"Grindintosecond" (Grindintosecond)
11/19/2014 at 16:48 • Filed to: parent's house
5
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"Grindintosecond" (Grindintosecond)
11/19/2014 at 16:48 • Filed to: parent's house | 5
| 4 |
Next box of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! series. The Grasshopper was an MRC Tamiya remote control dune-buggy style car. It was one of the more basic RC cars but worked well for those getting in to the higher end of RC. Dad saw my RC car/plane magazines I was reading and made my year with the Super Grasshopper. I was 16.
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A few years of abuse and I head of to college. I opened the box in the basement. Yes, I remember running it hard, speed charging the battery and runningit hard again. the first RC car I got came from Radio Shack. It was alright but it was only half way there to what I really needed, A fast and real race car. what kid doesn't want that? Mine took 8 AA batteries and lasted fifteen minutes on those. The energy bill was scary for mom. We discovered the Realistic rechargeables and the world was right again as long as I didn't have a problem waiting for the AA's to recharge. It was good on mom I suppose. Every two to three hours I would go outside for twenty minutes until the batteries died.
Sixteen year old boys break things. They abuse things. They don't take care of things. There's always a jump that's higher to take and there's always something to drive over that we shouldn't. We learn by doing-if that's a positive thing. If you were an RC car, this is what a three-year stretch with a teen-age boy would leave you looking like:
Bald rear tires, way too many things taped on for decals, only the coolest Oakley stickers and broken and repaired plastic mounts for things. It was Christmas 1989. We had snow on the ground. The worst thing for such a happy boy, in the case of a present like this, is snow outside! As luck would have it, the solution was naturally at hand. Literally nature saved me. The snow fell, slightly melted and then went through a hard freeze so the six inches we had was also a very hard frosty crust. The car rested on it perfectly. It only had the silver side Oakley stickers and an all white body, exactly what a shake down car should look like. It was phenomenal. Snowy rooster tails and power slides across huge landscapes of sloping yard for twelve solid minutes of full power. this car could reach nearly thirty miles per hour. Not scale. real. suspension compressed. If I put it in full reverse from top speed it would spin out and flip. that was the coolest!
It eventually stopped working. the snow melted wen it got in to the car under the body. electrics don't like that. I brought it inside and the family asked about it and I said it worked great! I was secretly wondering if it would work again after it dried out. It did and I charged up the battery with the quick charger the parents also got. Fifteen minute charge, ten to fifteen minutes run time. Excellent! I got some tape and some plastic wrap and covered the chassis except for the heat sink and that way, the snow would never get inside. that was fantastic! I now had the all-weather dune-buggy.
The heat sink is mounted on the back. the speed controller in front of that and then the servos are screwed in along the way to the front. The shocks used oil inside but I could totally take them apart and change the plastic plate on the shaft to change the valving. I used mom's 3:1 sewing machine oil for the shock oil. It worked extremely well! I had no idea what to really use. The instructions had pictures to assemble the car. It went together properly. I didn't have to use the words!
There was a bump where the driveway met the garage door. The old Radio shack RC car would hit that and ump in to the garage. I would take a hard left and drive out the other door of the two-car space and back up the driveway and ten turn before the road and back down again and hit that jump again-and again-and again! This car would jump, and tumble across the garage floor. That was cool! the new goal was to get it to jump and roll a few times and right itself and keep going, rocketing out of the garage, turning back and jumping and tumbling again-and again-and again. *snap*
The tub of this car is one piece plastic injection including the shock mounts. Repeated impacts bottoming out shocks and sending that stress in to the chassis broke the mount in the middle. The issue here, now learned, was the lack of shock tower bracing across the top. I rummaged through the junk drawer of common tools in the kitchen and found some things in the garage and made a fix. this plate was metal. It took all future abusive impacts. why didn't they make this shock tower more durable. Out of metal or something. Like music, metal is awesome in all things! that's what I learned at school at sixteen.
By the next winter, the yellow rear wheel tires were bald from the pavement street use. I needed traction for the winter. We got an icy winter this time and the crusty frosty style of snow didn't make a good track. It was now a glazed slick. I got a second pair of tires for the back but wanted to save those for dirt so I modified the slick rears by pressing through them, from the inside, thumbtacks.
Somewhere in that lawn are twenty rusty thumb-tacks waiting for some barefoot kid to run. They did not work.
I can't say what happened. I got my drivers license. that same year. This car was wonderful fun. I know my enthusiasm waned after the quick charger function stopped quick charging and I could only use the trickle charge. That took fifteen hours instead. I had found other things to do in that fifteen hours. Things to do with friends, the Nintendo Entertainment System mostly. If I found 8 AA batteries for the transmitter and tried to charge up the car, It might work.
I'll box this up and take it home to my house.
More coming.
area man
> Grindintosecond
11/19/2014 at 16:53 |
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Amazing. My uncle built me a Traxxas stadium truck when I was in middle school and I destroyed it real good over the next three or so years. It's still in the garage - must rescue it soon as my parents are moving and have issued a similar ultimatum!
Pops_McAwesome
> Grindintosecond
11/19/2014 at 16:56 |
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Thanks for sharing. Makes me want to go dig mine out.
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Grindintosecond
> area man
11/19/2014 at 16:56 |
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"This is why we can't have nice things"
I hear myself tell myself that in my head over and over again.
ACESandEIGHTS
> Grindintosecond
11/19/2014 at 17:03 |
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These things are legendary. I would throw down cash money [a few dollars: didn't realize it had been rode hard and put away wet—but then that's what it was meant for] to buy this from you so my kids could abuse it. My buddy loved his so much he went out and bought a 2-cycle gas powered trophy truck to flip around in the dirt.