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Post by Unimog on Oct 14, 2009 11:26:18 GMT -7
Suddenly Tamiya's excellent design and clear instructions have fallen off the edge of the world.
I am at the point of installing the electronics. First of all their illustrations of threading the wires are worthless, even contradictory - but I can figure that out.
The problem I need help with - when installing the servo and ESC the instructions say to use double-sided tape to attach them together (only the servo attaches to the chassis with two screws). The supplied tape is not sticky enough to hold the two units together even long enough to position them. I tried some double-sided tape I have with no better luck. The surfaces of the units don't seem receptive to tape, and they are probably too bulky to hold together with tape anyway.
So I am inclined to glue them together.
Would this be a mistake? Do either of those parts go bad often? By gluing them together I might be committing to replacing both if either of them goes bad.
Or maybe, you have a clever solution that I'm not thinking of.
I suppose I could glue hook and loop to the units - but I think the vibration of running the car requires a better attachment.
Double-sided tape? What a cheesy design.
ALSO: The instructions for the servo say to make sure it is in neutral before hooking it up. The one way I can think of to do that is to have everything else wired up and to use the radio. Is there another way?
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Post by DaveB on Oct 14, 2009 11:53:04 GMT -7
The esc and servo wouild not be together , let alone glued together. At least in my limited knowledge of RC. The esc and receiver may be together or in the same area of the chassis.
I went thru 3 servos on my crawler so if they had been glued I would have been screwed..
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Post by Escuderia Nacional on Oct 14, 2009 13:38:16 GMT -7
Here ya go, You can use hot glue tape etc to stick the esc to the chassis. As for setting the servo. Power up your battery and put batteries into your controller. Turn everything on and zero out the controls on your radio. Then attach all the servo arms etc. This is so you set the servo arm in the neutral or direct center., make any sense?
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Post by Escuderia Nacional on Oct 14, 2009 13:39:26 GMT -7
I do my electronics last in my builds. Hot glue the esc to the side of the servo is fine
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Post by vdubjunkie on Oct 14, 2009 13:39:43 GMT -7
Yes, the double sided tape they supply is kind of crappy. The best stuff to use is the stuff you get from Home Depot. Look for the extra heavy duty double sided tape. It will have the RED release liner and the foam tape is charcoal in Color. That stuff will stick a brick to a wall. It is that good. Do not get the green and white stuff as that is just as bad as the stuff you got. HOT GLUE? WTF? ;D ;D Wipe the surfaces with rubbing alcohol or other cleaner like simple green or windex. Place the tape and adhere either the receiver or the ESC. I would try the receiver first as it's much lighter. Then put the ESC in the spot above the battery. You see, because of all the various sizes of ESC's and receivers, it's really up to you where you put what. As long as the ESC and receivers are out of harms way, (water and constant flying dirt) you should be okay. That is why they are so vague. Also consider the fact that that space you are talking about was originally used for another servo that used to swing a mechanical arm of the early mechanical speed controllers. Things have changed but the chassis has not so you just simply need to move things around a bit to adapt the newer technology.
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Post by Unimog on Oct 14, 2009 13:46:03 GMT -7
Excellent. Thank you all for the help.
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Post by Escuderia Nacional on Oct 14, 2009 13:48:54 GMT -7
I hot glue all my ESC's and receivers. Won't shake loose and you can peel them off with no damage or residue. LOVE THE STUFF
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Post by vdubjunkie on Oct 14, 2009 15:49:19 GMT -7
Just make sure you keep your cars in the shade on a hot summer day Jimbo or you might be dragging something behind the car. ;D
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Post by Unimog on Oct 14, 2009 18:00:17 GMT -7
I was planning on driving over to Home Depot tomorrow morning. I thought I would try the hot glue tonight. It seemed to work well. So I'll see how it holds up (no summer heat in the forecast). Next time I'm at Home Depot, however, I'll look for the tape you suggested Mike. I have the green and white stuff, and you're right, it's no better than the Tamiya tape.
First bad part in the kit. I did have to enlarge a couple holes in the ABS plastic chassis to get some self-threading screws to go all the way in. They went in about 3/4 of the way with huge turning effort, but wouldn't go any farther. Cheaper screws would have stripped out. I quadruple checked that I was using the correct screws (they were 4mm where a lot of other ones are 3mm). A 9/64 drill did the trick - though they still were not easy to screw in.
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Post by Escuderia Nacional on Oct 14, 2009 20:06:01 GMT -7
I encountered some of the same issues. It sounds like you will have this baby rapped up soon. Give yourself some major Kudos bro! It's not like you started out with the beginners kit. The ORV is a real build. Tackling this with out even running a modern RC is Huge! First Dave with the Venom and now you with a ORV and DF-03ra! We have some RC rock stars here! Now all we need is for Mike to hold a painting class for us and we are all set!
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Post by Escuderia Nacional on Oct 14, 2009 21:38:17 GMT -7
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Post by Unimog on Oct 15, 2009 8:52:01 GMT -7
Thanks Jim. No star yet. As you can tell I'm going real slow on building the Brat - I'll complete the chassis today. Next I'll have to figure out the electronic details like charging batteries and setting up the Tx-Rx link (see I already have a little lingo). Then painting and decaling the body - staring with the polycarbonate one. I have some paint, brushes, liquid mask etc, but am going to do some searching on the Internet for painting procedures and tips. I'll be using brushes and can spray - no airbrush.
I heartily second the motion for a Mike body painting class - maybe an online class?
Thanks for the link to the Tamiya Club. I joined. I've also joined several other forums (RC Tech, Ultimate RC, RC Universe) and ordered a basic RC book from Amazon. Lots to learn. And, of course, you guys have been great with help.
The pictures on the link you suggested are helpful, but what in the world did they do to that poor Lancia 037? Horrifying. WAIT! Do the wheels on that kit really stick that far out? Sure doesn't look like the box art. Well maybe it isn't what I thought it would be - save me some money down the road.
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Post by vdubjunkie on Oct 15, 2009 10:26:37 GMT -7
Painting a body is really simple.....or a real PITA. The good side to that is it's totally up to you how tough of a job it is. For obvious reasons a one color job is less difficult than say a two, three or four. Here are some real basic guide lines for doing a decent job.
1: Wash the inside of the body with warm water and dish soap. Never, ever skip this step.
2: Apply window masking on inside. Take a credit card and apply slight pressure going around all the outer edges of the window mask to ensure a good taped off barrier.
3: When masking for multi color paint jobs, mask off areas that have the lightest colors first. This is because you will be painting all the darker colors first and the lighter colors later.
4: Use either good 3M tape or Liquid mask. Pros to tape is you can start painting right away. Liquid mask takes time to dry but you can do some very intricate designs. Although most would not recommend this I use vinyl tape as the edges are much crisper in sharpness that resemble liquid mask. The down side to vinyl tape is that you really have to watch that it does not come away from the body later during painting so you really have to stay on top of it. I did not have any vinyl tape doing the Baja and boy what a PITA it was to do with 1" wide masking tape IMO.
5: Apply paint using a few light coats. Use a hair dryer to make drying time quicker. I like to heat up my spray cans under hot water for about 2 or so minutes. It increases the pressure inside the can and keeps blobs of paint from spurting out of the nozzle. Tamiya has great paint for this but you need to do this outside. Pactra makes some great water based paints in bottles that is specific for lexan and those you can use inside. You can brush on or spray on the stuff using a real cheap air brush bottle and air pressure can. This is what I prefer now. Heck I have even used a small foam paint roller using this paint. It is that flexable to apply.
It comes down to this. Prepping the body is 85% of the work. That is where you make it or break it. Applying the paint is monkey work IMO as you can't screw it up because your painting from the inside. Even if you have runs in the paint it does not mater as it will always be a perfect finish on the outside.
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Post by Unimog on Oct 15, 2009 17:00:25 GMT -7
VERY VERY useful information! Thanks Mike.
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Post by Escuderia Nacional on Oct 15, 2009 18:43:33 GMT -7
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