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Cheap chinese lights - could this be you?


hawkeye's picture

By hawkeye - Posted on 19 December 2015

davo29er's picture

Throws water on electrical fire, TWICE
gets bike out first, then the neighbours
then calls 911

Brenos's picture

Thats from the cheap ass Lipo batteries you get with them. There's nothing wrong with the lights... I race remote controlled cars, so i have a heap of top grade lipo's that last 10 times longer than the ones you get with the lights.. Should also charge in a lipo sack, to minimise the risk... 9 times out of 10, the reason they blow is because ppl charge at to high a Amp. For eg, if the lipo is a 5200mAh then you charge at 5.2 Amps, no higher. If its 4000mAh, then charge a 4.0 Amps an so on.

hawkeye's picture

I used to do that... even won a NSW champs. This back when everything was NiCd and motors had brushes - ancient history now. All the gear's still sitting in the garage. TQ'd the NSW nitro tourers champs once too.

The performance of the current LiPos teamed with brushless motor combo is impressive, and so much cheaper to run and less maintenance. Better than nitro, maybe even better than 1/8 scale.

Slowpup's picture

Have that exact same model light sitting in the man cave..... Sad

hawkeye's picture
Brenos's picture

Yeah the old skool rc. Now it's brushless and lipos, so much faster. Small world Hawkeye, i've also won state titles in electric. Yeah 1/8th electric is on par with nitro's now. Just plug and go

hawkeye's picture

I got out of in 2001, just before my club hosted the 1/8 nitro worlds. I shocked everybody - I had been dominating the 1/10 nitro tourers for close to a year at that point, and was in the top three nationally and might have been the quickest if I'd been bothered travelling.

According to my team mates at the NSW champs that year the Japanese Mugen factory team were thunderstruck by the performance of my MTX10. They made a copy of my setup and released it as a specialist edition later that year. Would have been nice if they'd bothered to talk to me (and maybe given me some credit), but there you go. Smiling

It was an easy decision though. I didn't want my legacy to be the dad who neglected his kids because he was too busy playing toy cars. The traction at our track was ridiculously high and normal off-the-shelf pre-glued rubber would just get ripped apart, so a lot of time had to be invested in preparation. It wasn't sustainable.

Some of the other guys didn't make that choice. Most have since been divorced, and at a recent visit I made to the track I think it was last year, they all looked old and unhealthy. I respectfully declined their invitations to come back racing.

Slowpup's picture

Thanks John.

Brenos's picture

Ahhh you were an onroad racer John. I'm an off road racer for St Ives, love jumping. I've done a little on road, but not much. And yep, there's still a lot of unfit guys still racing lol

hawkeye's picture

I had a stickybeak up there awhile back. Looked interesting and I had a look at pricing for a couple of 2WDs for my son and I to race, but in the end decided to leave it alone.

I was actually a founding member in 1982 and had a dabble with early 4WD Kyoshos. It was more time consuming and expensive than I could afford as a student back then. And I liked going fast, so stuck with on-road.

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