Got it in last night. All excited to get it out of the box and play with it.
First impressions...
I was a little surprised to see how small it is, it's the same size as my FG.
It's very lightweight!
Too much black, needs some color other than the 15 warning stickers saying the motor is hot.
I really liked the look of the tires and wheels.
The body is beautiful.
Nice wing mount with dressy cone washers. I've never liked the body clips on my Marder.
So I completely disassembled the whole car to check to see that everything was put together correctly and it was! Everything had loctite applied and all screws and nuts were tight. So I slammed it back together and filled it up with fuel. I checked the Awesome purple radio and super janky servos and everything seemed to work, I didn't even have to bind the rec.
The drivetrain was so tight that I could barely push the car, nothing was binding, just everything hadn't been seated in yet. The 30cc well Hung Wang motor fired on the second pull and idled like a champ after I properly adjusted the needles. I advanced the idle so the drivetrain was engaged and left it sitting on the stand running at about 10,000 rpm for about 5 minutes, I would occasionally blip the throttle and let it rev a bit.
This loosened up the drivetrain considerably! I could now easily push the car. I topped off the tank (what a tiny tank compared to the 750cc in my FG) and fired it up again to drive it around.
First drive impressions... What a slug.
The throttle servo is a pile, it's as slow as a 645 when the rec pack dumps.
The steering servo couldn't find it's center with a compass and a road map.
Pipe is a piece of poop and dumps oil scum all over my fuel tank and wing mount.
Pipe melts rear body mounts and makes them smell like poop.
It's geared like a lawn tractor.
It hits it's top speed in 3 seconds, but it's top speed is only twelve mph.
Lets just say I was not impressed.
So let's see what I can do with this slug.
I swapped the primary and secondary gear around to increase the top speed a bit. This helped a little, so at least now it has some top speed.
I took the factory carb and hit it with a baseball bat into the neighbors yard and replaced that piece of poop with an 813, this was a night and day difference. Still has no top end, but damn this thing rips out of the hole. All four tires break loose on blacktop with a satisfying squeal/howl coming from the tires.
The stock throttle servo is the slowest servo on Earth. I put it in a plastic bag and put it in my "pitbox for friends" so when buddies need parts, there ya go. I just replaced it with a Hitec 7955 that I had laying in the bottom of my pitbox and I plan to replace it next week, got any suggestions?
The stock steering servo would forget where it was. It was similar to when the splines strip out in the horn. You turn to the right and it would stay a bit to the left, so tried to counter that by adjusting the steering adjustment on the radio. That worked for about 30 sec, then I ran out of trim adjustment. So now I'm driving with the steering wheel cranked all the way to the right and the car is still going left! I found if I turn off the receiver and turn it back on the servo will reset itself for a few seconds and then it will restart the process. In the junk that servo went! I don't have anymore good 1/4 servo's so I just used the old 1/4 scale servo from my old hobbypro, I can't believe I actually used something off that old turd.
Now that I'm done with these simple changes, the car does really cool 4 wheel powerslides on pavement and some really kickass doughnuts. The handling on this car is amazing, when the steering servo works. I have to say, this is the best driving R/C I've ever owned! I can broadslide this thing exactly where I want it and it actually brought a smile to my face.
So for a stock R/C for less than 500 bux and a few simple adjustments, you really can't go wrong with the Redcat!
