TOPIC:

Edou wrote:

They just rereleased the Fox so I'd have a look around for that shell myself.

ive seen one on ebay edou,i think they wanted £34 for it,TBG £26 all in.not sure if they will drop in price on the bay as time goes on

I can only assume the Foxes will be restocked and there will be many of them around in general.
Not a limited edition in any way...
The first batch went very quickly in the Asian shops so if I were Tamiya I'd see an opportunity there.
Hopefully it's not wishful thinking.
The price difference is quite a lot at this moment...

TBG shells are ok, its the packeging and shipment thats sometimes heartbreaking
They do solve there mistakes quickly so service sofar

did you mean 1700 instead of 1200? no see 1200 in my picture

sorry waterbok i could only see the corner of the picture i just asumed it was the 1200

that will teach me to not make asumptions

jon_the_fox wrote:

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jonny are the tbg bodyshell any good,im thinking about gettin one for my fox resto?

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jon_the_fox wrote:

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ive seen one on ebay edou,i think they wanted £34 for it,TBG £26 all in.
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TBG shells are pretty good quality - but they do suffer on size, my Falcon one was a tiny bit smaller than a Tamiya one, but the Bigwig one was well undersized, which really affected the fit

Same with the Holiday Buggy/Sand Rover open gearbox covers

IIRC they didn't combined shipping costs on those so I paid well over the odds

I've had issues with their packaging too - 2nd hand boxes with no padding are prone to being squashed

I also had to part import VAT last time - 3 GBP in duty + an 8 GBP fee for working it out - that'll soon wipe out any difference on the price




That adds up to a lot of frowny faces - it's a shame, but they really my seller of last resort now, I'd only buy from them again if there really was no other option, regardless of price

As most of you know, I'm not a fan of batteries that aren't NiCds, I've had nothing but low output, overheating, short life & non-resilience from everything else I've tried.
I still try to acquire NiCds to use, I still prefer 2nd hand NiCDs over new NiMH.
I've still got packs from the early 80s which still work ok (More than can be said for a pile of 6 month old LiPo heli batteries I have here...)

I've also found that the "lower" capacity NiCDs have a higher current output & usable life than "higher" capacity ones - 1200, 1300, 1400 are usually ok no matter what manufacturer, 1500 & above seem to be more useless with increased capacity. I just bin 1800s without trying them nowadays, they're hopeless. I'd much rather have my car tearing about like a scalded cat for 4 minutes than dawlding about for 30 minutes like it needs a hip replacement.

Anyway, below is a recent buy from Ebay (I say recent, it's probably 6 months ago now), I bought a pile of them for around 30gbp & they were all "New/unused in pack". It did raise an eyebrow how they were sealed in plastic bags rather than in posh Tamiya boxes, but there's no question they're new - is this packaging normal for Tamiya now?

are these the heinz baked beans of battery packs eddrick?

they look mint,i would like a find like this on the bay

i havent really used either type battery nimh or nicad long enough to make a valid desicion on which one to stick with,il let you know in 6 months to a year

tanks for the insight on TBG body shells waterbok and jonny,i brought my falcon bodyshell from KAMTEC,it seems to fit ok but the moulding was.....well urrrm,not as good quality as i expected..sorry to any KAMTEC lovers out there

jtf

Here is one of my 2 tamiya packs.
I don't know if it work again

??? NP is RACING PACK too.
My other one is gold but I don't remember if it is a 1300 or 1700 mah???

put some charge in the old girl stingray,would be fun,ive been told you can revive these old ladys to close to there former glory

No idea if they're posh or not Jon, they work really well for what I paid, so that's good enough for me!
Keep an eye on the bay, there's always stuff like that about, it's just a case of looking in the right place at the right time.

Stingray - thrash the blue pack (1400NP) on an old style run-back charger. It'll get gradually warmer, but keep going until it gets warmer quickly. If you have a voltmeter & ammeter, keep an eye on the charging current & voltage - you're looking for the voltage rising continuously until it's around 11.8 volts, then it will start to drop, indicating the pack is fully charged. You will probably see a charging current of 1-2 amps if the pack hasn't been used for years. Stop charging immediately if it suddenly starts to get hot.

Once you have charged the pack (As above), IMMEDIATELY run it completely flat again, prefferably under high load (eg in the car) & use a discharger or auto headlamp bulb to get the absolute last of the charge out of it.
Then, thrash it on the charger again as above.

Keep repeating the process & the pack should improve each time you do it.
You'll know when it's recovered as the car will run faster for longer, then suddenly go flat, with barely any time going slowly before it completely dies.

I usually get 4-6 minutes out of a 1400NP in my TL01 with a mildly tuned motor. I get about 8-10 minutes with a silvercan, barely 4 with a "hot" motor.

It's worth also checking the state of the wiring, especially the connector crimps, as these packs tend to rot the wiring if they've ever been wet, dunno why....