first boat

[addicted2rc]

Sorry guys may not be in the right place but just ordered my first boat, Hobbico Hammer. Has anyone run one of these yet? Anything I should look out for, ect. Thanks in advance for any help.

[dag]

I too bought a nitro hammer as my first boat less than 2 months ago. I think for a first boat this is a great start. Once you see the boat it is alot better looking in person than any picture you may have seen. I think the decals make it look more like a toy. When you run this boat it is pretty fast. I think it does around 25 mph but never clocked it. Handles pretty nice on a smooth day. Once had it out in the whitecaps of a lake and was a little too rough. Had it airborn a few times and had the bow under the water as well. There are a few mods you can do to help the performance such as changing props, cutting a hole in the hatch above the carb, and sharpening/shortening the rudder.

Main things to watch out for are:

if the rudder and/or prop are broken out of the box (hobbico will send you replacement if needed)

you'll almost definitely break the rudder at some point. (I did before it even got near the lake)

reinforce the rudder (be creative)

mine was hard to get running that first time. alot of pullin and tweaking the high speed needle (just be patient, you did not get a lemon)

invest in lock tite-lots of screws and bolts vibrated loose on mine

once you get it running and tuned it runs pretty good (at least so far for me)

[addicted2rc]

dag, thanks for the input, had already read in the reviews about the rudder flexing, was just waiting till it got here to see how i could reinforce it without causing excess drag. As for loctite, I have plenty ( i also run a xxxnt offroad truck). my main question being new to boats is do you start the engine in the water and then install the hatch and go. How long can it run without overheating?


thanks again for your help

[dag]

you need to start the boat on land on its stand. i could not tell you how long it would run w/o overheating but put it this way you start it, let it warm up 30s to 1 min, adjust the needle, replace the hatch, and walk over to the water to toss it in, and you'd be fine. just make sure you keep it at iddle most of the time it is out of water. i give it a few pulls off the trigger to help warm it up and make sure it wont crap out when you give it throttle. but you should not worry about it overheating while you start it. if you wanted you could rig something that runs water through the cooling system. i have a squirt bottle that i place on the outtake and squirt it through to cool it down when its feeling hot. some guys say if you spit/drop water on the head and it sizzles than you running too hot. also i recommend tuning the boat in the water so you have load on the prop.

[addicted2rc]

dag, got the boat saturday. Guess what, broken prop. They are sending me one. going to rig up a gallon jug with a fitting in the bottom to hook the cooling hose to when i break in the engine. At least for the first couple of tanks. the only concern is no load on the engine out of the water. Any problem with that on break in?


thanks

[dag]

according to some on this site--yes. i'm not sure why i guess no loas = higher rpm's which may over work the engine or heat up too much. maybe some one else has more insight for ya

[mjmsprt40]

This is one that's fairly easy. Break-ins on land are a bad bet because there's no load at all on the engine. The airplane guys can do it because they have huge (by comparison to what we run) propellers on their engines, but it's rare to find anything that will give a meaningful load when your prop is less than three inches in diameter.

Try this; on your first run, if you feel the need to do a land run, do just enough to make sure the engine won't quit on you. Rich at first, then lean it in to a good running setting. Launch, then do your break-in on the water where you get real loads on the engine. Do straights, figure 8s and standard racing turns. Go easy on the engine for the first tankfuls, progressively leaning in on each run. Done right, you should have a good, strong engine for quite some time.

[addicted2rc]

thanks for the help guys, guess i'll wait till the prop gets here or if i can get to a hobby shop before then, closest one is 75 miles. i would feel better breaking it in under load. that's how i do my cars too.