Here’s one for the Tips For Bashers section that I have been meaning to add for a while. Then someone sent me an email saying we should write a ‘tip’ about this, and I thought.. yea, I need to get it done.

So this tip is all about storage of your RC vehicles. Around the Big Squid RC office we have tons of vehicles that are being worked on, tested, or just bashed. In the shop things get pretty crowded, and on our weekly road trips, stuff gets piled in the truck till we can’t move any more. Something we started doing a while back, to help keep parts straight and with the vehicle they belong with is to pick up these Rubbermaid or Sterlite style storage containers. They come in all sizes, but the common ones we use here are 58 quart and bigger. We buy them on sale for about $4 each and they really come in handy. They won’t really hold monster trucks, but 1/8th scale buggys and smaller fit fine.

There are a ton of uses. One great use is to keep all the extra spare parts together with the vehicle. Since we have so many vehicles we end up buying lots of extra/spare parts, and since this isn’t a hobby shop, we don’t have all the parts just hanging around on the wall for us to grab. Parts many times get tossed aside, and lost in a tool box, under a work bench, or who knows where. Tossing them all in the same container makes them easy to find.
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It’s been a while since we have added a new Tips For Bashers post, so I thought I’d help out and get things rolling with a quick Electric Motor Break-In Tip.

Ever wonder how some people get extraordinary life span out of a stock motor and others only get a couple of weeks? Well, it most likely comes down to how well the motor was broken in. One of the best ways to break in a closed endbell motor is to use the water-dip method.

Here is how it is done:

First, you will need a container that is large enough to fully submerge the motor in water. Sure, you could use a bucket or even a bathtub for that matter, but I use a cheap plastic cup. Read the rest of this entry »

RC Bashers and racers find themselves in many different types of places while bashing. It can be the backyard, a parking lot, a school, wherever. When you are out there with an electric vehicle, you don’t always have enough charged batteries to last you the whole time you want to bash, and you don’t always have a power outlet available. One solution would be to go out and get a generator. This is expensive, and they take up a lot of room (not to mention the noise) so we bring you a cheap, small, and easy way to have portable power.

Here is the item list we used.
1) One Rubbermaid Container with locking lid. (around 15 quart size) $5
2) One Hobbico Deluxe Power Panel II $21
3) One Hangar 9 Maintenance-Free 12v 7Ah Sealed Battery $25
4) One Hangar 9 12V Battery Charger $12
5) Some sort of charger, batteries and maybe even a power supply.
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