RC Car - Who Needs Instructions?

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Who Needs Instructions?

My friend from South Africa has offered another one that left the PRO laughing at the laptop, see for yourself why instructions, are sometimes, useful.

Michael: It has been, for many years, my contention that every would-be groom needs proper education for that which lies ahead. A university course in basic electronics, computer technology, advanced plumbing and advanced electrical circuitry would do as a start. This should be followed by an advanced course in psychology, preferably up to a masters degree level.

I have had over 11 years of on-the-job training and thought that I could handle just about everything, when my mistress (my wife calls her "that car") threw me a curveball. I had removed the 12x3 motor from lovely Losi, following your article, as it was clear that the comm needed serious attention. My local hobby shop offered to attend to the comm and check all the settings for me. I wasn't too surprised as I am sure that,by now, I own a substantial amount of shares in the business. This left me without a motor (I decided not to use the Tamiya's motor). Of course, my hobby shop came to the rescue and sent me a new, rebuildable Fantom stock motor at a very reasonable (for once) price. No problem. I did the necessary and changed the wiring while I was at it (more on this later). The problem arose when I tested the lady. No brakes. I promptly re-programmed my ESC, but still no brakes.

This led to a frantic evening of putting back the modified motor to check for brakes and switching back to the stock motor. All to no avail. No matter what I did on the programming, I could not get the brakes to work.

Last night I decided to give it one more go. The race meeting is tomorrow night and I decided to run without brakes if I could not fix the problem. I had a glass of fairly decent South African Cabernet (the one good thing this country still offers, apart from plenty of sunshine) and for a change spent some time with the family. By the time I sat down to tackle the ESC, all the problems of the day were something of the past. I then decided to look at the instruction manual, just for interest's sake. Man, did I feel stupid. In my haste, I had missed a step when I did the programming earlier. Needless to say, within 2 minutes the brakes were back to normal and there was one relieved racer. The moral of the story is that when these things happen, one should sit back, play with the kids, acknowledge the existence of your wife and TAKE OUT the instruction manual. We all to often blame the manufacturers, or the product or anyone else, for that matter, instead of making sure that we got it right. There, I made a full confession.

Thanks to Michael for this one. If anyone has any interesting stories that they wish to share, feel free to e-mail them to me, I enjoy hearing from my readers.