Help (model car) clutch fried

[andytk]

One of my mates has just blown a weeks wages on a 1/8th scale off road buggy. I spent a day helping him put it together. Its one of the glowfuel engined efforts. However we have a problem. After following the instructions starting the engine and running it in the tiny auto clutch unit started to play up.

First it wouldn't disengage, we thought that maybe the engine was just idling too fast and tried to retune it but couldn't manage it. Then it wouldn't engage until the engine was doing silly revs. At this point we left it to cool down and went and got lunch. After lunch we took it apart and were a bit pissed off to find the little clutch unit was completely wrecked. The spring in the clutch had gouged into the bell housing. It definitley needs to be replaced.

What bothers us is that we don't think we did anything wrong, we followed the instructions to the letter. No booting it until running a few tankfuls of fuel through it etc etc.
He's going to see if he can get a new one on warantee tomorrow as we really don't think we mistreated it.

Where do we stand. Are we likely to get a new clutch. What did we do wrong to wreck a clutch in only 4 runs?

I know this is a bit of a daft place to ask but I remember a thread about loads of folk having these type of cars in another thread. Neither my mate of I really know much about them, he only bought it on a whim. Both of us fly model aircraft though so we're familiar with the engines and R/C gear though.
Also does anyone know of any good websites with good (active) forums where I could post the above question again.

Any advice welcome.

Andy

[McNab]

Depends which sort. They're all different - some easy and some awful. Back to where you bought it, but if they won't help try Scotland's best - he also builds and races his own very sophisticated full-size cars.

www.brucesmodels.co.uk

[andytk]

cheers for the advice. Its a centrifugal slipper type clutch. We reckon it was faulty. Either that or we're idiots. My mate has emailed the place he got it from. Hopefully they'll be really helpful.

Andy

[Roop]

I fried one of the centrifugal clutches on one of my buggies (funnily enough - a 1/8th offroad beastie). After a big off, I checked the car - looked OK. Restarted the motor and it stalled when I tried to set off. I restarted and gunned it only for the car to move very slowly and the clutch smoked it in about 5 seconds. The Clutch had got red hot and the two friction surfaces had basically welded together. New one was only about £20 - mind you that was probably about 8 years back. Mine was a Kyosho Inferno MP4 or something.

Similarly, I had a new 1/10th offroad buggy where the glow plug blew out the top of the head at high revs and stripped the thread of the ally head. Got a new head and plug for free from Ripmax - Kyosho distrubutor in the UK. Car was only 2 weeks old and had one about 3 full-bore runs after 10 tanks of low speed rich mixture run in. Upside was it was going like the cats ass until it went pop...!

Roop

[Allan D]

Hello, I am that mate, got a reply from the website folk, they say they'll send me out a new clutch as long as i return the fried one to them. I'm not sure whether to remove the flywheel like component that is attached with a locknut, its still in ok nick but i'm not sure whether it counts as part of the clutch. Any ideas?

cheers, Allan.