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Update metadata and transcripts through end of July 2026

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Episode: 4556
Title: Nitro man! RC Cars
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4556/hpr4556.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:13:51 (official HPR transcript)
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4556, for 2026-01-19
Today's show is entitled, "Nitro man! RC Cars"
The host is operat0r and the duration is 00:16:12
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "I talk about run with Nitro RC Cars"
Hello everyone, I'm looking to the episode of PackUpUpGradio with your host Operator.
Today it's a special Christmas episode, it's such a kind of part for the RC cars.
So we're going to have to talk to them about the Metro cars.
The Metro cars are RC cars that run off of this like 20% oil gas thing.
So the oil is in the gas, it has a little motor and you can pay you know $800 for a motor
or you can pay, you know, the 50 bucks for a motor.
I got this Traxxas Rustler Nitro Older Style model for a second hand for free and the
nice perceived spin hundreds and probably all together probably $200 to $300 so it's not like
any hobby.
It starts to get expensive if you don't know what you're doing.
So I spent probably $200 because I didn't know what I was doing and I wasn't taking
my time.
So it can be a cheap hobby if you are affected that DIY and repairing your own stuff.
But I replaced the RC radio module twice.
First time I drove it in the rain the second time I shorted it out by plugging in it
incorrectly.
So I'm out $100 just because of not reading the directions and taking my time and crushing
through things.
I have replaced the little servo thing.
So there's servos which turn the gears and turn the wheels and those little servos you
probably see them if you've done like a Arduino kit, you've got a servo in there.
These are like kind of medium performance servos that come with this stock.
You can get all metal servos at then whatever I'll talk about that later.
But the servo thing has up a little like a servo protector or whatever.
So the drive pin that the servo is attached to that turns the wheels.
It is on like a little almost like a plastic circle with a bunch of fins attached to it
and those fins grip onto a surface.
And so when it rotates around the fins can sort of crack or break or tear and it won't
destroy your servos.
So if you have a $50 servo or a very expensive servo you can put the servo protector
on there and that will protect it.
It comes stock with it already.
That'll protect you from getting wrecked when you hit an obstacle or should like that.
So that's kind of one thing that I had to replace.
I put scholastics on the radio transmitter.
Once I plugged everything in and I knew I wasn't going to move any of the wires around
I just glued it all in here with electric tape or liquid electric tape.
You can buy various forms of cleaners.
Deoxet D5 is very expensive.
You can go to your local store and buy a carb cleaner.
But you want to be careful on electronics or plastic parts.
But chances are by the time you gum up a plastic part on this thing you're going to get rid
of it anyways.
So like the whole thing about not strain plastics on with a carb cleaner or something
it's I wouldn't really worry about on this.
I have a printed 3D parts for it.
The shock absorbers tend to pop off all the time so you have to check those all the time.
They pop off all the time.
You can 3D print those.
You can 3D print the brakes.
You can order like carbon fiber brakes pads.
I had problems with brake pads because I don't know what I was doing.
What other things I've done to this guy?
I put just regular silken oil I had laying around the house to fill this thing to fill
the shocks or the shocks are filled with like a silicone silken silken and it's they're
both about the same jumping this.
They both handle the same amount but I know the fluid in there is not the correct 0.02
whatever.
The fluid you put in there.
You have various exhaust things you can get in mind to stock plastic.
The thing with this one at least you can't go backwards and you cannot turn it off.
There's no like off button.
So your backwards is your brakes.
So most of your RC cars right you press the back button and that will be your brakes.
Well, you don't want to give someone that's used to using an ISO car and regular RC car
because they will destroy it because their first instinct is to like put the brakes on and
that bolts in the car and full speed backwards and run into something and the axle will
clip right off on somebody else's vehicle.
So be wary of if you're going to be racing somebody else's car and you're used to
an ISO cars you will destroy the other person's car oops sorry but they're in law.
So anyways, they have a little glow stick in them and that little glow stick is heated
by a battery pack that you put in the back.
They have hand crank once.
Nobody really does that anymore but you can buy kits just convert them back over to hand crank.
I had to mess with this one a lot so it doesn't run very well.
It doesn't start very well.
So I have to like start it way too long which you're kind of wear out your fuse, the glow
fuse thing in there or something.
So it takes a while for me to get it to start but when it runs pretty good and I had
problems with the idling well first I had problems with it it would really it was so it was
so fast like these things go and it's 90 miles an hour something crazy.
It would really and then when I had to replace the brakes like nine times it wouldn't
really really any more and then after a while it would it wouldn't idle it wouldn't
stay running because I'll fix my later so it wouldn't stay running it would there's three
different types of trim on the motor and that's really annoying it's it's it's an
arc form you got to be able to kind of understand the car and understand what each knob
does and play with it I've probably put an hour or two hours into just tuning it and I'll
get it perfect and then you know the weather changes or it's cold outside or you know
it's been sitting out and it's called gunked up and then God forbid you go in there
and start messing with the dials.
If you have it running and it's clean and it's nice and it's happy don't mess with it.
You're going to want to mess with it because it's not going to start.
If it doesn't start it's something else there's something else going on you don't have
fuel in it you the glow plug doesn't work there's it's not getting electricity there's
a little light at the top but it's fun it can be a money pit my brother-in-law went way
hardcore into it it's been a bunch of money and now he has a ridiculous car that you can't
even race anywhere because it's it's so fast you can't even do it in a parking lot it's
you go so fast this little guy you know I've racing around of I've like I said
I've jumped into two three hundred dollars on it what's all said and done but now it's
at the point where I know it enough to where I can fix most of the parts I haven't done any
of the transmission or the motor but I did replace the what happened was is it gave me a
fault since that idle and I took the whole thing apart and there's a thing called a
drive bill or a click clear drive clutch bill or whatever and the clutch has a spring around it
and when it when it spins at a certain speed the spring gives away and then that lets the car
move forward so if the car the car wasn't idling I had to like it would it would take off
and the only way to keep it running was just put my foot in front of it and while it's trying
to take off well the whole problem the whole time was one my slip slip clutch was really
which actually allowed me to run the car and not have the clutch even working so if you're
clutch spring dies you can actually just loosen your slip clutch like so loose that it just spins
around and it'll basically melt your clutch wheel your your fly wheel or whatever they call it
the gear wheel plus the gear wheel um and and that's how you can run it without a spring because
I ran it for probably I don't know 10 times without a spring and eventually it got so bad
that I would have to it would just take off on idle and I couldn't keep it running without like
it wanting to just run my foot over it was probably pushing two or three pounds of
of torque just trying to keep it running and then the the motor would crap out because it's trying
to push the the the motor and it would can't go anywhere because either I've tightened the
the fly wheel so tight it doesn't want to spin around so anyways I eventually realized that
the AI told me that it can give you a false sense of a bad idle if you don't have a proper
whatever I also ran it into a pull I full speed right in the middle and that shattered all kinds
of stuff I had to replace a bunch of stuff in the front I only remember what what I had to replace
but it broke a lot of stuff so you got to be really careful with the same thing with any kind of like
RC or helicopter that an RC helicopter for a very short time that's hard to do you got to
practice online with a simulator first but I'll say all and all you know you buy one of these for
like 600 bucks it's all plastic and then you're like oh well this plastic thing broke I'm
going to replace it with metal and then the problem with that is that okay you replaced the
the shock the what do you call the things that hold the wheel on the axles you replace the axles
or whatever with metal and then the thing behind that breaks and then your drive train breaks
and then the thing and then you now that all the your drive train all your tires and stuff
and your axles and all that stuff is all you know kind of glad then your gears are going to start
to open out because your tires and gears on the tires and all your supports for the tires are
stronger than the motor so then the motor starts giving out and yet the replace that all with metal
and then next thing you know you built what they call a bacher so which if you really want to get into
and you really think that you can fix it yourself and you've done RC before or you fixed small
electronics or even motors you're good at just by a thracer or bacher whatever because they are
much easier to take care of because they are stronger and they're all metal um this is plastic
there's some metal in it obviously but it's mostly plastic and it's you know 600 bucks for
the thing or so but the other ones are like you know 700 a hundred I don't even know three four
actually I think it's like three or four for this one and then your your bachers or whatever are like
you can go from five and up or four five six but if you want to not worry about having to fix it
as much and not having to worry about crashing in or whatever you want to get a bacher
or a thracer or whatever they call my brother-in-law ended up with one and it's kind of fun to play around
because it was all metal and you didn't have to worry about running into a tree as much
and you could actually do ramps and stuff with it which if I got one of those I wouldn't actually
do the ramps my wheel is really loose um so I've got it all put back together I thought I
lost this group and I would ape but it ended up being there is no there was no screw for it
but that's pretty much it you know it's it's fun to take out I keep it in the car mainly
so that I can use it but you kind of you kind of got to do of you know five point inspection
when you're you know you clean it up you clean it up and whatever and it's the whole thing takes
you know it's been hours and hours it's like any kind of RC hobby except for you had the
component of a motor and trying to get that fucker to work so if you want to skip the nitro
it is actually quite enjoyable and it gets people excited and riled up because you hear an actual
motor and like what and God's name is that it sounds like an alarm going off in the neighborhood
when it's going down street like I said they can go up to like the dining mouths and
hours I'm crazy and you can't really race these in the neighborhood so much
cold sack sort of kind of but they're so fast it's hard you'll hit a curb too quickly and if there's
any cars in the street you'll hit the car and the problem with the cars is that they will kind of
grab onto your tires and rip them apart and rip them rip the axles off so I've
wrecked two cars with just running into car tires um curbs will actually kind of bounce that
the thing bounce off of curbs but when it gets stuck under a tire it kind of grabs it and we'll just
rip it'll the car will rip itself apart anyways that's kind of where I'm at I put
rechargeable batteries in it I have two battery packs back up battery pack just in case it's dead I
keep plenty of gas the gas is stupid expensive you can buy it big size of it but they don't
really even let you order it like I guess because it's the giant thing of gas so the little containers
and they're still stupid expensive but it's fun to play around with like kids play around with
and they're pretty sturdy but you have to you know tell them hey no matter what happens just remember
to push this forward if something happens if it floats over or for anything happens if you don't
know what's going on or if you some of you get a wreck the only the best thing you could do is because
it'll spin and if the tires spin too fast they will literally rip themselves apart because they're just
kind of glued on there and there's a foam under them and when the tires start spinning when it's upside
down the thing will completely rip itself apart it's a little crazy so I've seen it have to
it and I've had to glue some of them back so I've replaced tires I think on once and of course I
bought the wrong tires and the wrong uh wrong sized tires and tried to make it up you know like a
third bike thing and I said no I'm not doing that you of course can replace the gears and
make the different strings so you can have it faster lower gear ratio or higher gear ratio if you
want what it revised or so if you want more torque then you can do that I did I just opted for more
torque because I don't want it to go as fast it's already stupid fast but the clutch slip thing I
did not have tight enough so it might actually do release now so hopefully it's all happy and I've got
the clutch spring on there and I've got the attention for the forever set correctly so it's it's
not difficult it just takes time a lot of time to learn so if you don't have a lot of time and you're
not really good at DIY but it'd be prepared to fix it a lot and it's in deal with that frustration
it just take it slow um if you want to you know go fast and hard I mean I've got like zip ties on the
thing because when I run into it my my exhaust falls off so I've zip tied the exhaust essentially
too the vehicle so that way when it gets a forward impact it doesn't fall off because it is so out
the exhaust is incredibly loud if it ditched detached to the point where you don't even want to be
next to it when it's running normally but if the exhaust comes off like it blows your ears out
especially indoors you don't want to do it indoors obviously for the reason of you know gas
fumes and whatnot but it's fun and hopefully this will work and maybe we'll go to the park
here in a second if I can make sure it works and and ride around you to big open space to
drive this thing you can't really drive it in a normal streets but anyways take it easy my
Christmas and happy new year and happy holidays and all that stuff take it easy
you
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