Tamiya Hummer restoration Part 3 - Chassis

With the body in good shape it was time to rebuild the chassis of our Tamiya M1025 Hummer. Like all Tamiya kits one begins with the differentials.

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 5 - Drift car power consumption

In part 5 we look at the electric power consumption of a 1/10 scale 4WD drift car.

The test subject is our Tamiya TT01D. We obtained the car second hand quite a while ago. It was originally an Expert Built set but has been substantially modified by the previous owner. It has the obligatory aluminium propeller shaft, a carbon fiber upper deck, a front one-way differential, sway bars, and a HobbyWing EZRun 60A brushless system with a 5.5T motor. The tires are well-worn HPI T-Drift. A 4600mAh 2S 30C LiPo provided energy for the car.

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 3 - Tamiya CC01 power consumption

In this blog post we look at the power consumption of the Tamiya CC01 Unimog.

RC electronics Part 2 - Battery charging

The popular four-button-chargers support charging of different battery types. This article examines the different charging strategies applied for NiMH and LiPo batteries.

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.

DIY car light controller for 3-channel RC

Light systems for RC cars are available for relatively little money. But for our Dingo I wanted something custom, something special. So I made my own.

The goal was to be able to control the lights from a simple 3-channel RC car radio controller, such as the HobbyKing HK-310 or the FlySky GT3B -- both of which we own.

The following functions have been implemented:

• Parking, Low-beam, Fog lamps and High-beam can be switched on/off using CH3
• Brake and Reverse lights are automatically controlled by monitoring the throttle channel
• Indicators only come on when you want to. You have to stay in neutral for 1 seconds, then hold the steering left/right for one second before they engage. This way normal driving does not trigger the indicators for more realism.
• Hazard lights can be switched on/off using CH3
• Programmable servo output designed to drive a steering wheel or a figures head

This video shows the functionality of the light controller:

A new face for our Axial SCX10 Dingo

Since we joined the SG Crawlers on their trails the small Tiger Crawler didn't cut it anymore. So we bought an Axial SCX10 Dingo.

One thing that turned us off when we first saw the Dingo was the front area. The stickers of the grill and lights just looked wrong. That was definitely an area we needed to improve on ours.

Tiger Crawler rear axle repair

Our Tiger Crawler from Thunder Tiger has seen a lot of use lately. And it developed a few problems on the rear axle. With a bit of DIY, some scrap material and a fresh set of gears we got it running again in no time.

DIY temperature sensor for 4-button RC battery chargers

Most 4-button chargers on the market appear to have a connector for a temperature probe. Unfortunately almost none of the chargers come with the sensor in the box, and even aftermarket availability of temperature probes is non-existent. With a little bit of DIY you can easily build one yourself though.

Thunder Tiger Tiger Crawler 1/18 scale RC rock crawler mini-review

Thunder Tiger's Tiger Crawler is a small, inexpensive entry-level rock crawler. It comes as ready-to-run kit, all you need are 8 AA batteries for the transmitter to get going.