Spare Screws in Your RC Tool Kit?

[MailManX]

I am still pretty new to RC, but am up to six rigs now. I'm upgrading and customizing each one when I'm not simply repairing something that my grandson or I broke! I'm finding more and more that I am missing the ONE screw I need the most when I'm close to the end of a repair or upgrade. If I ever catch Murphy red-handed, I'm gonna kick his... his... well, I gotta be clean, I have a grandson who looks up to me. I'll grab Murphy's ear and twist it a little, then make him write an apology to all of you who he's screwed with over the years!

So anyway, I was going to grab a bunch of screws from Harley Designs, but his website says he no longer carries any HD screws. That was very sad news.

I've also considered going to Tony's Screws and getting a complete set for each of my rigs. However, six complete sets of screws would set me back over $200. That's definitely overkill just to keep some spares on hand.

I've finally decided to check either Fastenall or McMaster-Carr and get some bulk screws. So, I got out my manuals and started making a compilation list of most common sizes, but it was tedious and mind numbing. I stopped for a bit to write this post.

Those of you who have been in this hobby a long time probably have certain specific screw sizes that you always keep spares of. If you are willing to share that info with me, maybe I won't have to keep digging through all my manuals. THANKS! (P.S. - I still won't go easy on Murphy if I can catch him).

[Wade]

I wish I could help you out.........but I did hear Murphy passed his bar exam and is a lawyer.

[MailManX]

Originally Posted by Wade

I wish I could help you out.........but I did hear Murphy passed his bar exam and is a lawyer.

OK grandson, cover yer ears for a moment. Now I REALLY wanna kick Murphy's miserable ass! Screw him, so to speak.

[Crank]

Team KNK Hardware --www.teamknkhardware.com

[Natedog]

Hit up fleabay for some stock replacement screws and mcmcaster.com: The Leading Genealogy Site on the Net for fine thread high quality screws!

[MailManX]

Originally Posted by Crank

Team KNK Hardware --www.teamknkhardware.com

Thanks! I checked them out. Never heard of KNK before. Looks like great stuff, but I prefer class 12.9 black hardware. Stainless strips out easier. I don't do much wet driving, but when I do, I clean and coat the chassis and fasteners.

Originally Posted by Natedog

Hit up fleabay for some stock replacement screws and mcmcaster.com: The Leading Genealogy Site on the Net for fine thread high quality screws!

Fleabay worked out well for a stop-gap. A couple of chop shops that I like to spend money at sell small bags of partial hardware for a fair price. I still have those in bags which I have to dig through. Eventually, I want to get more organized and get my hardware into plastic divider boxes in incremental sizes that are labeled for easy access.

As for the link you posted about a genealogy site, I can't tell if you were joking, or just made a typo. I'm guessing that you meant McMaster-Carr with one less "C" in the website address: McMaster-Carr. They are a great company for all kinds of hardware. I'm in the aerospace industry and we use them a lot.

Ultimately, finding places to buy hardware isn't the question I had. I was more curious about what sizes some of you tend to keep on hand the most? I could always just buy a selection of 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0mm hardware in multiple lengths for each diameter. But it gets out of hand fast because each of those can be cap head, button head or countersunk flat head. I could end up with 100's of screws if I'm not careful.

[Ohioskills]

i always keep M3 fine thread

[chattinfarms]

Here you go and stainless to boot. mrm005 - Racers 900 Piece Metric Kit for Crawlers

[MailManX]

Originally Posted by chattinfarms

Here you go and stainless to boot. mrm005 - Racers 900 Piece Metric Kit for Crawlers

That's an awesome kit! Now if I could just get it in 12.9 alloy. I'll keep looking.

[C*H*U*D]

I carry two large ziplok bags with me in my pack. In one, I have smaller bags of button head M3's starting at 5mm going all the way up to 35mm. In the other, I have the same thing with SHCS.

[Meatwad]

Agreed on mobile kit, 5 of each common length m3 button stainless for me. Weight in the pack is an issue figuring in lipos, tools and water. In the hobby kit at home, yes. More damn m3 screws than I need, because you'll always need some.

[ClovisCrawler]

Dang! Six rigs? I'm going to have to start working on my Losi Micro Rock Crawler/BWD Wedge High Performance Basher project. I'm curious what you have MailManX. Being the owner of a stable of rigs, I suggest you look at the hardware list in the manuals of all your rigs. RC4WD has a great crawler set of screws, nuts, washers and etc that you might look into. And don't get too overboard with quantity. I still have a lot left in my RC4WD set.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MailManX]

Originally Posted by ClovisCrawler

Dang! Six rigs? I'm going to have to start working on my Losi Micro Rock Crawler/BWD Wedge High Performance Basher project. I'm curious what you have MailManX. Being the owner of a stable of rigs, I suggest you look at the hardware list in the manuals of all your rigs. RC4WD has a great crawler set of screws, nuts, washers and etc that you might look into. And don't get too overboard with quantity. I still have a lot left in my RC4WD set.

Yup, I started out with the manuals and felt a bit overwhelmed which is why I turned to the forum for assistance. I'm leaning towards just having a series of lengths of M3 button head screws in fine thread along with a small selection of SHCS in various sizes.

I have the following rigs, listed in order of purchase (first purchase was made in January this year):

* Axial Ridgecrest, used, in good shape, unmodified
* Losi Night Crawler, used, in good shape, heavily modified for comp crawling by the previous owner (I don't do comps)
* Traxxas Summit 1/10, used, in good shape, already converted to a DeWalt 14.4v motor, single steering servo (Hitec HS-7955TG) but all else stock.
* Associated RC8.2e buggy, used, assembled, without radio, but with a Tekin RX8 ESC and Tekin T8 1900Kv motor. It's bloody fast.
* Traxxas Stampede 4X4, new. I bought it for my grandson, but we keep them all together and I work on it with him, so I consider it part of the stable.
* Last, and certainly not least, is a used Thunder Tiger MT4-G3 in excellent condition with an upgraded servo, banded tires, a well-done home-made shock tower brace that is easily removable, and the body is reinforced with Shoe Goo and drywall mesh tape. This one just arrived last week. It is the last rig I will be buying for a while. I'm happy with this selection of critters.

I started this because of my grandson whom my wife and I are raising. He is 9, very active and very inquisitive. I am having fun developing hobbies and activities that we can do together. I started with crawlers because I live on a very rocky piece of property that just begs to be crawled over. My grandson learned to drive those and got pretty good at picking the right line and knowing when to back off and try a different one.

I had always wanted a Summit, so I got that next. My grandson was very taken with it due to it's shear size. Also, compared to the crawlers, this thing is pretty fast in high gear. It brought out the hidden basher in my grandson and he started beating the crap out of my Summit, and my yard. That truck is a beast. It has taken out five sprinkler heads and three Malibu light fixtures without even flinching.

I got unhappy about him beating up my beloved Summit, so I bought him the new Stampede 4X4 so he could beat on that, instead. I got him the XL-5 brushed version so he could learn to drive at speed without the speed being too great. My agreement with him was it was his truck, he could drive it anytime he wanted as rough as he wanted, but he had to learn to fix or replace anything that he broke. It has been an excellent arrangement. It turns out that he loves the repair and maintenance as much as the driving. He and I both look forward to evenings of RC tinkering after his homework is done. He's actually quite good at it. Between his truck and my rigs, he has learned to replace A-arms, turnbuckles, bearings, hub carriers, shocks, receivers, ESC's and motors. We got tired of all the different connectors, so I taught him to solder safely and effectively. He picked it up really well and helped me change out all of our connectors. I even eventually let him do some batteries after I taught him some healthy respect for them and how to do only one wire at a time, always keeping the other one covered. He can now solder low-resistance connections without any cold joints on wire up to 10ga and several types of connections.

Wow, sorry, I really digressed. But my grandson is part of the story of my rigs, especially since I started this because of him. I started taking video of him bashing the Stampede and we enjoyed watching it back later. It started bringing out the hidden basher in me, too. He was having too much fun to ignore, so I wanted to do it with him. However, I didn't want to bash my Summit. So, after much research and contemplation, I started keeping an eye out for a reasonably priced used Thunder Tiger MT4-G3. While I was waiting for that, I got a deal I couldn't refuse on the Associated RC8.2e buggy. It's a good thing we have a lot of land because that thing eats it up very quickly. More speed means less road. Because much of my land is unimproved, I decided the buggy needed more ground clearance, so I turned it into a quasi-truggy. It now has RC8T extended hubs and truggy tires on it. I did not go the whole distance to put on the truggy arms and axles since I knew I'd bet getting a monster truck. I rebuilt the leaky center diff, put in heavier oil, then geared down the pinon to handle the bigger tires. It's exactly what I had in mind. It rips all over our property and is a total blast.

Oh, and by the way, my grandson's truck is no slouch now, either. Little by little, everything on it has been upgraded. We went through it and put new bearings in everything, put on RPM A-arms and replaced the tiny 3mm pushrods and plastic toe links with the 4mm ones that come on the VXL. He ended up letting the magic smoke out of the, well, everying! Even after teaching him Lipo safety, he had one of those batteries with the removable leads. After soldering a new connector on it (correctly), he plugged the leads into the battery backwards. Then he made another cardinal sin... He plugged the battery in and turned on the truck without first turning on the radio. We were in the dining room when it happened (grandma's dining room table makes a very nice work area, much to her dismay). I had my back to him when I heard the motor go full tilt and heard him scream. I turned around in time to watch that Stampede leap off the table and climb the nearest wall, then a bookcase, then our dog, and it chased our cat down the hall. To this day, I can't get that cat to come out from under the bed if it hears an RC in the house. I was laughing pretty hard, but I corned the beast and brought it down. It's time had come anyway. It was puking the magic smoke and everything was shutting down, or melting. I yanked out the battery connectors which slowed the smoke down a bit. I threw the carcass outside to finish dying. Man, that smoke is some nasty stuff! Something about burning electronics has a smell like no other.

My poor grandson almost peed his pants. You know, I wasn't made at him. No harm, no foul, everyone survived (even the cat) and nothing in the house got broken. This is a lesson he will NEVER forget. He now nervously looks at every connection about three times before plugging it in, and he ALWAYS makes sure the radio comes on first and goes off last.

We retrieved the smoke-free carcass of the Stampede from the backyard and turned it into a brushless screamer. It now has a Hobbywing WP-SC8 120a ESC and a Castle 1410 3800Kv brushless 4-pole motor. I also gave him a hacked Flysky gt3b radio and receiver so he could have more control over end points, trims, etc. That little truck moves out pretty good now. Thankfully, he drives it pretty well. No more sprinklers or light fixtures have given up their lives for it. Oh, and we installed some huge big bore shocks on it from an 1/8th scale buggy. Much bigger shafts and rod ends. They handle jumps much better and I hope he can't break them as easily (we popped a lot of shock caps on the originals and bent two of the shafts).

Now back to me. Finally, after lurking on the WonderTiger forum for several weeks, I found the deal I wanted on a used MT4-G3 from a really nice fellow in Texas. He had maintained it really well but didn't have time for it anymore. He shipped it with the original boxes. Man, it is pristine. I'll probably make changes to it someday, but for now it just needs the differential oils changed to meet my needs.

And there you have it. Six rigs in 4 months. Plus, numerous upgraded and spare parts by the box full. My checking account has been puking money. Time to plug that leak for a while. I still need to retire someday.

But dang-it, I am having some FUN! Raising a 9-year old at age 56 is actually a real treat. I have an adult son whom I adore, but he was never interested in things mechanical or electrical when growing up, so I didn't get to do these things with him. I also find that I have more time, money and patience this time around than I did as a younger man. When my son was a boy, I was chasing the dream, working major OT, travelling away from home, etc. I did not enjoy my son and daughter as much as I wish I had. I loved them, but did not revel in them as I am doing now with my grandkids. I don't believe I did wrong by them, I just wish I'd enjoyed it more at the time. Unfortunately, things have not gone well for our adult daughter. It's her son that we have been raising since he was 4. I'm gonna do right by him. If I can help it, he will learn to grow up with old-school beliefs of honesty, trust, respect, hard work, God, family and country. He's a really good kid with a big heart and an open mind. I hope we can get him through the teen years without that falling apart.

And there you have it. My simple explanation of "what rigs do I have" in 500,000 words or less.

[Wade]

That is a great story...... I had lost my dad at the age of 16...... And never had a grandpa they had passed before I was born. Now at 48 and a 3yr old son, I can't think of anything better I have accomplished in life that would compare to him. God I love that little fella..... And a big fat kudos to you for what you are doing, your story just made my day feel better. Awesome.

Cheers
Wade