Worse things you did to RC cars as a kid

[Fred19K]

Decades ago, I attempted to combine 2 of my favorite hobbies: rc cars and model rocketry. I took the shell of my RC10L and taped on a couple of Estes A engine tubes. I recall it sort of added some speed, but I did it by myself and not with someone to ignite the rocket engines after I got to speed. The rocket engines burnt out too quick. Made it so tubes stuck out safely past the back so no damage to the car. I am sort of tempted to try this again with a beater pan car and possibly a 2 stage D engine setup and a very long straight track.

I also figured out that round smoke bombs would wedge perfectly in the rear bumper of my Tamiya Bigwig.

[orangemazda]

I taped smoke bombs to the gearbox of my Tamiya Grasshopper but they ended up burning a hole through the gearbox! My dad wasn't too happy I just messed up my new birthday present!

I never put model rocket engines on an RC car but my friend and I made LEGO rocket cars! We would build them as heavy and as sturdy as possible. We had really big LEGO wheels on it. We'd launch it down the street in front of our house, and half the time the vehicle would start lifting off the ground and then smash all over the road! We'd have to scramble to scoop up all the legos before they got run over by passing cars!

To this day, I still have some of the legos with mild rocket engine burns!

[GoMachV]

This is easy, the worst thing I ever did back in the day.... .. I took the trailing arms off a yokomo and put them on an RC 10. Then I threw away the rest of the yokomo.

[caesar]

I melted the gearbox of a 1/12 scale tamiya porsche by soaking the sponge tires in petrol and lighting them up at night and taking her for a spin.

[CraigB]

My worst "experiment" was trying out the rear tires from a 1/12th tamiya f1 model car on my rc12. I thought of it before I went to the track and didn't have time to test it. I spent the entire qualifier bouncing off of the boards.

[bully]

Whilst wiring up an old hitec esc that i got used and had to save for ages for, I was in the final phase of adjusting the pots and dumb teenage me used a small flat blade screwdriver.. Immediately the lights went out an I had that WTF look for weeks,man I was angry at myself....

[jwscab]

worst for me was twofold:

one-throwing any thing away, even the busted lexan
two-drilling lightening holes

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

As said above. I drove my Thundershot off of a roof onto the concrete, then threw it away...

[Coelacanth]

My solder jobs back then were terrible. It didn't help--and I didn't realize it until much later--that the soldering irons I was using were the el-cheapo "high-wattage" $30 units, which never seemed to heat up fast enough, or hot enough...resulting in ugly blob joints that came apart as often as not.

The other stupid thing I did was throw a bunch of money at a Tamiya Frog (my first car) in a futile attempt to make it perform better.

[CraigB]

I also shorted out my speed control by putting the heat sinks on backwards. I thought it would look cool.

[scr8p]

Bought one. Damn money pits.

[Coelacanth]

Bought one. Damn money pits.

Did you finish that one yet?

[teman]

I was testing the radio range on my blackfoot as you can imagine, it didn't end up well curb: 1, blackfoot: 0

[scr8p]

Nope. Finishing them makes you want to buy more.

Ok..... no it doesn't. I don't need a reason to buy more.

[Incredible_Serious]

I spent ages building a Xenon 9 ESC from a kit (http://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/Xenon/Xenon.html)... got it all complete, perfect soldering, tested it quickly with the included setup board, was all looking good. Then, the guy across the road came over and I showed it to him.... he says "Here, test it out with this motor".... plugged everything in, turned everything on, and it went 'pop' quietly, and never worked for about five or more years.... turns out the motor was something like a 6 or 8 turn, way more than the ESC could handle!

True story though, I was showing it to a buddy years later, and he said "what about this fusible link on the circuit board".... turns out that was the only fault! He definitely had better eyesight than me!

Amazing true story part two: I still have it, and it still works!

Alex