It's been 20 Years since I raced radio controlled cars!
Discussion
Well the other day was starting to feel a bit bored so got my old Mardave meteor out, last time I had it out was when I was playing with petrol cars (a fad that lasted 6 months or so but on the upside made profit from the cars I bought!)
So I went on t'internet and had a good look around and found the club I used to race at (the heady days of a schumacher cougar with ESC and a modified motor!) is still going, well to cut a long story short they hold a vintage class so I thought I'll pop along have a look and if it isn't too sad then I'll go and race the meteor, last time it was raced was scarily 20 years ago!!!
The club was good, pretty friendly, but my god things have moved on, I needed a new esc as I blew mine up testing it, and he had 2 there one for £30 and one I thought he said for £34, turns out he said £134!!! I took the cheap option, then the chap was talking and most of the lads now are racing 2-300 quid cars, with brushless motors that cost £200 ish with esc, 100 quid of lipo batteries and hundreds of pounds worth of computer radio gear!!! They're talking thousands to be competitive. Must be mad IMO, you could actually buy a real car and go racing for a season for not a lot more, and certainly cheaper forms of motorsport are easily do-able for less.
So I shall be going along with my little car, with it's antique motors, old fashioned ni-mh batteries, a new but cheap esc, and a £30 radio set!! And to be frank I doubt very much I will enjoy it any less.
My original plan has actually changed slightly with the meteor having such sentimental value to me and being near mint I don't want to race it, so I have a few spares (meteor and cobra) and am cobbling together a hybrid from the box of bits, will probably be a lot faster than the meteor, should still class as vintage as it is all vintage albeit a cut and shut, and I couldn't care less if it gets broken!
On a side note Mardaves really are an engineers dream, metal construction, good basic engineering, and as mine have shown truly indestructible over the years!
So I went on t'internet and had a good look around and found the club I used to race at (the heady days of a schumacher cougar with ESC and a modified motor!) is still going, well to cut a long story short they hold a vintage class so I thought I'll pop along have a look and if it isn't too sad then I'll go and race the meteor, last time it was raced was scarily 20 years ago!!!
The club was good, pretty friendly, but my god things have moved on, I needed a new esc as I blew mine up testing it, and he had 2 there one for £30 and one I thought he said for £34, turns out he said £134!!! I took the cheap option, then the chap was talking and most of the lads now are racing 2-300 quid cars, with brushless motors that cost £200 ish with esc, 100 quid of lipo batteries and hundreds of pounds worth of computer radio gear!!! They're talking thousands to be competitive. Must be mad IMO, you could actually buy a real car and go racing for a season for not a lot more, and certainly cheaper forms of motorsport are easily do-able for less.
So I shall be going along with my little car, with it's antique motors, old fashioned ni-mh batteries, a new but cheap esc, and a £30 radio set!! And to be frank I doubt very much I will enjoy it any less.
My original plan has actually changed slightly with the meteor having such sentimental value to me and being near mint I don't want to race it, so I have a few spares (meteor and cobra) and am cobbling together a hybrid from the box of bits, will probably be a lot faster than the meteor, should still class as vintage as it is all vintage albeit a cut and shut, and I couldn't care less if it gets broken!
On a side note Mardaves really are an engineers dream, metal construction, good basic engineering, and as mine have shown truly indestructible over the years!
Never been a racer myself but always had an RC car of some sort. Currently have a 1/8th scale nitro buggy (Hyper7) and a 1/5th petrol buggy. I dug the petrol car out today to take it for a bash, hasnt run for a year and needed fresh fuel and some tweaking. Me and a mate then went out to a remote forest patch and did a few runs and jumps in the mud and water, probably running it for a good half hour before drowning it in a very big puddle! Took it home an dried it off, took the spark plug out and eventually got it started again with no ill effects of the damp (and i mean it was very wet...) Even the electrics survived as most of them are sealed off.
I only used half the tank (it holds 750cc) so my half hour bashing costs less than a litre of fuel and reliability to boot.
I couldnt do that with my nitro car!!
Much better than staying in on a misserable Sunday afternoon.
I only used half the tank (it holds 750cc) so my half hour bashing costs less than a litre of fuel and reliability to boot.
I couldnt do that with my nitro car!!
Much better than staying in on a misserable Sunday afternoon.
wildoliver said:
The club was good, pretty friendly, but my god things have moved on, I needed a new esc as I blew mine up testing it, and he had 2 there one for £30 and one I thought he said for £34, turns out he said £134!!! I took the cheap option, then the chap was talking and most of the lads now are racing 2-300 quid cars, with brushless motors that cost £200 ish with esc, 100 quid of lipo batteries and hundreds of pounds worth of computer radio gear!!! They're talking thousands to be competitive. Must be mad IMO, you could actually buy a real car and go racing for a season for not a lot more, and certainly cheaper forms of motorsport are easily do-able for less.
Mardave's are cool! They've just rereleased the Cobra with a few updates!Always bugs me when I hear this sort of story, I don't think you need to spend that much to be competitive at club level, nationals maybe!
Certainly the hundreds on radio gear isn't going to make as big a difference as how good the thumbs are on the sticks!
In terms of cars, why not look out for a secondhand RC10 B4, costs are around £70 or so and it's the current world champ. radio gear, speedo and batteries are all available cheaply too. In terms of batteries a couple of packs of generic nimh stick packs for around £20 each should do.
I am speaking from experience here as that's what I did last year when I started up after a 12 year lay off! Even the cheap cells with a mild modified motor have enough power to last for two races without recharging in between!
Ok, now Ive got the bug again I'm starting to buy more stuff but, I'm getting some new and other stuff secondhand to keep the costs down.
wildoliver said:
The club was good, pretty friendly, but my god things have moved on, I needed a new esc as I blew mine up testing it, and he had 2 there one for £30 and one I thought he said for £34, turns out he said £134!!! I took the cheap option, then the chap was talking and most of the lads now are racing 2-300 quid cars, with brushless motors that cost £200 ish with esc, 100 quid of lipo batteries and hundreds of pounds worth of computer radio gear!!! They're talking thousands to be competitive. Must be mad IMO, you could actually buy a real car and go racing for a season for not a lot more, and certainly cheaper forms of motorsport are easily do-able for less.
You can get a NOVAK brushless speedo and motor combo (stock racing 13.5 motor) for under £140 from the US. Mine arrived within 7 days and works a treat 
As for LiPo's you only need one, not like the old days of cells where you needed 4 packs for a race weekend. I have a 3200 LiPo that costs £50 and works perfectly for stock racing. Modified is also fine with the 3200 LiPo packs - only those who expect to be doing some serious racing need to consider a higher capacity pack. You do not need £100's for radio gear either. A good 40MHz set is easy to find for less than £80.
All in all you do not need £1000's to go racing and those kind of statements always scare off the newbies.
I'll be honest chaps Peetbee has hit the nail on the head as to my game plan, it will be my hybrid car for a while till my thumbs catch up with the rest of me (being quick on a real track doesn't seem to translate down in size that well!) then if there is a need to it will be a used losi/associated/schumacher/yokomo by that time I will have decided 2 or 4wd, and will have decided which suits me. I always raced schumacher back in the day as they were british and pretty solid.
Radio gear will stay the acoms 27meg £30 special I have just bought, I seem to recall I used to flap the power wire from the steering servo to the esc power lead which gave quicker steering, the servos used to burn out eventually but they are about £4 each.
I have a pair of brand new 1800 packs, they will get me going along with my old race saddle pack, and then I'll probably buy some big Ni-mh cells. not going the lipo route too much hassle.
Got a speedo that will go down to 11t more than enough for me.
And after that maybe just a few motors.
Were talking £150 all together max lets put it that way! It's only a bit of fun at the end of the day. I've got the full size things to blow money on!
Radio gear will stay the acoms 27meg £30 special I have just bought, I seem to recall I used to flap the power wire from the steering servo to the esc power lead which gave quicker steering, the servos used to burn out eventually but they are about £4 each.
I have a pair of brand new 1800 packs, they will get me going along with my old race saddle pack, and then I'll probably buy some big Ni-mh cells. not going the lipo route too much hassle.
Got a speedo that will go down to 11t more than enough for me.
And after that maybe just a few motors.
Were talking £150 all together max lets put it that way! It's only a bit of fun at the end of the day. I've got the full size things to blow money on!
You may want to look at Acoms who have brought out a 2.4Ghz radio system (no crystals or chance of someone using the same frequency) for 60 quid. It does make life a lot easier. Believe me after the first time someone else uses the same crystal and your pride and joy smashes into a wall you will be an instant convert.
Especially at races where you get alot of people together when people dont always follow the rules on radio gear.
Especially at races where you get alot of people together when people dont always follow the rules on radio gear.
Everything can cost as much or as little as you like, i've seen cheaper setups beat far more expensive ones. But the better stuff does give an advantage if you are racing failry seriously. I was reading on another forum about how the tyres only tend to last 2 runs after that then they loose a bit of time so if you want to try and keep up with the top guys then you need 3 sets per meeting. I'm only racing at club level so my tyres are fine for a good few weeks before they significantly go off.
I also have recently got back into racing but I've learnt from before that it's not always cheaper to buy the cheap stuff, you tend to upgrade things over time and the cheap stuff next to worthless when you try to sell it.
I also have recently got back into racing but I've learnt from before that it's not always cheaper to buy the cheap stuff, you tend to upgrade things over time and the cheap stuff next to worthless when you try to sell it.
The_Jackal said:
You may want to look at Acoms who have brought out a 2.4Ghz radio system
It's great if you can drive with a steerwheel transmitter, but I'm too old to learn how to change from sticks! Absolutely teeny receivers too.It can be true about spending more to upgrade from the cheap stuff, which was the main reason why I bought stuff secondhand, RC10 B4FT for £70, KO Esprit 2 for £45 & Novak Millennium charger for £15 for example. Can't see me changing these for quite some time, even if I did I wouldn't lose much on them.
Most of these were on the for sale section on www.oOple.com
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