Your crash and burn stories (I'm interested lol)

Welcome to RCTalk

Come join other RC enthusiasts! You'll be able to discuss, share and private message with other members of our community.

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
4u2nv said:
what car ya have going 65mph? :sigh:

Explosion at 65mph?? The answer is clear, Grasshoppa.... it's a Smarttech.
 
Wasn't my car but I was there to witness the carnage ...

Friend had an MTX-3. It was ballistic! We were running it at a track for only about 15 minutes. After a few runs back and forth, it started glitching but that's where the problem got ugly fast. No failsafe or trs could've saved it. It went WOT, hit second gear but still had some steering till everything failed. It zipped around for a few secs as he tried to get some control then it hit someone square in the ankle. It knocked him down (crying and screaming like a stuck pig i a slaughter house). After it hit him it zipped around and made a bee line straignt for the leg of a metal bleacher.

Damage was a badly crushed pipe and sent the guy to the hospital.The person that was hit had a bruised ankle straight down to the bone.

Reason for the runaway: battery wire was hanging a bit low, frayed from making contact with the tarmac. It shorted out and sent the throttle servo wot and locked it in place!

Second scenario happened to a fellow racing buddy. He never filed down his CF chassis to fit his new IB3800 packs down correctly. Instead, he would just force it in and strap it in place. After a while, the battery casing started to get worn through.

During a race, the battery pack shorted out and the car caught fire in a race.

I have been lucky to not have a runaway since I got into the hobby. I have had a fair share of bad hits during races, but that's normal and expected.
 
I had a runaway when I first had my Storm. The antenna wired exited the reciever box a little too close to the rear center shaft, and got wound up around it like a spool. Thankfully, it was about 10 feet away and approaching, so I was able to catch it and shut it down without damage. And this was on a new novak XXL... I was ticked, but got over it.

Another incident was the same car. Breaking in the engine (Ofna O1comp BP) in the driveway, and the switch died. The car took off to the street at about 1/4 throttle... I caught it, just before it made it to the middle of the road.

Other than that, I've been really lucky to not have any runaways. Altho, I am a firm believer in throttle return springs. My GT's linkage fell apart during practice one day (that little circle-clip came off the throttle servo horn). I went and paid the $5 or so for the Tmaxx linkage kit (it had the same part, but it has a nut on the bottom instead of a clip).. Best $5 I ever spent on a traxxas part, lol. Haven't had a problem since. If it wasn't for that little spring pulling the throttle shut, it probably would have went into the middle of a cow pasture.
 
failsafes stop most crashes from happening. Although if the linkage did break, the failsafe would be useless. But you can get failsafes that, when the battery power just suddenly becomes unplugged or the wire gets fraid, has its own battery which it uses to neutralize or return the servo to a preset position.
There is one for £25 i saw a while ago. They are abit bigger than the standard ones though.
I have a small orange one, can't remember what its called.
 
That would've been worthless in our situation. The short circuit locked the throttle/brake servo in the open position and it fried in that position as well. Bad situation, especially since it hit someone.
 
i was doing top speed runs with my ntc3/18tz in a crowded parking lot like an idiot so the space i had was very narrow. long story short full throttle grazed a curb and bent the cvd and both of the pillow balls on the front wheel. bent the cvd back and got new pillow balls and all is good :)
 
I cut the Steering servo wire w/ my disc brake on an XB8....it would act fine until I stomped on it and then it just glitched all over.....it cut across lanes and jumped the back side of a jump onto an empty pit table.....the wire was just nic'd enough to expose the signal wire and when I gave it gas the wire was pulled into the disc....it was a JR8611 and after having the wires shortened and resoldered on I still use it today in my truggy.....
 
I had a buddy of mine that (had) and I mean had for about 4 hours a savage 4.6 it was his first RC. He's one of those guys that his stuff the greatest and your is crap. So I told him that my rc10gt would blow the doors off his savage. I new it wouldn't so lunchtime came he was going to show wicked it was remeber never had an rc before so he fired it up cruising around the parking lot warming it up then I said the magic words THAT THING IS A PILE OF GARBAGE and then it happened he let her eat wfo across the parking lot broke traction and Blammo right into a semi tire blew into a million pieces. He priced out all the parts he would need to put it back together and it was cheaper to just buy a new one I laughed my but off that what he get for making fun of my old rc10gt.
 
Is it a crash if it was on purpose!

This is going to hurt the extreme hobbyists ears.


I had just gotten out of an all winter camp job, it was the beginning of April myself and the rest of the crew had just picked up our banked hrs cheques
Now there was 15 in our crew, we decided to have a BBQ when we arrived I'd say 11 of us pulled out fresh rigs some traxxas, some HPI, Muggies, and thunder tigers, anyway we had a few to many and ended up having a race at the top of lee park hill at lee park A.B, needless to say I lost...now this is where it gets fuzzy for some reason I jumped a less than 2day old hellfire off a rather large cliff. I asked the girlfriend the next afternoon what happened too it, but I wasn't that surprised. I didn't even go looking for it until the next day, found some here and there....I got the important parts back
 
Good stuff, guys. I crash two ways: hard and often. ;-)

While I've had some doozies, I've been fortunate enough not to have extensive damage during one hit. My worst happened actually last month.

Driving my Losi 810 down our sidewalk about 30 mph. It hit a bump and crashed sideways, mid-air into our brick mailbox! The radio tray broke apart, my hump pack flew 20 feet, the throttle rod broke in half, the casing on my throttle servo broke apart, etc. The buggy went WOT and crashed into my neighbor's garage. Ugh! ;-(
 
A little while back, I was racing my AE RC8BE as usual when my transmitter started to beep, battery was low. Not thinking, I just kept racing. WELL, I lost controll , car went WOT under a fence, across a pretty busy street, under the guard rail and into a ditch/swamp. LUCKILY the heavy brush stopped the buggy just a few inches away from a stream. The moment I watched my $1000+ rc car rocket 60 mph across a busy street AT NIGHT into a ditch made my heart drop.... The only reason we found it was because i happened to notice the ESC lights blinking in the grass..I can't believe I didn't break anything!!
Well, that was my horror story! lol

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 4 Beta
 
That sucks, I didn't know there was such thing as a wot electric run away
 
Why were you racing at night anyway? WOT? Really?
 
i was driving my hpi bullet mt 3.0 for the first time and i was going top speed and i wen up the gutter and it flied snapped the custom metal bullbar and broke the whole front steering but its running again
 
Back
Top