I while back I was posting about my interest in Faller Car System, yet how it was somewhat beyond my budget. So being the curious person that I am I began to explore RC cars on ebay. I discovered this model here from china that sells for near nothing. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Multicolor...hash=item2a9bc672bd:m:mg2D2IlOETGleTVb537d3tg After several careful deconstructions of the model with a screwdriver, followed by successful reconstructions, I have now taken the plunge and really gotten to taking things apart. I will get some photos later. I also have a similar truck to this one here, in pieces on my desk. Things I need to solve for this model build: 1. The truck axles measure tad shorter than the RC car. 2. The wheel axles thickness of the little rods doesn't match either. 3. I need to move the small PC board from the race car so that it fits inside the covered load area of the truck. 4. The LEDs provided are large and too bright. I have some on order now that are smaller. 5. The motor is designed for a fast little race car. I need to put a resister in line to slow down the motor. 6. Since it is weird plastic I'll likely end up using Walthers goo to assemble everything. 7. The truck has a longer wheel base. I am debating whether to extend the RC car, or just fudge it on this firs attempt. Long term goals: 1. Modify the steering on the chinese model to accept a faller car system steering magnet. 2. Build the controls into my layout control panel. Playing around with it, the steering may be able to work as a dual system that can follow Faller's in road wires, but can also be over ridden with the remote control. Since this does not use the Faller system, I would have to drive my trucks on the layout and avoid crashes between vehicles, but this could also be a bit fun. So my original question is this: Have I completely lost my mind?
This condition is commonly found amongst model railroaders. However, elsewhere it IS a problem. For we in model railroading it is just normal.
And these are what I bought, but they may not be the right voltage. We'll see when I start to unsolder all the external systems attached to the PC board: Lights, Steering, Motor, Antenna. Still waiting on delivery of: https://www.ebay.com/itm/L0805GW-10...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649
I was thinking about doing this with the same or similar cars. What kind of steering does the car have? Is it servo based or electromagnet? I tried to make one with an old micro rc car I had, but the receiver wouldn’t work, so it was a bit of a waste. HO scale RC apparently has a presence in Germany, so if you can understand German, there are a few good videos I have seen.
Seen this before. At one time I was on the scalemodcommunity forum based in Australia (since taken down, at least I have been unable to find it). Those guys down under were very involved with the Faller car system and did some really cool stuff with it, embedding the wires in their own roads, etc. Personally, I don't think I have the gumption to tear into my collection of 40-50's Ford, White, International and Chevrolet trucks to install that, so I'm just going to continue to pretend it doesn't exist.....doesn't exist.....doesn't exist
I saw videos of layouts with moving cars and I said something: Gee that's just cool. Followed by: Gee that's expensive. Now I'm messing around with doing a low grade DIY version that may not be as fancy, but if I can get one truck driving around my back roads I will feel vindicated.
I think HO scale RC would be fun. It would be a point of interest other than trains on a layout, which could be interesting, but then you would also need to design roads on the layout too. They wouldn’t just be able to disappear off the fascia since you actually have to drive on them. You might have seen this video, but I think this is the best HO RC vehicle. It is a Unimog with a front loader bucket. The amount of functions and motors he fit onto the truck is pretty crazy. It would take a lot of design work to come up with something of that caliber, but I would like to see what you make out of that car, if anything.
I videoed the test of two types of Faller Road System HO trucks on a demo board that has various road crossing angles and curve radii. There is also a Hall Effect sensor buried under the guide wire that detects when the truck’s guide magnet passes over. It looks like the trucks will not divert on roads that cross at angles 30 degrees or more. Also, they have no trouble following a curve of 4" radius which is less than Faller's recommendation of 6".
