Street Weapon Graphite

[RCveteran]

Picked this up off the old Bay. Appears to have very low miles, chassis almost new, ball ends and various other parts like new. Good cleaning and it should be dominating the streets weapon style.

Need to get saddleback, anyone can recommend a thinner one. I have 22mm to play with under stock hold downs??

Anyone ever heard of this Birdman Motors, says Mojave, CA on it.

[knixdad]

I've got saddle pack style Lipos but I think I use with mildly modified hold downs.

Usually I just drop a normal 2S on left side of the chassis and put all the other stuff on the right side. Lipos are light enough that it doesn't make all that much of a difference to the balance.

[SFC K]

Nice looking Street Weapon and it looks really clean too! I have always wanted to get one of these, but the battery mounts made me a little leery of getting one. I'm not a fan of saddle pack layouts....

[RCveteran]

You could fit a small lipo on the side by moving the esc to the other side.

My first foray into old Losi onroad as well. I started to take apart to inspect belts and before I knew it you pretty much have to disassemble the entire car to access. So now I have a box of parts street weapon. It is in very good shape. I am guessing some limited carpet time.

I'll clean it up, spend too much money on it, probably put a 13.5t brushless in it, drive it once and then spend more money looking for rare hop ups on Ebay in an endless bankrupting cycle.

This appears to be the IWC version which included the graphite, threaded shocks and other hop ups per vintagelosi.com.

[knixdad]

---------------------------------------------------------Street Weapon IWC
--------------------------------------------------------/
-------------------------------------Street Weapon
------------------------------------/-------------------\
------------------------------XX-4----------------------Rally Weapon
------------------------------------\
-------------------------------------XX-4 Worlds Edition
--------------------------------------------------------------\
---------------------------------------------------------------22-4

Heavy Metal was a body shell, stickers and body mounts (lifted from the Street Weapon parts bin.)

Depending on how much you want to run it and what spares you have, you can do some modifications to make it easier to work on and fit Lipos better. You can cut the Belt Cover so you can access things without complete disassembly, sealing it with tape when in use.

In general the on-road versions don't break as many things compared to the off-road buggy, unless you are plowing into curbs and whatnot. The belts are usually the weakest link, I've had them rot away inside sealed packages.

[RCveteran]

It has tough racing belts now which appear still available on Ebay. Not sure if they are good or not? It will not get run much. I have been reading up as my knowledge is in offroad. It appears the IWC version was about as good as it got at the time.

What are some of the rarer aftermarket parts?

How long was it made for? 1999 - ??

Not sure I follow your diagram above? What is interchangable with XX4?

[Incredible_Serious]

I have a chassis of one of those sitting in a box somewhere, with some arms and a few other parts attached.... probably should put it in the BST, maybe someone else can use it!!!

Definitely not a lot of room for electrics there.....

Alex

[knixdad]

It has tough racing belts now which appear still available on Ebay. Not sure if they are good or not? It will not get run much. I have been reading up as my knowledge is in offroad. It appears the IWC version was about as good as it got at the time.

What are some of the rarer aftermarket parts?

How long was it made for? 1999 - ??

Not sure I follow your diagram above? What is interchangable with XX4?

The belts are decent and don't explode into crumbly rubber bits when exposed to air.

Almost everything is interchangeable within reason. The major pieces that have restrictions are the chassis and belts and tunnels. Only because they are different sizes, but there is nothing stopping you from slapping the shorter arms (with the appropriate length driveshafts) onto a long chassis.

[RCveteran]

Cool. Im buying some hop up parts on the ebay for a nice restoration but its clean to begin wit. I like to waste money though.

[R Cane]

I have a Birdman motor also...know nothing about it...

[RCveteran]

We must find the birdman!

[farmer]

Ok so I will give you the lowdown on birdman motors birdman aka Dennis Anderson , not the Dennis Anderson of the grave digger monster truck . Birdman was a local motor builder here in kern county . Back in the 90s into the 00s I use to run for him , and race against him on a regular bases, he got the nick name birdman because he always walked around with a parrot named hondo! On his shoulder even on the driver stand at races, and would always have a fat lip of chew in his mouth and when he was racing or just talking to you his bird would go down and grab some specks of chew that was left on his lip . No joke! He is a real nice guy

His motors were ok , this was back in the day when there was a motor builder around every corner. He was more well known for his oval motors on the east coast . But once the p2k copper can came out he figured away to make that motor fly I'm talking stupid fast that's what I believe really propelled him into a recognized name. Than he started making battery's, than in the early 00s his whole motor and battery operation burned to the ground along with all his R/C cars and race equipment. So he was pretty much done with the whole motor/battery gig. When the brushless phase started coming in he started to make custom hand wound brushless motors. Once again stupid fast, but with the price of motors his profit was not there. I have one hand wound still in the package that I'm saving for a rainy day. He still races her locally and we always get together and talk when see each other re live our glory days of racing

Really nice guy! So save your motor and display it proudly that, that motor came from a guy that was trying to compete with the big motor corporations and was doing a good job at it tell the fire
A couple other local motor builders were Kisbey, And Mike Ruby from Ruby Motors also custom works

Hope that helps
Thx
Farmer

[RCveteran]

Very cool. Fun to have something like that arrive with an EBAY car as an added bonus. Sounds like a real character!

[R Cane]

That's awesome, thanks farmer. Somebody should make a written collection of all this kinda stuff. That's the cool information that's all going to be gone forever once the few people that know it are gone.

[RCveteran]

I guess this forum is that record. But I agree.