Pre-processor for the DIY RC Light controller

For my Tamiya XR311 I needed one of my DIY RC Light Controllers. If you are not familiar with it, please refer to my blog post: DIY car light controller for 3-channel RC

The XR311 is a small car and does not have any lights attached to the chassis, only to the body. So there was no need to have a full blown light controller on the chassis like in our Dingo, but I still wanted the convenience of having only a single servo extension wire between the chassis and body.

The HobbyKing HK-310 radio system I am using does unfortunately not have a PPM output on the signal pin of the battery connector as some receivers do, so this route was out of the question.

So I came up with the following solution: use a stripped down light controller in the chassis, serving as kind of pre-processor for the steering, throttle and Channel 3 signals. Since only one chip is needed for this function, why not add it directly into the receiver?

Tamiya CC-01 steering repair using GPM parts

Over time all CC-01 suffer from this: the steering rod that goes through the chassis wears out, adding a lot of play to the steering. This makes the handling of the car very unpredictable, even at modest silver-can speeds.

To fix this one can either do a DIY repair job as described in https://www.tamiyausa.com/articles/feature.php?article-id=499. or use a simple to install repair kit from GPM Racing Products. For us the GPM kit was the better route as we would otherwise have to buy parts for the DIY solution.

Our Tamiya M1025 Hummer

Recently we acquired a Tamiya M1025 Hummer. It came RTR (ready-to-run) with an old Acoms 27 MHz radio, a rather new NiMH battery, a charger and this vintage car that was first released in 1995.