuck off back down their hole.

Probably.

Does that apply to everything? Could I, for instance, start selling little Halo models?

Hmm, good question. I think the answer is no, but I couldn't tell you why exactly. I'll have a look later. Also Koolasaurus still due, natch.

You can already buy them in handy packs - you just need to file off the word 'polo'.

Heh.
I do have awesome little Master Chief models:

Look out! Recon armour!

888 Bananas to Devilman

Those Master Chief models are ace! Where did you get them?

Christ.
Erm... I'll see if I can find out.

Take the stuff of the drawing of the saucy lady so I can see it properly Grim...

Limited edition, apparently, but you might find some somewhere.
http://www.firebox.com/product/1987/Hal ... ?src_t=wnw

It's already on the pad - you draw the dirty bits in yourself.

Awesome
http://www.firebox.com/product/2382/Beerdolier

You want to feed the Grimlet Tomcat-shaped jello? Cool.

Also, there were piles of Halo figures for sale in my local Gamestation. They look cool. But they're Halo figures.