RC Dork: The RC history Part 7

The revival.

I had rediscovered another old love, my love for music and over the years this love for music grew into a new hobby: Headphones. This is not really relevant, but I felt like mentioning it so you won't think I spent a decade without hobbies :P
One day, I found my old Corally C4.1 in a box in the attic, I think I was looking for Christmas decorations or something. And the sight of that chassis in that box instantly brought me joy. I immediately knew what to do. I had to revive the old C4.1.

Not mine, but one just like it. Picture courtesy of the internet.

I ordered a bunch of parts to give it new life. A brushless motor with a matching ESC, a new LiPo saddle pack and some new rubber. Well, things had changed a bit over the years. The battery didn't fit any of the standard mounting options so I had to stick it in with dual sided tape, which was a pain, as I didn't want to risk charging in the car. The new motor was so powerful that the ball diffs wore out in the runtime of a single battery and spares were extremely hard to find. I found some compatible parts, but the chassis, while fully featured was a pain to work on if you didn't want to take it apart completely. I had some fun, I wanted more, but I decided to abandon this project to save the chassis for historic purposes. That, and there were even less suitable spots to run an on-road competition grade RC in the area I now lived.
But my son was growing up, and started to show an interest in Monstertrucks on tv.
So, I had an idea. I would buy a small 1:18 scale cheap semi-hobbygrade monstertruck, give off-road a second chance and see if my son would like it too. If we liked it, I planned on buying a nicer monstertruck for myself and passing the small one on to my son.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 6

The dark ages.

My brother in law had moved in with his girlfriend and now lived far away. Racing alone was no fun. Occasionally I would come across other parkinglot bashers, but I wasn't really welcome to join them, as my competition grade car was faster than even their quickest 3 speed Nitro. I got caught up in life, work, started hanging out with a group of 1:1 street racers, started to have more problems with my ADD (which I didn't know I had at the time), came close to completely blowing it with my girlfriend (it all worked out in the end, as you might have guessed from the fact that I referred to my RC buddy as brother in law), lost my job, found a new one, but in general went through a pretty dark time. I didn't notice it a lot back then, but looking back, it was pretty bad.
RC went on the back burner again. And life took my wife and myself through some pretty dark times. We moved to another city for work, had too many cancer related deaths in the family, including my mother in law (it's just not fair, you finally find a good one and then they bail out on you :( ). Lost my job twice in 6 months to outsourcing only 2 years after moving to a new city for that job (the 2nd time was a similar job at a different company, in the same city i used to work before I moved. The second time I lost my job came just after I had found out I was going to become a dad. But by now I had married the girl I loved, bought a house, had 2 awesome pet bunnies and a psycho dingo for a dog. And I would be a dad soon... So I had a lot going for me too. I decided not to mope around and went looking for a new job. Found it, and managed to tell my old boss to go f#ck himself before the end date of my expiring contract was reached. As you can imagine, there was little place and time for RC in my life. But the love never died.

Axial SCX10-II (AX90046) shock rebuild

As you may have read in Part 1 of my review / build report of my Axial SCX10-II (which you can find here), I wasn't too thrilled with the shocks. I took a lot of care assembling them, but they didn't perform like they should. I didn't want to invest in a shock upgrade right away on a new kit, so I decided to rebuild them. Just like the build report, It's been a while since I did this rebuild, but I managed to reconstruct most from forum posts etc.

Ok, this is a bit of an open door, but I started by taking the shocks off the chassis. Once all four of them were on my workbench (a.k.a. kitchen table), I opened them up, dumped the shock oil in a jar and inspected all components of the shocks. On one shock piston, I found a bur that I had apparently overlooked during the building process. That was quickly fixed with an exacto blade. I couldn't find anything wrong with the other 3 shocks.

I decided that for the re-assembly of the shocks, I was going to use the shock caps without the faux-piggyback-reservoirs. I figured that they'd make for less places to get muck stuck while driving. And being a tiny bit easier to screw on straight was just an added bonus.
I pried the o-rings from the previously used shock caps and inspected them for damage. They looked good, so they were installed in the new shock caps.

Now the process of filling them again started. I'm a patient man, but getting all the air out always gets on my nerves. I filled the front shocks with the 30wt shock oil provided in the kit. After I was certain there was not a single air bubble left in the shock, I put a few drops of oil in the shock cap, filled the shock body until the oil literally bulged over and carefully screwed on the shock cap. And cleaned up the excess oil that by now was all over the place.

One rebuilt shock

Victory! The first rebuilt shock was perfect. My guess is that without shock diaphragms, some air bubbles had remained in the cap on my first attempt. I repeated the process for the other 3 shocks, but for the rear shocks, I used a 20wt shock oil as the weight of the SCX10-II is biased to the front.

When I built the kit, I found that the spring adjustment were binding on the shock hoops. So I wanted to add some shims to fix the problem. I was running low on shims and didn't want to waste any where another solution might work. So I looked through the left over plastic bits from the kit. It turns out the rings that usually go between screw and body on the models where a rollcage is installed, were a perfect fit.

With the rebuilt shocks back on the chassis, the handling and flex had improved a LOT. I'm very happy with their performance now, but I do wonder how long they will last, as I read a lot of reviews mentioning leaks and other problems.

1 wheel 10cm (4") in the air, the other 3 planted on the table, it didn't do that before

So far I've been running with these shocks for about 6 months, and so far, there have been no signs of leaking.

Axial SCX10-II 2000 Jeep Cherokee kit (AX90046) build report/review Part 3

It has been about half a year since I actually built this kit, but as it is my main RC, I still wanted to do a write up on it. This is Part 3 of that write up.

Wheels & tires
Again, not much to say about this, just put the inserts in the tires, put the tires on the wheels, make sure they're on straight and glue them. Just like on any other RC car. Then after the glue has set, mount them on the car with 12mm hex adapters, pins and a lock nut. The replica Method Mesh wheels that even come with center covers are a nice touch. The 1.9 BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2 tires in R35 compound feel sticky enough out of the box. I can see these working well on rocks, but there's not a lot of those around here. Sandy forest trails and slippery tree roots are what I expect to encounter most. But tires are easy enough to replace and these may just surprise me.

Let's Roll!
There's still work to do on the cracked motor mount and shocks, but with the wheels installed it's time to take it for its first spin around the livingroom. This immediately brings attention to another issue. With the electronics in their current setup, the motor is WAY too agressive, it's like driving a drunk, angry short course truck. But it runs and I feel confident about being able to solve the remaining issues, one way or another.

And we have a working crawler

Body
I'm not a big fan of the Jeep Cherokee, but it'll do until I find something I like better. I decided on doing a dark blue paintjob with black accents. I started with cutting and drilling the body. The manual recommends drilling after the painting, but I prefer it this way as there's less (well, none really) chance of damaging the paint when drilling. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the hard plastic grille of this body. While it looks nice and gives you great options to add realistic lights, cutting the hole for it is a pain. There's just too little material left under the grille, and it snapped under the stress of being only slightly bent by a pair of brand new ultra sharp lexan scissors. So I cut it away completely. That works, but doesn't look nice.
After that, I masked all the parts I didn't want black and degreased what remained. The body is quite big and I have fairly small hands, so holding it while painting was challenging, but I managed to get the black on without other problems.

Black paint and masking, a little more work required

After the paint had set, I removed all the masking and put on the window masks. Cleaned and degreased the rest of the body and painted the rest of the body blue. I'm used to spraying multiple thin coats, but due to the size of the body, one can of Tamiya paint was enough, but only just.

Cue Eiffel 65

I don't like to stick a ton of decal on my RC cars, so with this kit, I kept it to a minimum too. And as I like the whole scale look, but am performance oriented too, I decided to install the door handles and side mirrors, but not the roof rack, as it wouldn't do the center of gravity any good, especially if I would actually use it to put stuff on.

All done... For now...

Conclusion
There were a few things I didn't like.

First of all, I don't have much love for the included hardware. The quality of the screws would have been acceptable for a sub €100 store brand kit from Hobbyking, but not for a €400 kit from a leading brand*. I really hope Axial will use better hardware on their future releases.

Second, the cracking screw hole on the motor mount. I checked, double checked and triple checked if I screwed up (pun intended) myself. But no, I didn't use the wrong screw, I didn't drive it in at an odd angle. There was nothing I could have done to prevent this from happening other than not screwing in the screw. This is not what I expect to see on a kit at this price point**.

And last, the part of the polycarbonate body along the underside of the hard plastic grille is simply too thin. It is too easily cut, which is not beneficial for the scale look of the body. A small design-change or a pre-cut grille opening would solve this.

But overall, I found the kit easy to build, and had a lot of fun building it. The only real difficulties I encountered were due to my (poor) choice of tools. The manual was very clear, the fit and finish of the parts was excellent. And the rig the build results in, is really a quite capable machine when paired with the right electronics.

Click here for Part 1

Click here for Part 2

* I have ordered a kit of torx screws for the SCX10-II from RC-Schrauben, this makes a huge difference. I'm replacing the screws with those from this kit whenever I replace of upgrade a part. But if I was to build another SCX10-II kit, I'd order another one of these screw kits and use that right from the start.

** Now I could have just been extremely unlucky, but when installing the replacement motor mount that was sent to me by the vendor of the kit, the same thing happened, but on the other side. Again the screw hole for the spur gear cover cracked. So it seems to me that Axial does need to improve their quality control.

Axial SCX10-II 2000 Jeep Cherokee kit (AX90046) build report/review Part 2

It has been about half a year since I actually built this kit, but as it is my main RC, I still wanted to do a write up on it. This is Part 2 of that write up.

Gearbox & motor mount
The kit version of the SCX10-II comes with the 2-speed gearbox housing, but doesn't include the 2-speed guts. Every axle has ball bearings which is good, but the fit of the bearings is a bit tight, so I had to make sure they had to be aligned perfectly or they wouldn't seat properly. Again, the instructions are perfectly clear so pay attention to the bearings, use plenty of grease and building the main gearbox will be a breeze. Here too the hardest thing is screwing the fairly long screws into unthreaded plastic components. The same goes for the transfer case and motor mount.
Once those were in place it was time to install the spur with its slipper clutch. And again, everything went as expected. The usual setup for the slipper spring (screw all the way down, unscrew 3 half turns) seems to work just fine. This part of the instructions also covers the installation of the motor as well. My cheap chinese Surpass Hobby motor fits perfectly. I ignore the advice to put a piece of paper between pinion and spur, as my experience is that this usually ends in less than perfect meshing, so I just do it by hand.
With the motor installed it's time to put on the spur gear cover. It looks ok and it keeps dirt and debris away from the gears, but Axial could have designed it to allow for a bigger spur. The included gears are 32 pitch and with big teeth like that, there won't be a lot of options to change the gearing as just a couple of teeth extra would make the spur too large to fit under the cover. In addtition to that, the design of the gearbox and the position of the motor limit the adjustability of the distance between pinion and spur, even further limiting the grearing options. All while I'd expect people to gear down further to improve crawling performance. But as this is my first crawler build, I'm not going to worry about this too much now.
What does worry me, is that while screwing on the spur gear cover, the screw hole on the motor mount cracks. <insert powerful terms of mild annoyance here> One email to the vendor of the kit and I get a reassuring answer: "Send us the part number, we'll send you a replacement part". Great service. As the crack isn't really going to affect the working of my rig, I decide to continue the build and replace the motor mount later.

Cracked screw hole

Central driveshafts
Building the driveshafts does require a little attention, as they are different lengths for front and rear and additional parts are included for when you want to shorten the wheelbase of the kit. But other than that, it's just a matter of sticking to the right order of things. The driveshafts are pretty sturdy, but they are plastic, so I'll have to see how long they will last.
Once they're assembled, they get mounted to the output shaft of the gearbox.

Chassis part 1
Now it is almost time to put everything together. There's some preparation to be done first, like mounting the skid plate and "motor mounts" on the gearbox and fitting the servo- and batterymounts together. Also the servo is installed. I recomment that if you build this kit for yourself, you make sure that at this stage, you pop in the battery you plan to use and adjust the battery positioning tabs accordingly. This will save you a bit of a hassle trying to adjust them later on.
With the preparations done, we can start mounting everything on the left chassis rail. For parts like the bumper mounts this is simple. For other parts it's a little more tricky as multiple parts are held on by the same screw. Like front shock hoops and battery/servo mount or side plates and skid plate. It's not really a big deal, but if you use standard L-shaped hex keys (like I did), you're going to need a little patience. Also pay attention to how you run your servo cable. If you don't pay attention now (like I did) you're going to have to go through all the frustration of the L-shaped hex keys vs. side plates all over again.
Once everything is mounted to the left chassis rail, the right one is pretty easy, as everything is already supported.
Next up are the axles. The links are bolted to the skid plate, which isn't very complicated, unless you count more of the L-shaped hex keys vs. side plates frustration. Man, maybe I should invest in a set of decent hex key drivers. And don't forget to connect the driveshafts during this process.
With the links attached, it's time to install the shocks. Right away I notice the adjustment rings on the shocks binding on the shock hoops. As I plan on rebuilding the shocks anyway, I leave it like this and make sure to find some shims for when I do the rebuild.
After installing the axles and shocks, all that remains is connecting the steering rod to the servo and the chassis is ready to have its electronics installed.

The assembled chassis

The electronics
Well, what's left anyway. It's just the receiver and the ESC. There's a water resistant receiver box on the left side plate. The receiver box has silicon seals for the lid and where the cables pass through. As positioning the cable in the seal is a bit finicky, I connect the servo and ESC cables to the receiver first. Then put the cables through the silicone seal and slide the seal into its designated slot. For the servo cable its a tight fit, but as the ESC will be stuck on the side plate right next to the receiver box, there's plenty of cable to spare. For now I just pull the excess cable throug the seal and wrap it up inside the receiver box.
There's space for an additional cable in the seal, there's even a part to plug that up included in the kit. Nice touch Axial!
Now that all electronics are present, it's time to connect the motor to the ESC and check if everything does what its supposed to do. So I hook up a small battery and check if everything works. Once that is done, I close up the lid of the receiver box.

Chassis part 2
The last few finishing touches are now mounted on the chassis. Bumpers, body posts and rock sliders are installed in this phase. Nothing special here, just make sure the parts are correctly aligned and fasten the screws. Next!



Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 3

Axial SCX10-II 2000 Jeep Cherokee kit (AX90046) build report/review Part 1

It has been about half a year since I actually built this kit, but as it is my main RC, I still wanted to do a write up on it. This is Part 1 of that write up.

Intro
I had a first taste of RC crawling with the FTX Outback Mini, I liked it and I wanted more. After doing a little (well, a lot really) of homework, I decided to buy the Axial SCX10-II 2000 Jeep Cherokee kit (AX90046). I chose the kit version as they give you good insight in how your rig is put together, which saves you a lot of time puzzling when you have to replace or want to upgrade a part. Another advantage is that you don't pay for electronics that you will probably end up replacing anyway. Also, I like to build almost as much as I like to ride, so going with a kit is pretty much a no-brainer for me.
The SCX10-II platform was chosen because it has good parts support, both from manufacturer and 3rd party, guaranteeing you can keep your rig running for years to come and giving you tons of tuning options to adjust it to your personal preferences. And of course because it has proven itself to be a very capable machine.

Parts etc. used

• Axial SCX10-II 2000 Jeep Cherokee kit (AX90046)
• JX DC5821LV waterproof servo
• Surpass Hobby Platinum 3100KV sensorless brushless motor
• Hobbywing EZRun 60A Waterproof ESC
• Radiolink RC3S transmitter
• Radiolink R4EH-H
• Tamiya PS-4 (blue) and PS-5 (black) paint
• Loctite 243 threadlocker

The motor and ESC were bought for another project, but I ended up using different parts for that, so these were what I had available and seemed like a decent enough starting point. But I knew they would have to be replaced sooner or later to make the most out of this rig. At first I was planning to use the waterproof servo that came stock my HPI Bullet Flux MT, but after reading up on crawling a bit, I decided against using it and opted for the stronger JX.

Axles
After the usual ignoring of the advice to check if everything is complete, the manual starts you off with building the axles. The instructions are clear, the fit and finish of the parts is good, so putting them together is a breeze. But once I got to screwing on the differential covers, I noticed that the quality of the hardware provided with this kit is not what you'd expect in this price range.
Grease and thread locking compound are supplied with the kit, but I chose to substitute the latter for my own trusty bottle of Loctite 243. The little bottle supplied with the kit looks similar, but after a very frustrating experience with a ARR (where the threadlocker used seemed more like a cyanoacrylate adhesive), I wasn't going to take any chances.
The AR44 axle housing is the same for front and rear, the difference is made by the fitting of C-hubs and steering knuckles to the front and lockouts to the rear. This immediately gave me some ideas for 4 wheel steering mods, but I shouldn't be getting ahead of things. All in all the building of the axles is pretty straightforward, the only real point of attention being the angle at which the C-hubs are mounted.

Links
Next up are the steering and suspension links, again, pretty straightforward. The included links are non-adjustable (without using shims etc.), so it is just a matter of screwing everything together. The hardest part being screwing the threaded ends all the way into the unthreaded plastic rod ends. Once the links are put together, it's just a matter of attaching them to the axles in the right place.

Finished axles, links & shocks

Shocks
While doing my homework on the SCX10-II, I noticed that there are quite a few people reporting that the shocks that come with the kit are not exactly the best there are. Well, they are what I have available so I'll just use them and see how they hold up.
The building of the shocks isn't very different from other RC shocks I built. Grease up sealing o-rings and make sure to properly de-bur all parts and it should be ok. Right off the bat I notice that these shocks do not have shock diaphragms, but use a o-ring to achieve a seal at the top end. No big deal, other than a little extra care and attention required during assembly.
The springs supplied are different for front and rear, as the battery pack on the SCX10-II is placed over the front axle. Axial included a bottle of 30wt shock oil, which I used for all four shocks, there's plenty of oil left over afterwards. I took a lot of care building the shocks but I was not thrilled with the results, could those complaining people on the internet be right? On the internet I found all kinds of solutions, like running the shocks empty (save a few drops of oil to keep them lubricated) and drilling additional holes in the shock pistons. These didn't seem like very good solutions to me. So I decided to fit them as they were and rebuild them once the entire rig was put together. That way I'd have a better idea of what would need to change for real world use.

Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3

RC Dorks SCX10-II specs

SCX10-II (kit version)

• Axial SCX10-II (kit version)
• Castle Creations "Slate" 1406 2280KV Brushless Motor
• Castle Creations Mamba Micro X Crawler Edition ESC
• JX DC5821LV Waterproof 22kg/0.10s (@6V) steering servo
• HPI Racing SF-10W Waterproof 4.5kg/0.18s (@6V) shift servo
• Castle Creations CCBEC 10A
• 20A relay to switch BEC on/off @ ESC power on/off
• Radiolink RC3S 4 channel 2.4GHz transmitter
• Radiolink R4EH-H 4 channel 2.4GHz receiver
• SSD-RC Pro Aluminium C-Hubs
• SSD-RC Pro Aluminium Steering Knuckles
• SSD-RC Pro Aluminium Rear Lockouts
• SSD-RC Brass Axle weights (at all 4 wheels)
• SSD-RC 2-Speed conversion kit
• RC-Schrauben High tensile steel torx screw kit
• GPM Racing 57t steel spur gear
• Corally 11t steel pinion gear
• AXSpeed Servo relocation mount
• AXSpeed Low Center of Gravity battery relocation mount
• Team DC Roost II 1.9" Aluminium Beadlock wheels
• Axial Ripsaw 1.9" R35 compound tires
• Yeah Racing 12x6mm locking hex adapters

SCX10-II "The Green Man" Deadbolt RTR

• Axial SCX10-II Deadbolt RTR
• Homebrew LEDs for the stock lightbar

RC Dork: The RC history Part 5

The Racing days.

The 1:10 tourers had my preference after the disastrous experience with the messed up 2nd hand Kyosho Ultima ST. I had been looking at Tamiya kits, but couldn't really decide what to get. Then, I stumbled across a Corally C4.1. A competition grade chassis with a 40% discount at a hobbyshop. They were shifting focus to model trains, so all the RC stuff went on sale. I decided then and there that this was the chassis for me. The kit and the build was of a whole different level than the ones I had worked on before. Carbon fiber, graphite, glass fiber reenforced plastics, aluminium bulkheads, ball diffs, it had it all. I added a 12 Triple motor, a no turn limit ESC and a Nissan Skyline R34 body. Boy was this thing FAST, it made my Nitro cars look like kids toys (and they were no slouches either). Soon I realised that just a few milimeters of groundclearance brought along some problems when racing parking lots. The last bash spot we had had a nice smooth asphalt surface, but even the tiniest bit of debris sent the car out of control if you were unlucky and happened to hit it the wrong way.

Not mine, but one just like it, right down to the NiMH cells used. Picture courtesy of the internet.

It was time for the next phase in my hobby. I joined a RC club. But they were just a bit too far from home, and I still had some sort of a social life back then, so I couldn't visit the practice days very often. The club was Electro only, so my brother in law didn't join as he was still running Nitro. I participated in the club competition, but with no time to put in any practice it wasn't much fun as even 10 year olds were able to run better laps than I did. But with a chassis with all the bells and whistles and desparate to have at least one race where I didn't end last I did learn a lot about setting up on road cars. Switched my body to a Dodge Stratus, which was a downforce monster at the time. Bought a set-up board, learned about how to fine tune gearing to the track. And in one short moment of glory, I managed to finish a race in 8th place (out of 10 drivers). They say you should quit while you're ahead, so I cancelled my membership and went back to the parking lots.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 4

The Nitro days.

After the little M03, I wanted to take it to another level. So at the hobbyshop close to where I worked, I picked up a Carson CR4. A 4WD Nitro powered 1:10 tourer, with a 2-speed gearbox and a Porsche 911 GT3 body. It was a fun car, fast too. And noisy and smelly and greasy and a pain to adjust the engine every single time I took it out. But I loved it. My brother in law picked up the bug as well and bought a Tamiya Nitro. We tore up the local parking lots together and as I wanted to try something other than on-road, I bought a 2nd hand Kyosho Ultima ST (and got a Kyosho PureTen GP Alpha to go with it for free).

Not mine, but ones just like them. Pictures courtesy of the internet.

The Ultima proved to be impossible to set up right and tore up slipper pads like mad. By the time I figured out what the problem was, it needed so many repairs that I decided not to bother with it anymore. As parts support for the Carson CR4 started to dry up in my local shops, I decided to strip whatever I could use and put it on the PureTen chassis, to build the ultimate parkinglot racer. I had tons of fun and learned a lot about setting up RC cars in those days. But local development and real estate projects started to limit the places suitable to run. After a while, there were only 2 suitable spots left in our area. And the best of them now had a fence and was locked up after business hours. The last suitable spot was close to peoples homes and there were complaints about the noise. I didn't want to give up my hobby, so it was time to look into Electro RC again.

Quick Crawl session with RC Dork Jr.

It's always nice when your local shops stop carrying a specific product you need and therefore have to drive to another town to get it. It's even more fun if your kid isn't old enough to stay home alone and you have to interrupt his Zelda-session and drag him along.
But RC Dork Jr. recently bought a RC crawler of his own, so we decided to take along our RCs and stop at a nice spot to drive them on the way back home.

Sorry for the poor image quality, still figuring out why it looks like this.

And that we did. We made a stop near "Uitkijkpunt Drunense Duinen" (Lookout point Drunense Duinen), at the south side of Dutch national park Loonse en Drunense Duinen. This side of the national park combines pine forest and the edge of the sand dunes that give the park its name.
At this spot the dunes are rather flat, but we stayed in the forest area, where we found some bare tree roots that made nice obstacles. Nothing spectacular, but great for teaching RC Dork Jr. some techniques. He's starting to get the hang of how to approach obstacles, but is still a bit... digital... on the trigger of his remote. When hung up on an obstacle, he tends to try maximum wheel speed as a first solution, digging him in even further and making it even harder to find the grip he needs to clear the obstacle.
But hey, he's 8 years old and has only had his Carisma SCA-1E Lynx ORV for a week, so I think he's doing great. His ride has already been modified with a Team DC 50t motor, which gives it a bit more torque and makes it run a bit more calm. But I did notice a few things about his rig that we will have to improve, but that's something for the future.

Carisma SCA-1E Lynx ORV & Axial SCX10-II Deadbolt

For myself, I brought my Axial SCX10-II Deadbolt RTR, which is completely stock other than the addition of some LEDs. I chose the Deadbolt to make sure the difference between our rigs wouldn't be too big. I can imagine the difference in performance between a stock SCA-1E and a SCX10-II with a ton of upgrades would have been a bit demotivating. Nonetheless the Deadbolt performed a bit better with its bigger, grippier tires and the Deadbolt body allowing for a bit more flex (especially with its narrow rear end).

We only had about 30 minutes before we had to go home again, but we had fun, RC Dork Jr. learned a few things, I got some ideas for improving his rig and we got to spend some time in nature with awesome early-autumn weather, so it was worth the detour.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 3

My first kit.

My love for RC went on the back burner for a few years. We moved to a new town, high school happened, music, computers and other things big kids do took up my free time. I lusted after the Tamiya kits the local hobby shop had on display for years, but I was never able to afford them as I blew all my money on CDs, concerts and beer.
But once I was old enough to start driving, I got an after school job and bought a car (my moms old car, which was actually cheaper than a Tamiya kit at the time). Well, the car didn't live long, so I borrowed money from my parents and bought a classic Mini Cooper. A car I had loved since I saw my kindergarten teacher drive one. I had a few more after school jobs to pay off my debt, and at one point, I had some money saved up and bought a Tamiya M-Chassis based Mini Cooper.
The idea was to make a replica of my real car, but little did I know about painting polycarbonate bodies. Free advice: Never paint an RC body with metallic red and back it with black to make it look darker. It will hardly look darker, just dirtier and it will highlight every single imperfection in the red paintjob. Even if my little kit didn't turn out like I wanted it to at all, my love for RC was alive and kicking again.

Over time, this little car was upgraded a few times. Full ball bearings, limited edition aluminium 4-spoke revolution wheels (the ones I wanted on my real car), a LRP Runner ESC, bigger capacity battery, better tires. It was so much fun to drive, almost as much as my 1:1 Mini. Unfortunately, it was the M03 chassis, and parts/hopup support was mediocre at best. So when I, once again, broke a few parts that would have been pretty expensive to replace, the little Mini was retired. I still have it though, in all its busted up glory. I'll add some pics once I dig it out from the attic.

RC Dork on the internet

I'm currently working on building a decent foundation for RC Dork. But, it shouldn't be long until I have everything up and running and will start posting better content. If everything goes as planned, you'll find reviews, build reports, mods, event reports, maybe some giveaways and my general RC related brain-farts here in the near future.

So, if you want to keep track of what I'm doing RC wise, follow me on Instagram, become my friend on Facebook or check out my YouTube channel.

And if you want me to review a RC product, please contact me via the form on the right side of this page.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 2

A small step up.

When I was a little older, Santa (well, his brother Sinterklaas, or actually my parents) brought me a Bandai Black Max, a (for those days) futuristic looking buggy. Still toy grade, still non-proportional steering, but this one actually had some speed and power to it.

Again, not mine, but one just like it. Picture courtesy of the internet.

Enough power to keep up with my the Nikko Turbo Panther that one of my friends had. And to make me break a steering knuckle in the first few weeks I had it. I was devastated, but my dad somehow managed to get a set of cast aluminium steering knuckles for it. This vehicle actually had a low and a high gear, but the high gear was pretty much useless, as the distance it took to get up to speed was just about as long as the range of the transmitter. Over time I broke off parts of the rear wing in some spectacular crashes and I wore down the tires to beyond slicks.
I can't really remember what happened to this car, so I assume that my parents threw out its worn down carcass at some point.

P.S. If you have one of these for sale, in decent working condition and for a reasonable price, drop me a message :)

RC Dork: The RC history Part 1

The introduction.

Hey there! How nice of you to visit my little corner of the web. As this is all new to me too, I'll start by introducing myself. And taking you along through the history of my RC hobby seems like a fun way to do that. Over the next few days I'll post a bit about my journey through RC every day.

My name is Pepijn (yeah, if you don't speak Dutch, don't bother trying to pronounce the :P ) and as you might have guessed by now, I'm from the Netherlands. And in various places on the internet, you can find me under the name RC Dork (or RCDork, or RCDork79). I've been into RC vehicles for most of my life although it has varied a bit how active I have been over the years as life tends to get in the way of things. I have played around with a quadcopter and some boats for a bit, but my first and true RC love has 4 wheels.

Not mine, but one just like it. Picture courtesy of the internet.

It all started out somewhere in the 80s of the 20th century, when I used my savings to buy a Nikko Big Horn toy grade RC. A funny little car, somewhat based off an early 80s Isuzu Big Horn/Trooper. It was a fixed axle rear wheel drive with approximately zero torque (carpets were a challenge), it had non-proportional steering and was pretty horrible to drive. But it had a working winch and with all its shortcomings it was a good way to learn how to drive an RC. I really loved the thing to death. And at some point, it actually died. At the time I wasn't really concerned with preserving childhood memories and my curiosity got the better of me, so I took it apart. It's gone now, but I think I may have the battery cover somewhere in a box in the attic.

P.S. If you have one of these for sale, in decent working condition and for a reasonable price, drop me a message :)

Heh... The RC Dork has a blog...

Hang on kids! Actual content will follow soon...