Nothing like a good crash.

Last night was a pretty dang fun night. My friends Boris, Benson, and I went to play with my two nitro-powered remote controlled cars.

This post is pretty long-winded, but it gets more interesting towards the end. Also note I put up another new post (photolog 2)  last night on Waterton park.

If you’re wondering what the “nitro” is in these little beasts; it’s not NOS (nitrous oxide) and my name isn’t Paul Walker. The mixtures can vary between engines and environments, but my fuel consists of approximately 20% nitro-methane, 14% castor/synthetic oil, and the rest is methanol. For the oils, castor oil breaks down into a nice lubricant at high temperatures, while synthetic oil works well at lower temperatures but burns at higher temperatures providing little lubrication. This stuff doesn’t come cheap, it’s about $40/gallon, but it lasts for quite a while. Maybe I’ll do a more detailed post about the ins and outs of a nitro RC later. The engine is pretty interesting.

Back to the fun. The first hour and a half was pretty lack luster.  I won’t bother with boring details, but basically I was having problems getting the engines started because the batteries in the electric rotational starter were dead (it kicks the engine over exactly like a car starter). Eventually though, I managed to get them both going at once, and then the fun started.

I was driving the Savage X SS for most of the time, while they were taking turns with the much smaller MT2. Both trucks are extremely fun for different reasons. The Savage is big enough that it can take easily tackle most curbs and traverse over some pretty intense terrain. It also has a very snappy acceleration due to the 3-speed transmission in it. The MT2 on the other hand, is much smaller, and has a higher top end speed (about 105km/h if I have it leaned out). It handles infinitely better than the Savage due to its narrower tires and overall smaller dimensions. The Savage is a 1/8th scale monster truck, the MT2 is a 1/10th scale stadium truck.

Even though these weren’t cheap, for some reason I LOVE to see an epic crash (and it’s a bonus when nothing expensive breaks). We were ripping around the parking lot, and I was getting slightly bored. I full throttled head on with the Savage right into the MT2. It was pretty awesome. The Savage launched right off the MT2 since it’s so much larger. That was enough near-destroying-something for me.

Here’s where it gets pretty awesome. Boris was getting tipsy from his medication, on a sugar high from the root beer, and maybe distracted from some Asian women walking by. He lost focus on what he was doing, and he accelerated right into a curb and over some large rocks which were cemented into the ground. Everything looked fine as it trampled over the big rocks, and I quickly responded, “Okay never do that again!”. Somewhere between smoking the curb and raging through the rocks though, the radio switch on the car was knocked “off”. Since I don’t have a fail-safe on the MT2, the car quickly accelerated on full throttle with absolutely no control. It flew off the curb, and then cut back into it, hitting even harder than the first time. Then it roared across the street right in front of a moving vehicle. The vehicle swerved and took out a light post before slamming into a house and exploding. Wait, no that part didn’t happen; after hitting the curb a second time, I didn’t really see it but I am pretty sure it did some extreme flips before it crashed into the bottom of Boris’ real truck and landed upside down with the throttle still wide open. The muffler on the MT2 flew off at some point, and the engine was absolutely SCREAMING. It was ridiculously wicked. I grabbed one of the spinning tires which were going extremely fast. That worked fine and I flipped the car back over and pressed my thumb against the exhaust header (since the actual muffler flew off), swiftly stopping the engine.  That’s the proper way to turn it off, just not with my thumb. Needless to say, I have a big blister on my thumb now. It was past 9PM at this point, so the locals probably weren’t too impressed, I sure was though. Benson noticed some of them eyeing us out of their windows.

I continued driving the Savage for around fifteen more minutes in the nearby field until it was too dark to see the thing. Then I inspected the damage on the MT2. Overall, there wasn’t really any damage at all. There might be some damage to the engine since the air filter flew off when it landed upside down, but other than that not much. One of the rear tires flew off at some point in the accident, and the muffler was ripped off, but it’s not even close to some of the tortures I’ve put that car through over the last few years.

Here is a shot of the damage, as you can see nothing actually broke, things just flew off, which is pretty remarkable.

Click the image to see all it’s greasy 10MP high-res glory.

8 thoughts on “Nothing like a good crash.”

  1. Huh? what are you talking about J.Chen you’re so full of it!!! That wasn’t me…j.p. j.p. but seriously wasn’t me yo!

  2. Spam Spam Spam Spam. Jokes. Anyways yeah hah it was a pretty epic crash. Should have brought a video cam but oh well. We should do this again but maybe not so late at night. Need a new area too, somewhere more awesome.

    MT2 > Savage.

    Btw. Thanks for the IP. Time to h4x0r his a**. But seriously hah, should censor out the last few numbers.

  3. Okay fine I cut out the last few. Not going to be so tolerant from now on though.. lol..

    Savage > MT2
    You’ll see once we get to some more exciting terrain.

  4. build a ramp on top of your roof and another ramp on a different house. start launching those beasts from house to house!

  5. @Nathanael
    That’s not something I haven’t thought of. I want to set a ramp up on my house and launch about 25ft to the garage.. would be awesome. If Benson films it i’ll try it.

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