Eye decals for RC scale figures

A few weeks back we were discussing with fellow RC enthusiasts how difficult it is to paint the eyes on the plastic driver figures, like the Wild Willy or the Rally Cockpit. Turns out help is at hand:

Bed-mobile - 3D printed RC bed on TT02 chassis

The LANE Boys recently acquired a 3D printer. Beside printing spare parts and accessories, why not print a body shell?

A few years ago we were amused by the motorized furniture creations of Edd China. So we decided to build this:

Starting on 3D printed light buckets for RC cars

After long consideration, the LANE Boys finally got a 3D printer. One of the applications we had in mind is printing custom light buckets for RC cars. The first results are very promising.

Bug-eyed Subaru

Recently we tried to sell a newly built Tamiya TT02 Lexus RC F Eneos Sustina. That did not go as well as planned; it took quite some time and we had to sell the car in pieces.

However, the photos I posted along with the ad led to someone contacting me, asking whether I'd be interested in painting a body shell and installing lights. My first client <smile>.

Build your own RC receiver

Its always fun learning something new. Ever since we got a 2.4 GHz RC system a few years ago, I wanted to understand how these things actually work. How do they send data over the air? What components are used?
Well, in the last months we finally got around digging into it. And it turned out that it is a rather simple affair. So we built our own RC receivers.

The HobbyKing HKR3000 and XR3100 receivers along with two different versions of compatible, home-brew receivers.

Tamiya FF02 Alfa Romeo 156 Racing

A few weeks ago we bought a cheap second hand TT-01 because LANE Boys Snr. wanted to have a 10th scale touring car for relaxing in the local park. Along with the TT-01 came another box: A semi-vintage FF02 Alfa Romeo 156. The body shell had been used quite a bit and was heavily damaged. The chassis was incomplete, but in excellent condition. The front uprights were stripped where the king pin screws go in; turn buckles, servo mounts and a drive shaft were missing, but the rest of the vehicle looked like the car was never run before.

So we've set out to rebuild the car to its former glory.

Make your own RC Winch Controller

Want to control you 1/10 scale winch from your 3-channel RC system? Below you can find instructions to build the necessary controller!

DIY RC Light Controller update

It has been a while since be blogged about our Light controller. In the meantime we have equipped more than ten cars with our custom electronics.

In this post we describe the changes we did along the way to the electronics and the firmware.

Tamiya Hummer restoration Part 2 - Body work

With all parts stripped and cleaned, it is now time to build the vehicle up again. First we were dealing with the body.

Tamiya Hummer restoration Part 1 - Dismantling and cleaning

Having finished our XR311, it is now time to get its brother, the Tamiya M1025 Hummer, back on the trail.

Custom jumpsuit for a scale RC driver figure

Our Tamiya XR311 is getting close to being finished. One of the last remaining jobs is painting the driver figure that comes with the kit.

Since I made the steering wheel in the XR311 movable I need the arms of the driver to follow the steering wheel. I first thought of adding hinges to the plastic, but abandoned the idea. I made hinges before for our Dingo and I am not pleased with how it turned out.

Studying how others solved the issue I found that real cloth provides the flexibility to keep the hands on the steering wheel. So I needed to make a suit for my driver.

RC electronics Part 4 - Full metal scale Land Rover

The LANE Boys residence currently hosts a very special scale truck for light installation: a custom built full metal Land Rover Series 2 SWB. A good opportunity to see how much energy is needed to run such a RC car.

RC electronics Part 1 - Tenth scale 4WD Buggy power consumption

When it comes to RC electronics there is not a lot of technical information available. Not many RC enthusiasts are experts in electronics and the manufacturers only provide very few data-points for their products.

Recently I got the opportunity to acquire a second-hand Eagle Tree Systems eLogger. This device can measure battery voltage, current draw, motor RPM, temperature and throttle input while you are driving your vehicle.

My first target was our 1/10 scale buggy. A Tamiya DB01 Durga: belt driven 4WD, running a sensored 10.5T Turnigy TrackStar motor with a 60A Hobbyking X-Car ESC. The buggy is geared with a 23T pinion on the 97T spur, giving a final drive ratio (FDR) of 8.13. Power was supplied by a LPR 2S LiPo rated 4600mAh 30C.

2.4 GHz receiver antenna repair

Notice something missing?

Yes, the antenna has been cleanly ripped out of this poor receiver. Time to get out the soldering iron...

HobbyKing HK-310 throttle return mechanism repair

Can you spot the problem with the throttle trigger in the following picture?

If you look carefully, you can see that the throttle trigger on the right transmitter is slightly depressed towards the grip. This is due to a fault in the mechanism that returns the throttle trigger to the centre when you release it.

Fortunately it is not difficult to fix this issue.

DIY RC Light controller pre-processor miniaturization

This blog post is a follow-up on "Pre-processor for the DIY RC Light controller"

It did not take long until it became necessary to shrink down the pre-processor for my DIY light controller.

The HobbyKing HK-GT2R receiver is significantly smaller than the HKR3000 the LANE Boys are using, especially in height. No way an old-fashioned micro-controller in a DIP (Dual Inline Plastic) package can fit in there!

We need to solve this...

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.