Help the roockie

[Sergio]

Hello! Yesterday the fun almoast turned to disaster when I didn´t payed attencion to the flashing light warning that the transmitor batteries where down, the car locked on full throtle, luckly it got stucked in the tire of a parked car. I learned this lesson well, but now I´m afraid about the receiver batteries, there is no way of knowing if it´s low on energy, so could you tell me how long can last a 5 batteries receiver pack after a night of charging?

My car, the Thunder Tiger EB-4 SA (http://www.acehobby.com/gfx/cars/EB-4S2-Kit-4-350.gif)

[SteveH]

Always play it safe. I change my batteries in the receiver as soon as the steering starts acting sluggish. You should be running with a fail safe as well. Or at least a return spring. That saved me from a nasty time just last week.

[Sergio]

A "fail safe"? You mean there is something that cuts the engine, when the batteries go down? (Dam! Why didn´t the the guys from the shop told me about it?)

[SteveH]

It just makes sure your engine will return to idle if you lose
signal from your transmitter or if your receiver quits for whatever reason.

[Sergio]

Thank you very much for your help Steve.
:)

[pudder]

Failsafe has saved my ass a couple times. I doubt I will use it anymore though since I have an FM radio, and dont race nitro, just drive around with it. My controller (JR XR3) makes a beeping sound that really pisses you off so you will turn off your radio.

-mike

[fmolzer]

Losi makes a good return spring that you mount to the throttle linkage, if you loose power to the receiver, the spring will pull the arm back to idle and even apply light brake pressure for you. The spring is cheaper than the fail safe, and although not as sophisticated, it does the trick. Also, once I ran my nitro tourer into a brick (sideways) and this took the servo gears out, the returnspring cut the power and the car was fine, but in this incident, a failsafe would not have helped as it relies on servo input to bring the car to a stop. Also, there are switches you can buy that will have small diodes in them to show if the receiver pack still has enough power, there are even small volt meters that you can hook up between the battery and transmitter.

Good luck

[pudder]

Yes, I would go with the return spring, It does more than the failsafe, and cost less too.

-mike

[Nutter]

Wouldn't a return spring reduce the speed of your throttle servo tho? Seems like a good idea for bashing, but a bad one for racing..


-Nutter

[Sergio]

Iapreciate your help people, you are really nice persons. Unfortunatly looks as no one uses failsafe or return spring here in POrtugal, I´ve called some shops and they don´t have those items at sale, they say that people use only a electronic variator( I don´t know if is the right word in english), that thing is attached in the car between the battery and receiver and it as a led light that will go from green to red warning of battery failure.

Again thank you very much for your help guys.

[SteveH]

That's what I was talking about. The electronic one, that's a failsafe.

[InspGadgt]

Return springs are nothing more then just your average spring you can buy at a hardware store. It must be soft enough so that when the servo is powered it doesn't stress the servo when it tries to move. But strong enough so that when there is no power to the servo it will pull it back to the throttle idle position or even a little brakes. Fail safe's are a good idea but personally I prefer the Fail Safe built into a PCM radio as that will also save your car in the event of RF interferrence.

[Sergio]

I don´t think so Steve, the devise I talked about only shows the charge in the batteries, it doesn´t make no action on the throtle if the batteries run too low

[SteveH]

O.K. I misunderstood you, sorry about that.