BMAD01

Hi guys! I'm Brian. I'm usually over in the Speed-Gas Boats section. Up until today I was the owner of 2 Gas Catamarans. Last week there was a guy on JRCBD selling alot of boats. This Teak Cruiser was one of them. My uncle owned one simular to this boat, way back when I was a kid and in the back of my head I've always wanted one too. The price was right, so I bought it. It showed up today at work via the FedX guy. I just got thru unpacking it, and clicked a few pics. I'm curious as to who, and when it was built. There is the name "Bob", and a phone# 925-6885 penciled on the upper deck behind the door. Does anybody know this boat? Thanks, Brian

green-boat

Nice find there. From the looks of the Astro motor I'd say that it is at least 10 years old. Did the radio come with, is there a gold sticker on the back. The gold sticker will indicate if it is a narrow band radio or not. Narrow band radios came out back in the mid 90's.

Could the phone number be the guy you bought it from. Is the prefix (first three digits) in your area. I have been known to write down phone numbers on pieces of wood while building. Sometimes it is easier to find a piece of wood than scratch paper.

BMAD01

Thanks for the reply green-boat. I did ask the guy I bought it from about the history. He bought it on Ebay on March 20-2004. Payment was made to a Coni Stone [email protected]. The name Steve Crawford also appeared in there somewheres. It came with a radio. It's an older stick Futaba FP-T2NBR on channel 26.995. (pics) The guy I bought it from is named Rip H... in Texas, so the name and # inside are from a long time ago, at least 10yrs. Thats when we had to start using area codes to make local calls. Guess I'll try emailing Coni Stone and see what happens. I have no clue what those 2 electrical boxes on the bulkhead, in front of the engine are for. I was also told the boat runs on a 12v-7amp gell cell battery. The battery tray is about 5 3/4" x 3 3/4". So now I need to find somewhere to buy a battery, and the correct charger for it. The Piraniah charger I use for my other boats won't cut it for one of these batts. I read you need to be careful not to pump too much voltage into a gell cell and boil the gell. Oh yea! The boat is 50"x14"x14" high. Thanks, Brian

RC-Archer

Nice boat!!

Try googling Bob and the phone number and see what pops up.

green-boat

The small black item with the red button is a circuit breaker. There is a number on the end of the button, that is the amperage rating. When the button pops out, it's tripped. To reset, push back in till a click is heard. The other item I'm not sure of, it looks to be wired between the motor and the ESC. As for a battery, is there a Batteries Plus or an Interstate Batteries near you. They should have a sealed lead acid battery, gel cell that would work and the correct charger. A gel cell needs to be charged with a low current almost a trickle charge. Home Depot or Lowes might also have one in the electrical department with the emergency exit lights. I have a number of old emergency exit light chargers that make wonderfull cheap chargers.

BMAD01

I went to a number of places before I ended up at Batterys Plus. The 12v-7.2amp battery was too thin for the battery tray. They had a 12v-12amp, AGM battery that was a ferfect fit, so thats what I bought. I also bought a 500ma trickle charger. The guy at the store checked the voltage on the battery at 12.20v so I tossed er in, then it was off to the lake! The boat feels like it weighs 40lbs with the battery in it![X(] What really shocked me was the speed on the water![X(][X(] I can walk faster!! But if you figure the scale of the boat in there, I guess it don't look too far off. My Blast Cat is a 50+mph boat, and my Q/D Stryker is approaching 70mph. I also have a Rigger getting painted as I type that should do over 70mph when I get it tweeked in. So this was an unexpected sight seeing this thing running. But it was a pleasant change and I had fun till the battery crapped out after about 10min on the water[]. So I finished the day off runing the Blast Cat, and went home. I put the battery on the charger at 2:30 in the afternoon yesterday, It's 4:40 am right now, and it's still charging! WOW! Thats slow![X(] Maybe I should that the 500ma charger back, and get the 1000ma charger, huh? I agree about the black box with the red button being a curciut breaker. 2 different guys at the lake were arguing about the other box on the bulkhead being either a resister box, or the reversing curciut. I'm also going to try fixing up a badly cobbled up Octura X452/3 prop I got for free, then try it out next weekend. But everyone who's seen the boat so far really likes it! Thanks, Brian
Hows come nobody can sign their posts on this forum?? Whats with that?

green-boat

Looks good on the water. Welcome to scale boats, they are nothing like the go fast boats. Just sit back, run her around the pond and enjoy. They set you up with the right charger, seald lead acid batteries/gelcells don't like to be fast charged unlike Ni-Cd's. If you try to fast charge them they will swell up. A 500 Ma charger willl charge a 12 amp dead battery in 24 hours. You could go up to a 1 amp charger but I would'nt go any further on that size of battery. The mystery box could'nt be a reversing unit, that's what the ESC is for. A resistor box would get hot. As to what it is ???? Another fuse maybe, I see no use for it. Another thing about gel cells is that they will not supply the large amount of current in a short amount of time that Ni-Cd's will due to their higher internal resistance. In other words they don't like hot wind motors.

As to why nobody signs thier posts, no clue????? but I will sign mine this one time just for you.

Phil

BMAD01

Thanks Phil, I got to thinking about how I thought the battery died. Actually it just kinda slowed down, then stopped all by itself about 60ft away. I dragged er back in with my retrevial boat. When I got home I charged the battery and put it back in. Nothin!! Just some clicks from the esc. I pulled the motor tonight and jumpered it directly to the battery, It works fine. So I pulled the mystery box off the bulkhead and discovered it had 4, philips head screws on the back, so I pulled it apart. The pictures tell all, its a whatchyamacallit!! LOL Anyhow I did a continuity test on it and it checked good. So now I'm thinking I might need a new esc, huh? Just where would I find an antique like that one? Or should it be updated? Thanks, Brian

green-boat

The mystery box is an electrical noise supression unit. They are using 3 capacitors and a torroid coil. It helps to reduce the electrical noise that the motor generates for finding it's way back into the ESC and reciever. Nowadays they just use the 3 capacitors soldered from the motors leads to the motors can and one capacitor between each motor lead, simple but effective.

That ESC that you have is an antique, you might find on Ebay if you are lucky. I would just get a new one. Since you have that particular motor I would get a reversible ESC that is rated for more than 10 amps. Something like a Super Rooster. It is one of those that are used by the RC car guys. I don't know what kind of current that motor pulls but I willl do some digging around and see what I can find.

Phil

green-boat

I couldn't find out anything about the motor. Astroflight doesn't make them anymore, they do have the bigger brushed motors though. It seems to be that they are more focused on the brushless motors. If memory serves me right, I think that the motor that is in the boat will pull a fail amount of current. It's possible that you fried the ESC pulling more than 10 amps. Do you remember if the ESC or motor was hot when you got it back in.

Phil

BMAD01

It never dawned on me to check anything for an overheating problem because I thought the battery had run down. I just dragged er back in and ran my other boat. It was the next day I discovered it was worse. I'll try Ebay for an esc, but something that old probably won't be new. Chances are it'll fry again. Who makes the Super Rooster? I know Tower Hobbies has a ton of esc's. Should I look there? Reguardless, I'm probably going to have to rewire the whole system, and get a new reciever too. It's got "G" (thats what my buddy called em) connectors on it now and nothing new will mach up. The steering servo is a laugh too. I pulled the control arm off, the shaft is square![X(] Thanks for your help Phil, Brian

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

Bmad01: All your equipment is from around the 70's. The square post on the servo is from that era. I still have some of mine. Believe it or not, there are collectors out there who will want the servo and control horns for that square stuff.

If you are not concerned about keeping your antique boat "all antique" then pull all that gear out including the motor. You can get a new, modern radio on ebay for nect to nothing. All the RTR trucks/cars come with very decent radios and lots of guys pull them out immdiately to drop in the high dollar racing radio gear. You can look for a Traxxas system, for example, and get them NIB for $10 for the Tx, Rx, and servo. For a motor, for $3.50 you can get a Johnson 700 motor that will run up to 18V max but will be very powerful and live forever on 12V. For that big motor, you would use an ESC in the 40-50A range and those are not too expensive.

Motor

BMAD01

Thanks for the info Kmot! Firstly for dating this rig, then for the link. This scale electric stuff is all new to me as I've been doing 1/8 scale gas boats until now. I guess this will be yet another winter project for me. With that Johnson motor I'd probably have to fabricate a mount for it to use the existing holes in the hull. That would'nt be too hard as I'm a Prototype Machinist by trade. The Johnson motor is a bit smaller and shorter than my motor also. (which is a good thing, I would'nt have to hack the hull up) Now where to find an ESC with the amp ratings you were talking about? Tower Hobbies stuff doesn't quite match up with a setup like this. Thanks, Brian

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

Brian, as a proto machinist you certainly have an edge over most of us when it comes to modeling! I would make a custom mount out of billet with built-in water cooling.

Hobby People has several marine ESC's you can look at. Mtroniks is one of the brands they carry and Mtroniks is highly rated. The Xtra brand I believe is from Ripmax of England. You can also look at some others that are not carried by the major mailorder houses. Such as MCD from Canada and Electronize from England. An RCU member here has two of these motors in his Dumas Prime Time yacht and they are both controlled by a single Electronize esc.

-Tom

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

One other possibility. If you do not need reverse (lots of my boats do not have reverse!) the absolute best ESC on the planet is made by RC-Hydros.

BMAD01

Thanks for the links Kmot. I could'nt get the "more info" link for the Mtronics at Hobby people. But the MCD, Minicon Max was very impressive! I'll probably call them like they suggested. I've got to have reverse in this boat, it's all part of the game. Backing away from shore was definately FUN! The Electronize FR30HX was cool too, but I don't do english pounds.
As far as making a mount for the Johnson motor ,, That will have to be put on hold for a while. My last day working here in Denver was today! I quit!! Actually I found a better paying job about 17mi from home. I start on Monday. But seeing as it was my last day, I whipped up these servo mounts for my personal stash on company time! HAHA! Brian

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

Sweet!!

BMAD01

Yano, I just had a thought. Do I have to replace this motor? It works fine when I jump it to the battery. Can't I just put a MONGO SIZED ESC, and a new reciever/servo combo in there and be done with it? (for now) Guess I'd find out when I toss it in the water, huh? Brian

BMAD01

I've started a retrofit. I pulled the square post Futaba FP-S23 servo, and it's flimsy mount out. The boat also came with an extra servo. (no mount) It's another Futaba, but a bit bigger in size. It's a Futaba 1C servo, Fp-S7. If anyones interested, I'll sell em both with control horns REALLY CHEAP! ([email protected]) I bolted in a Hitec HS-475HB servo and replaced the pivot arm too. I was on Ebay last nite looking for radio's like Kmot suggested. There was Traxxas stuff on the block, but it was all pistol grip stuff. I'd like to get a stick radio for this boat. Something you can just set at full throttle and steer it once in a while. I went to Hitecs website and their getting about $40.00 for a 2 channel AM radio with a reciever, and 1, servo. HUMMM I'm going to call MCD next week and probably order a Minicon Max ESC. The weather out here has suddenly gotten very cold and I'm expecting the lake to freeze up any day, so this retrofit is in no rush. I'll post the progress as it happens. Brian

BMAD01

green-boat! I'm sorry! It wasn't my idea to keep the existing engine and replace the ESC. IT WAS YOURS! Sorry Phil, Brian

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

Hey Brian, your servo mount is a far cry from the "before" version! [sm=thumbup.gif]

You can look for inexpensive two-stick radios as well on eeeebay. All the major radio mfg's make them. Just be sure you get one on the 27 or 75 Mhz freq.

BMAD01

LOL It IS the new millineum yano Kmot. Thanks, Brian

green-boat

Brian,

I was going by what you had said back in post #11 about the ESC going bad. Following that, you had tested the motor and it was good. Sometimes it is hard to tell just how far someone is willing to go on an update and how deep their pockets are without scaring them away. I try to get a feel on just how far they are willing to go. Now that we know that you are a prototype machinist by trade, we know that tinkering, problem solving and a striving for perfection are no problem for you.

Kaymac

Here's a little tip for those of you using 12 volt Gel batteries. Go see one of your local Alarm companies and ask them for a PC board from a "locked out" alarm panel. These are replaced boards that were code locked by another company and without the code, the alarm function isn't accessable. They have lots of them and when they are "locked" they are vitually useless as the cannot be reactivated for alarm purposes and will likely give them to you for free. However, they have a perfectly good, regulated 12 volt power supply/charger that will charge a 7 amp battery in about 14 hours or less. I use these all the time and have a few laying around. Cheap and effective.
Regards,
Keith

green-boat

I get my gel cell chargers from old emergency exit lights that have been thrown out. When a buisness remodels or a new one moves in there is a dumpster full of interesting things.