The RC Spot

Castle Creations Mamba Max Pro Brushless Motor/ESC

I have had a Mamba Max 7700 kv motor since the day it came out, (about 4-5 years now) and have loved every second of owning it! The way Brushless motors work is for every 1 volt of power you throw at it you multiply that by the kv of the motor to get the RPM's. so with a 6 cell Ni-mh (nickel metal hydride) you have 7.2 volts multiplied by 7700 kv to get your final rpm of 55,440 rpm's. if you increase the battery by one cell raising it to 8.4 volts you get 64,680 rpm's and so on and so forth. I can honestly say the Mamba is without doubt the best RC purchase I have ever made, topping all the cars and all the other performance parts I have ever bought. The reason being with the brushless motor compared to the standard or stock brushed motors that come with cars you are very limited to how much power you can put to them, not to mention how very energy inefficient they are. with my stock 550 sized stock motor from my Traxxas 2wd Slash I could run for about 15 minutes on a 3300 mah (milli amp hours), with the Mamba 7700 which is easily twice the horsepower I can run for about 10-12 minutes on the same battery. even though yes the run times are slightly lower the performance and speed of the car has doubled. So by swapping motors to a much newer technology you will effectively increase your runtimes. The stock motor in the Slash (or any ready to run RTR model) is good for about 25 mph on a good day. With the Brushless motor you are very capable of hitting speeds very close to 50 mph. when I say you can increase your runtimes, I mean this in the manner of if you were to run the car at only 25 mph you would have a much longer run time then before. I know I know, none of us are capable of running a car at half throttle, and thats the beauty of running brushless, the ability to pick. The other incredibly amazing pro you get with the brushless motor is the complete lack for maintenance, with a older brushed motor it was common practice to take them off your car every 10-15 runs, take them apart, clean every single tiny little bit and bob inside the motor, oil it, put it back together and replace the brushed. if you did not do that as often as needed you would have to either buy small machines to resurface the faces of different parts of the motor, or just replacing the motor all together. With brushless motors it would be advisable to take them apart maybe two or three times a year and to put a very small amount of oil on the bearings. THATS IT! amazing motors...

The main reason i chose the Mamba system over some of the others (Novak, Greedy, etc etc) was the price was nice, and it has the option to connect your ESC (electronic speed controller) to your computer to fine tune the whole thing from top speeds, throttle curves, braking powers and curves, the hole nine yards. Now you know why I said first off that it was my best purchase!

Posted by Sam On 11:20 PM 0 comments

Proper Gear Meshing

Although this seems like a small thing, when changing out pinion and spur gears the proper mesh is terribly crucial to your cars performance. Having your gears too tight will result in sluggish speeds, shorter run times, shorter gear life, and unneeded stress on the motor and transmission. With too loss of a mesh you will clicking the entire time running the car, along with louder clicking under heavy throttle and heavy braking. The loose mesh is much less damaging to your car than tight mesh but equally aggravating and just as damaging to the gears themselves. to properly mesh your gears when you are replacing the gears, first always replace both pinion and spur gears. I know it seems wrong to think that the metal gear would get worn down, but if you run the same pinion gear and only replace the spur gear a few times you will see two things. First you see that which each spur gear you install the longevity decreases, and second, if you look at the pinion gear after several rounds of spur gears you will see it no longer looks like a gear, it actually looks like a saw blade. After you have replaced both the spur and pinion and you are ready to set the mesh follow these two steps.

1. Make sure that the peaks of the gears are not touching the valleys.

2. Leave the smallest of space in between the teeth of the gears to allow the smallest wiggle room

Posted by Sam On 12:02 AM 0 comments

What Ever Happened With This?

Horizon Hobby came out with a hydrogen powered RC car several years ago, and I have just now learned about it. I try my hardest to follow all of the newest and greatest RC products, and have done so for about 8 years now. I am just trying to figure out why it did not take off. Sure, it costs close to 1000 bucks, but that's really not that ridiculous for this hobby. I know it seems silly to have such a thing, and the argument is very valid that its pointless when you can easily get 200 charges out of a NiMH battery and closing in on 1000 from a LiPo cell. But lets face it guys, this hobby is comprised by and large of fully grown men playing with "toy cars", if that's not silly I don't know what is (Me being one of the biggest Grown Up kid's). Anyway, on to the actual facts about this thing.

The kit is made for the use of a TT-O1 Tamiya chassis but I suspect it could very easily be shoehorned on to pretty much any 10th scale RC car. Details on this kit seem to be few and fair between but as best I can tell it does not replace the battery of the car, although it greatly extends the run times, reports of up to 3-4 times the run time. The main battery supplies the car with its punch and off the line speed. Then the Hydrogen system kicks in and takes over to fuel power needs for the top end and cruising speeds. Again, details are semi hazy on what all come with the kit, but it seems that it also comes with the refueling station and "Hydrostiks" to refuel the car. I have not been able to read anything about how long the refueling process takes, but the main site does mention that water and electricity are all that is required to refuel. which seems pretty awesome.

I am by no means saying this will sweep the RC industry and completely revolutionize how we power our cars, it does however seem like something that would be a blast to have and play around with. My only objection I have is the fact that the concept is to have a "renewable" power system for RC cars that does not draw any power from the grid by setting up your refueling station up on wind or solar power. My only question is why worry about using solar and wind powered hydrogen when you could just as easily and WAY more cost effectively set up the same charging station for your standard battery chargers.

All in all I think its a sweet product, and hope that some time soon I am able to find someone who finds it as interesting as I did and actually bought one. Because I would greatly love to see one run.

Here's a YouTube clip of the power system on an upgraded chassis.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9UnqW6wrxI

If you're interested in learning more or want to grab on of these rockin' little set-ups click on over to www.horizonfuelcell.com/hobby_rc.htm and see what's up.

Posted by Sam On 10:47 PM 0 comments

Every Job Has The Perfect Tool

Almost all RC cars come with the most basic of tools required for repairing your car. Any hobbyist building or repairing a model with the previously mentioned "tools" will tell you they would rather pull off their finger nails with a pair of needle nose pliers. Even if you buy a Ready To Run (RTR) model that comes pre-assembled you still have to deal with the erector set style tools that it comes with, and that too can be a nightmare. That nightmare is followed immediately by the best investment any weekend RC-er could possibly buy. A good set of hobby tools. The tool kit I often dream of having would have to be the Integy 29 piece racing kit, complete with, well everything you could possibly ever need. But its main draw back is that it costs roughly the same as most first and second car kits do, it is definitely not a beginner tool set, but undoubtedly one for the experienced hobbyist. I personally think is the best bang for the buck would have to be something more like the Duratrax 10 piece tool kit you can find in almost every rc hobby shop. It comes with 4 screw drivers, 3 hex drivers, and 3 nut drivers which is almost everything you would need for less than 30 dollars, all wrapped up into one convenient pouch. That style of tool kit would easily allow you to build up a bigger tool kit as funds become available and as time goes on.

Just remember, friends don't let friends build or repair with factory supplied "tools".

Posted by Sam On 9:50 PM 0 comments

Helpful and Often Forgotten RC Tips for Beginners

I want to cover some of the most common problems I see plaguing me while I am building, driving and repairing my vehicles. The problems are often small in nature and very easy to avoid, if you only know to look for it. My main goal is to point out how to avoid these little gremlins.

The first problem I see popping up in my day to day RC driving life is a semi frequent problem with poor radio range. The way to test to see if you have poor range is to leave the antenna collapsed into the transmitter and walk roughly 50 feet from your model. if it remains twitch free you should be good for at least 200 yards of range with the antenna fully extended. The lack of range is a big RC problem because it can easily turn into a run away car. NO ONE wants that. The two biggest causes of this are very small, first being a loose antenna in the transmitter (or TX), the fix for this is simply to turn the antenna clock-wise back into its proper place. The other easy-fix problem is a lack of battery life left in your radio pack. After checking these two things turn the vehicle back on and do the 50 foot check again. If it keeps coming back to haunt you check all the wires for nicks, kinks, pinches and or cuts. After checking if any of these are found you should contact that electronics company to find out how to proceed. Most wires can be re-soldered so long as they are soldered properly and if it is not the antenna. A nicked antenna is something that the average RC-er could not properly fix.

I plan on revisiting this topic with a few more problems and fixes soon.

Posted by Sam On 2:50 PM 0 comments

New World of RC Rock Crawlers

With the extremely rapid success of the RC rock crawling sect people have grown to require more from the industry. 5 years ago "those crazy RC crawler fans" only had a handful of viable donor trucks to pull from to build a rock rig, and dreams of a truly scale trail truck was just that, a dream. Thank God the dark ages of the crawling world have come and passed! Now with the mainstream corporate support of this beloved hobby behind it one man would be hard pressed to own one of every crawler out there. What I aim to do is to educate you on the four main types of trucks and to list the top models in each class and to shed some light on the woes of the bottom models.

The Four Main Classes.

The first class being Large Scale competition rigs, which comprise of the Tamiya Clodbuster type and the XTM's X-Force and Rock Force type axles. The main differences in the two types of axles being the 'Clod type is a transaxle design requiring a separate motor for each axle whereas the traditional solid or straight axle design of the X-Force type axles have to be powered by a chassis mounted power-train. These rigs run roughly 6-8 inch tires from popular monster trucks such as the Traxxas T-maxx and the HPI Savage. The biggest draw back for these as an entry vehicle into the hobby is the fact that there are few RTR (ready to run) trucks available. So they have to be made from several other trucks and custom built. Also their size requires more powerful motors and electronics to allow them to properly navigate large rock courses without being under powered, resulting in a higher sticker price.

The Second Class is the 2.2 competition rigs. These rigs are built in the same manner as the Large Scale rigs excluding the large tires and the option for the 'Clod axles due to their size. The name 2.2 comes from the fact that these rigs run 2.2 inch rims that would be shared with trucks such as the Traxxas Stampede, with a tire that is at best 6 inches tall. Because of their size many people see it as a much more viable option for an entry level crawler simply because they can use electronics from older models they have laying around. They just don't require as much power. They are 20-30% smaller but are still able to complete the same courses as the Large Scale, just with less ease.

The third class is the 2.2 Scale or Trail Trucks. These trucks by and large are the same as the 2.2 comp rigs, just with less articulation and a more realistic body. When done right the average on looker would be hard pressed to see in a picture that it was not in fact a real trail truck. Before trucks like the SCX-10 came out from Axial, some people even made trucks that had frame rails just like those found on full size jeeps and other off-roading warriors. This truck is roughly the same start up price as a 2.2 comp truck, but the time, effort and in some cases money that is put into the detail on the truck body will often surpass the cost of a comp truck. These trucks are rarely capable of completing the same course as either of the two rigs listed above, but the driver will often have more fun finding "scale" obstacles to navigate.

The fourth and final class I have in the Small to Micro Indoor and Novelty Crawlers, such as the Losi Micro Crawler. These little guys are simply the best possible way to get your feet wet in the hobby and to fully allow yourself to fall in love with it. Most of these crawlers are no more than 6 inches long, and most of them don't even have 2 inch tall tires. Although they are by no means capable of completing courses anywhere near as big as the others they are still very capable on equally scaled courses. These trucks run very small and very inexpensive electronics. Almost all of them come completely RTR, even down to the truck and radio batteries. Most people buy this size truck for indoor use as I mentioned, and they really shine in the winter months where most RC'ers do not want to be outside in the freezing cold rain or snow. Garage and basement clubs are sprouting up all over the country just for these little buggers.

I hope that this has been of some help to you in identifying what type of crawler you would be interested in acquiring. And I hope it may have answered some questions. In the coming days I will post a new article comparing some of each of these classes in price and longevity along with capability . So keep an eye out!

Posted by Sam On 2:35 PM 0 comments

Coming Soon!

Coming soon...

Articles about RC cars, courses, repair, testing and more!

Check back often to get the newest posts.

Posted by Victoria On 3:36 PM 0 comments

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