TOPIC:

I have recently bought a Tamiya Sand scorcher and fully assembled it painting the body meticulously in box art colours as they say. I spent 4 days on the body and the time and effort really showed. I've used it carefully several times, at the beach and up and down my street with no issues whatsoever then today, It decided to go flat out by itself and run straight under a parked car. This car happened to be fairly low and I now have a really nice Sand Scorcher with a totally smashed front pillar, mirror and buckled roof. This is a reissue Scorcher which makes it a little easier to swallow but I would really like to know what happened. It has an ESC, Futaba 29mhz am radio gear. My neighbour also had his car several hours later do the same thing except it went forwards then backwards by itself. There is a lot of static electricity around at the moment, getting zapped when you get in and out of the car etc... Can this be the cause and if it is, What can you do or use to prevent it happening. Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

I've seen and heard of this problem many times.
My (vintage) Grasshopper ran backwards into the curb at full speed without any reason.
That made the gear box split in half.

I bought a modern Lrp esc with failsafes. Never had this problem again.
Instead of running wild, the car now just shuts off in case of signal interference.

tinyurl.com/3aovzem

I have seen 27mhz receivers that advertise "fail safe". Will this do the same thing as a fail safe ESC?

Upgrade to 2.4Ghz!

HobbyKing gear is great value for money.
Some have multi-model memory, and extra receivers are also inexpensive.
Never have any interference problems again!

Falcon#5 wrote:

Upgrade to 2.4Ghz! ... Never have any interference problems again!

Falcon#5 has a good point here.
When you're considering another transmitter-receiver then you might as well go 2.4 GHz.
Another cool thing about this is that there will be no more antenna sticking out your car.

I see you live "Down Under" - this means there won't be much of a problem importing this to your country.
This I actually heard from Falcon#5!

Sounds like the way to go. Thanks.

No problem of course. If you want, keep us posted on the new equipment.
I'm always curious how it works out...

Spent a few hours repairing, doesnt look too bad.

Nice repair job. Looked like it had a pretty bad crash in the first pic.

Well done repair job!
How did you do it?

-Lars