i am having trouble setting the caruretor and needles etc. Can anyone please help me?? Any info will do! thanks

Hey, what kind of Smartech do you have? The one I had, the idle needle did nothing! Only thing that worked was the Throttle trim, and the only needle that did something was the main needle. Was able to tweek that for the idle to work great.

nice. i have a commando.......on road nitro car.....similar to the winner one. its not the buggy. Is that the one you had?

ok I have an offroad nitro. I finally got the idle needle to work. for some reason I had to screw it all the way out and back in for it to do anything. but now I have it correct.

Do you have 3 needles or just 2?
If you have 3- 1 is low speed needle, 1 high, 1 idle.
my book wanted me to put the carb at 1mm-2mm idle.
if 2 then high speed needle and idle.

turn right for close (lean) left of open (rich)

how is the car running, what kind of questions do you have about the settings?

yeah i have got three needles as well. i think we have the same engine. well basically i have loads of trouble, brought it to my LHS and then he just opened the HSN, high speed needle, to full and told me to start from there and told me thats all he could do for me as they did not know tha brand. when i got home last night i tried again but the engine would not even start. probably because its way too rich. my idle is correct as i havent touched that at all since it last ran properly. The othe needle, the low speed one, i dont know what to do with it, so i just try to go 1/4 forward then 1/4 backwards of a turn and see which one is better. so yeah, if i'm doing sometihng wrong jsut tell me

anybody else can help?

Start with the low speed neddle first. Move that all the way rich and start from there. That and idle will effect you on start i believe. most recommend a 1/8 turn. So start real rich and lean it out from there.

oh really? will that be a lot better? i was told to adjust the HSN first and then the LSN. thanks man, i'll try that today its a good day now, even tho there is no sun

What I was told in the manual was to ajust the idle screw, then low speed. Then High speed. But I have a diff. engine on mine that only has the idle and high. Wish I had the low as well, as that would free up the high to give me most top end. as it is, I have to balance it out since I don't have a low.

right now my car is all dissasembled. Replaced the tuned pipe on it (was plastic and melting). The front and rear diff. went out, so now looking for those replacements. All in all a cheap buggy, but I wanted something not to expensive to start out playing with... Seems I should have got a more well know brand name, that way I can get parts But live and learn!

yeah, it was the same for me. i had already ordered my car when i found out that parts were not too available....but i can get what i need at rcmart so there isn't any problem and nothing has broken yet. 3 needles is a pain really....pisses me off. but yeah, its good practice for the futur, even though i doubt i'll ever manage to adjust it [][][]
ah well, i just gotta keep trying and hoping

I am trying to get all aftermarket parts for mine, when I find something that fits I am going to keep a list of them online and let everyone know what I found to work on mine.

As far as tuning goes, since this is my first RC, I am going to take it to a hobby shop near me and ask them to show me how to tune it correctly.

ah right, well you gotta let me know as soon as you got the list!

oh ok, well i did that, but all they said was that it is an unknown brand for them and therefore do not know how to tune....and that killed me[&o] so yeah, i'm kinda stuck. i just gotta spend a lot of time with this engine.....

Well hope all goes well! I will post a message on this forum and the RC101.net forum when I get my diffs in.

Best of luck with the tuning!

i have a winner one as well and my carbie has three calibrating needles also wich i stuffed up also. So what i did was tighten all the needles to full then unscrewed the main needle 3 full turns then i unscrewed the idle screw two full turns (with needle try to NOT let the throttle pop out, though it is easily fixed) then with the last needle i set it about half way out. this should get you started then once you have the engine going tweak it up from there. P.S when you are "tweaking" and the engine stops just put the needle back to the position it was in before it stops.

i hope this helps and good luck

P.P.S my smartech car flies i race it on the weekend at my local track and generally win most weekends unless i have a smash or somthing.

thanks man, i'll try that as soon as i can. what were your approximate tweaks after doing all that to the needles? dont worry if you cant remember, its just to get an idea. thanks to both of you guys!

i don't remember exactly but they were only tiny adjustments. i also had to fiddle around with the brake adjustment because every time i tried to brake it would pull the throttle fully closed hence stalling.

good luck

oh ok, thanks. so you adjusted that long throttle stick? there is no problem with mine at the momment! thanks guys, i'll let you know how my tuning goes.

rccarcrazy, you had the same problem I am having with my breaks. I use them and I stall if I hold for to long. Did you just screw in the idle screw till you still had the 1mm-2mm opening with the carb?

sort of, i had to set the idle without the throttle attached (engine was not running, set with the idle screw about one full turn in from fully open with about 2 - 3mm clearance) then i had to reposition the throttle arm thingy (not the cable attached to the servo but the actual throttle lever on the carbie), by this time i had reattached the cable. by doing this i ended up with alot more room to work on adjusting the throttle arm and brake arm, just keep on adjusting these arms until you can apply the brake and the throttle cable won't pull back.
this took me ages to work out and every car is different so use my information as a guide only. but if you have a smartech car with a 15 engine you should be pretty right!
if you have any more troubles i am more than happy to help cause i know quite a bit about these cars and yes getting spares for the smartech cars isn't easy but if you hassle your LHS to find a supplier (hey it's his job) you can get any part you need and when you get them going properly (which can sometimes be a hassle) they go as quick if not quicker than alot of name brand cars. my top speed is around 100 kmh (63mph).

Thanks, when I get my diff gears in today, and if they work, I will start on my breaks problem.

you got it all sorted yet?

i was woundering how do you get parts

well one good site i know is www.rcmart.com

you can get most parts there, but i havent gotten any of them yet so i dunno how good they are....

i ordered parts from excel hobby (excelhobby.com ?) and they came from the states to aus in just over a week there are a lot of smartech parts there.

yup that site too,
and www.raidentech.com aswell
hope that helps

rccarcrazy, what parts did you order? and do you have a 2 speed?