Nitro NOOB - Given Maybe $1000 Worth of Nitro RC

[Zebadee]

Nitro NOOB - Given Free Savage 21

I bumped into an old friend yesterday and while I was in his garage I saw a huge nitro RC truck in a box of RC related stuff. Immediately I b-lined for it all. He right then decided he'd rather see me tinker with it than have it rot in his garage.

It looks decent, appears to be a modified Savage 21, but I don't know how to tell how old it is. Definitely full time 4WD. The chassis has no rot, cracks, breaks, nothing. It's got an HPI 3.5 engine in it with some race cylinder head, plus another engine that looks brand new, but less powerful. This thing 'appears' able to run.

Controller
Receiver
2 Shells
Spare tarmac set of wheels
Speed bleeder
Shocks
Springs
Spare engine
Exhaust + u-bend
Roto Start
3 NiCad packs
2 Chargers
Ignitor charger.... but no ignitor? :/
Spare glow plugs
Various spares/plastics, etc & trash lol.

No fuel, no glow plug extractor, and a pull start on the engine still.

First thing I did when I got it was I knocked all the crap off of it. I rotated the engine over, and it has strong compression. That's about as far as I got.

Talk about a random gift, eh?

Pics!

I didn't find the ignitor in the box, only the charger.

I'm asking myself:

What's all this stuff worth? (Worth keeping?)
How much to potentially get it running?
Where do I go from here?

In the morning I'm going to head over to the hobby place and see what's up. I plan on bringing it all in a box and hopefully answering all those questions. Maybe even have a video for y'all of me zipping around. Then again, I could be broke by the time I leave.

 

[frickenjoey]

First things first....get rid of that air filter that's installed. That thing is nothing but trouble. It allows too much dirt to pass though and WILL ruin the engine if it is not already. Gut you a two stage oiled foam air filter for a Savage and you will be GTG. What you have appears to be a Savage 21 or 25. They are solid trucks for sure. I would not say it is a $1000 dollar haul but for free? Oh hell yeah! I would give it a cleaning and a check over for boken stuff and loose screws then charge everything up and give it a try with a can of fresh fuel.

 

[Zebadee]

Yeah after a few hours of googling I realized I was way off. I guess if I tried to buy all this stuff new it would be around 1k, not exactly worth that today lol.

There's very few things I can pick fault with. The gear sheared the teeth, and one shock had a loose nut with a ziptie on it. It was missing its spring, but there's plenty spare.

This is my first ever nitro vehicle, and my experience is only as far as homework and youtube videos. I've never done this before so I'm nervous. If I had someone walking me through it, I'd be cool.

I knew the air filter was BS, I was surprised that I couldn't find a foam filter anywhere. I already yanked it off and cleaned out the fuel system. I didn't touch any of the carb settings either. If the pull start feels good, could the engine still be toast?

The spare is TIGHT! I opened up the case just to look, and it looks new. Someone obviously broke the pull start trying to turn it over.

 

[frickenjoey]

You can never tell with the engine until you try it I guess. Here is a good filter to start with....

 

[Zebadee]

Right on! Do I have to use the plastic snorkel tube?

I'm going to get down to the 'go to' hobby shop and see what they say. Maybe I'll even get a walk through.

What's all this stuff worth you think?

 

[frickenjoey]

The tube gets the filter out of the way of the spur gear so yeah kinda need it. I would say maybe $200-250-ish if you sold it on EvilBay. It will be more fun than what is it worth to sell it for sure though. Yeah check out the LHS and see what they have for the filter. Quicker than waiting for shipping.

 

[Zebadee]

I wasn't planning on getting rid of it, I just wanted to know. I plan on completely stripping it, and reassembling it from the ground up. Everything worn and damaged will go. I'm kind of comforted that the gear was sheared on it, that means it was running when it was put away.

I'm super pleased, it looks damn good frame wise.

I googled the radio, and it was nearly $300 :/

 

[Rolex]

Parts add up fast. No doubt there's a layout of a grand in that collection. This is not a hobby to make money with, so get a second job and a divorce, if necessary.

Taking it apart to clean, check, tighten and maintain will teach you how these things work. The more you know about them, the better they run and the longer they last.

This is a super hobby. Glad to see you get into it.
Welcome to RCNitroTalk.

 

[Zebadee]

I'm a car guy, so I'm in it to spend a little here and there The female in my life is also an auto enthusiast, and she's about to start building an engine for her SVT Focus. She's got no room to have a hissy fit

I'm also a mechanic, so I know essentially what I'm looking at, but I don't know how to care for it, etc.

I went over to the hobby shop today and purchased various bits and pieces.

Fuel
Ignitor + charger
Bottle
New gear
New intake + filter

Total.... $67! Any cheaper places to order from online? I walked in hoping to spend $20, and almost spent $120 lol.

They gave me a business card to a guy here in town, and I made an appointment with him later today. It WILL run, question is how much money will it cost me?

Not bad for $67 into it.

EDIT: While I was there I played with the plane simulator. I've flown light single engine aircraft before so I know the flight basics. Took me all of 2 minutes before I was doing dumb things behind the controls. Corkscrew while in vertical ascent, stall & scoop lol. Then the wings fell off, and that's why I don't own one. Physics>Me

RC Aircraft = Next purchase!

 

[h8z2luze]

www.amainhobbies.com

www.towerhobbies.com

I can't remember the one I always used to order from...

 

[Zebadee]

Bad ass man. I really hope I don't break anything later.

 

[cdc2711]

You are one lucky guy for just getting that stuff for free.
If you need parts and stuff Ebays always good, a good thing for you to do is if one didn't come with it, to get the models manual or download a pdf file of it, that way if you need parts for it you can go straight to that and see what the part number is.

 

[Racer 1966]

Great haul for free bro! You say the engine says 3.5 on it? That probably means it's originally a Savage 21. I do see it has aluminum threaded shocks,those aren't original and that extra set of wheels are aluminum = pricey and the Nova cooling head is nice too. The XS3 radio was a great radio in it's day,still good only outdone by the newer 2.4ghz units now.

The only big issue I can think of is the diffs on the 21 were only a 2 spider gear design and stripped easily. A 4 gear diff is a must upgrade IMO but with all the other upgrades on it I'd guess it's already been addressed this truck.

Congrats on that deal!

 

[Zebadee]

The wheels on it are anodized blue aluminum too

Yes it has the HPI 3.5 engine with a three speed Race cylinder head, and the previous owner said it's a race motor.

She runs!!! Almost shocking how well it runs looking like utter crap. Total sleeper under that gunk. I traded the spare engine for labor and some spares, and it's mean. I've got to go back tomorrow for some misc tuning & tutoring. Every single thing is modified on it. Race servos, race suspension, the purple 2.1 is a high rev race motor apparently, as is the one on it. Both sets of wheels are aluminum, the off road ones are anodized and look SICK I can't wait to snap pics of it all cleaned up.

The guy I took it to didn't seem all that enthusiastic about it at first. Once he got it on his work bench and started pulling it apart he was like "Damn dude this isn't a pile of junk at all, you've got one hell of a ride." He guesstimated the previous owner has around $800 in it including the truck and not including all the spares. Awesome! I asked him how much it would take to get perfect and looking flawless, and I'm thinkin' maybe like $200?. He totals it all up in his head for a few seconds and I got all nervous. He said with $38 worth of little things it would be to that level. I'll take that!

It needed a one-way bearing, and there were two in the box spare lol. It needed a couple screws and some little things. It needs a new tank lid, some shock oil, one new shock, and that's it! I also learned that there were race servos in the box too, and much more.

After I have my fun zipping around and pissing off my apartment complex I do plan on stripping it all down, buying a new screwset, etc. Maybe I'll even polish the frame nicely. While writing this I figured out what I'm going to do regarding the engine bling. How about ceramic coated? I'm thinking engine ceramic coated blue, cylinder head gold ceramic coat because it's the best heat shedding one. That would be awesome. My ceramic coater does amazing work, I'm sure he'd knock it out for me and not screw up anything. That would sure be not only a free functional modification, it would be aesthetic. Can't hurt to run cooler

In the mean time though, it's game on. I'm going to tear through some rubber. My girlfriends 12 year old chihuahua just bit my 10 month old nephew. She needs to be punished with nitro fury! Muahahahahahaha. But hey it's only 1:26am...

EDIT: Just found steel cages.... there's no way that's not going to get powder coated! It'll probably be the smallest thing my friends shop has ever done. He might even laugh.

 

[Zebadee]

A new pic, and a start vid.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhMxNoMaJkA"]‪Savage 21 HPI 3.5 first start.‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Jacknifejuv]

lovin them rims

 

[Zebadee]

Me too man. It didn't occur to me to check them out before. I cleaned them and was like :O! Daaaaammmn They look sick whizzing around too

 

[Zebadee]

I think the carb needs rebuilding. Fun stuff! I'm hooked.

 

[Rolex]

Welcome to the addiction that is RC.

It took me a while to figure out the rims....Lmao

 

[Zebadee]

Me too, I thought it was like a German company or something.

This thing is SOOO MUCH FUN How the hell am I supposed to plug the exhaust when it's scorching? For some reason I thought it would be perfectly fine to do just that after a tank of run time.

I'm running her a little rich for the summer, and I want the engine to last as long as possible.

I do plan on taking infrared temperature readings from the cylinder head before and after the ceramic coating. I bet it will run much cooler.