A hearty Hello, Ramblings, and some Questions

[Bongo Fury]

Thanks to all for a great site, I’m having a blast rummaging around. Most impressed by the historical knowledge of what I consider to be some fairly young dudes based on the “Who the heck are you?” thread. I need to work on some organization and restoration, figure out the picture thingy and offer some contributions, hopefully not far away.

I’m a Losi guy for the most part with a special interest in transmissions. I’ve drooled on the JR-X2/T offerings, notice you’ve covered many of the early exterior parts, spring clamps, no hole rear towers, single hole trailing links, non ribbed link mounts, yada yada. But I haven’t noticed a mention of the early non “pro diff” gears, the ones without a bearing in the center of the diff gear. So that’s one picture I need to get up, hopefully it will interest some. And at the risk of being burned at the stake for blasphemy hopefully I can post some pics of a Stealth equipped Losi. Which back in the day was a fabulous set up for me, ran this in both buggy and truck for years through a few Losi model iterations, it worked great. A more conventional mod that I also haven’t ran across is a MIP tranny for the Losi, something that I assume the AE guys are familiar with as they were a very common mod when I started racing in the 6 gear era.

I have some of the early Jammin’ Jay Losi stuff such as a front shock tower. An ERP motor magnetizer. And nearly everything else from that time, tires, radios, speedos, chargers, KO FET servos, Bud Bartos’ dyno, motors and such.

I have the new stuff too, my Team Driver (OK, my Son) has been racing a pair of XXX CRs for just over a year. Lately now that he’s going pretty well I’ve been running a '94 era XX and having at least as much fun as the first time around, I had stopped racing for a while for the family thing.

If I may I would like to end this rambling with some questions: Are XX chassis and bodies available anywhere? I have a bunch of old Sanyo SCR1200 and 1400s. Any suggestions on reviving them to any degree? Most will only make 400-500mah with extremely limited punch. Not expecting miracles, but it would be fun to be able to at least run sorta strong for a few minutes with them. I love the new tech brushless and lipo, but it just doesn’t seem right for the old (pre XX) rides, kind of like putting a Stealth in a Losi if you know what I mean! It’s just not right.

Cheers to all, sorry for rambling on so, but I love this hobby/sport/addiction/moneypit/vacation destroyer almost as much as some of you….

[badhoopty]

welcome to the board!

i'm an idiot, but there are alot of very smart dudes here like yourself who could advise ya on the batteries.

[klavy69]

Welcome to the board and enjoyed your ramblings . Can't help you out about anything besides that there should be someone around here when its time to get you into the b/s/t area that can set you up with your losi stuff. But at least you learned to make a losi a winner you had to put an associated drivetrain in it

Todd

[adam lancia]

Welcome to the board!!!!

About your batteries: There are a few things you can do to try and get them revived. First, you will need a discharger that can discharger each cell individually. Trinity, Novak, Tekin and a host of other make this sort of thing. Take the cells down to 0 volts. Dead short the cells by attaching a wire between the positive and negative ends of each cell. It's important to do each cell individually. You can dead short all the cells at once, they just need to be done with their own wire. You can leave them like this for a few hours or overnight.

What kind of charger do you have? The cells will probably false peak after this discharging cycle so if your charger doesn't have a lockout function you're going to have to keep restarting it. There's also the possibility that some of the cells are totally dead with no chance of being revived. In that case, after the pack has taken a good portion of a charge, check each cell with a volt meter. The cells should be within a few tenths of a volt of each other because you discharged them to the same point and dead shorted them. If one is really lagging behind, you should probably try to replace the cell. After doing that, you'll notice an improvement in the packs performance and charging.

Now, if you have stick packs and you don't want to take them apart and make them side by side packs then none of this really applies Hope that helps!

[Eau Rouge]

But do remember, they are 20-25 year old cells that had a very limited punch to begin with. IMO, use them for display purposes in shelfer cars and get some new Sanyo 1500SC cells to run in a vintage car. They complete the look nicely and can still be had brand new, plus they will charge on all of your old school charges for that fully authentic period-correct jones.

Otherwise, current runners with contemporary batteries and motors are probably the best (and safest) way to go.



Welcome to the board. It's good to have another "old guy" here.

[Bongo Fury]

Welcome to the board and enjoyed your ramblings . Can't help you out about anything besides that there should be someone around here when its time to get you into the b/s/t area that can set you up with your losi stuff. But at least you learned to make a losi a winner you had to put an associated drivetrain in it

Todd

Hehe... You'd probably like my RC12L too. Needed a Losi rear end, well, not to make it a winner, but it helped keep it a winner.

[Bongo Fury]

Adam, thanks. That’s close to what I’ve tried on a few cells, just didn’t leave them shorted for very long, perhaps I’ll try that. They are side x sides. I’m using ICE chargers which do have lock out, but don’t like the high charging voltages due to the high resistance. So I have to fake the number of cells or they want to shut down because of the higher voltage. I’ve also tried the reflex function with little improvement.

Eau Rouge, thanks for the tip. I didn’t think anything close was still available. I searched on the Sanyo site and even found some SCR listings, the ones you mentioned aren’t high rate/rapid charge batts per see. But would probably be better than what I got, and they appear to still be the older smaller size. As you guys probably know some of the newer sub c stuff doesn’t fit in the old battery holders. I’ve sent a message off to the closest distributor to see if any of the SCRs are available. Humm, Eau Rouge… a fellow Belgian GP fan may I presume??? Oh, and sadly you do not have to use quote marks when calling me an old guy. Or balding, fat, stupid, obnoxious etc……but I digress.

And thanks for the encouragement from badhoopty as well.

EDIT: P.S. which forum is the best place for non vehicle specific stuff, like electronics and motor stuff? The general forum?

Cheers to all. Dave