OMF! It arrived.. not bad seeing as I only ordered it on Sunday night from Stella Models in Hong Kong.
First impressions
Cute as kittens.
The bodyshell is an absoloute swine to get off due to the fuel filler cap, mixture screw and pull start.
Overall it looks well made with adjustable turnbuckles all round and the oil shocks are threaded.
I went over it with a screwdriver to check for loose screws and needless to say some did require more than a little tension, so I decided to start replacing some of the screws with stainless hex screws - in the typical Nitro tradition...
Digging down
I found the rear shock towers to be very soft, offering lots of lateral (side-to-side) flex. However, the suspension action doesn't place any lateral stress on any of the shock towers at all.
The Servos are small and remind me very much of the standard Servo units that the RC18T is fitted with. Fortunately the RC18T Servos are cheap and gear sets are available for them, so should a servo on the NB16 need replacing, there is a source.
The diff outdrives are steel, diffs are geared and the single speed bulkhead sports a neat little vented disc brake. There's also a nice little polycarb/Lexan cover over the bulkhead gear assembly
The battery box is decent but the little critter runs on AAAs, not a problem as I do own some Mini-Zs and NiMh AAA batteries are a plenty.
The 27MHz RX is quite big, this is a bonus because I will replace it with something smaller in 40MHz FM and this will leave ample room for a small failsafe unit.
The transmitter?
Crap sums it up.
The engine is a Toki 0.5 unit. The only thing I don't like is the plastic exhaust unit.
It came with a sticker on the cooling head that says: "Warning do not pull rope more than 30cm" Do they mean don't overdo it on the pullstarter cord?
I can imagine some ingrains holding a tape measure against the NB16 saying "don't pull to hard Rastus.. we's already broke 2 this morning"
The manual is excellent. It looks as if this could also be available as a kit. Page after page of detailed clear and precise exploded views. Exactly what any RC enthusiast needs!
The manual has a fairly decent brief on breaking in and tuning the engine. They do make mention of the mixture screws' factory settings but nowhere in the manual do they point out which screw is which, so a Nitro newbie would not know the difference between the idle, low end and high end setting screws. It is optimised to run with factory settings out of the box
No mention of what type of fuel to run it with, hey this is going 25% race formula, not negotiable. Also no mention of what range glowplug it has or uses. As BLiND said, an MC-9 should cover it.
A decent exploded view of the engine too, including part numbers
It seems as if Acme will have parts support for this, although we do know that some of the Half8 parts bolt right on.
It came with a decent Glowplug spanner too and a sheet listing all the hop up parts Acme have available for this. A set of spare Servo horns were also supplied.
Likes:
Micro
and Nitro!!!!!
Reasonably priced
Fairly well made
Asthetically pleasing as in looks good
Detailed manual
Solid well made chassis
Threaded oil shocks
Adjustable turnbuckle between servo arm and steering arm
Adjustable turnbuckles on front A-Arms, rear suspension arms and steering links
Anti Roll / Sway bars front and rear
Spares support (subject to confirmation by default should I need spares)
Comes with decent glowplug wrench (It's a "nitro thing" guys...)
Option for 2 speed gearbox!!!!!!
Cheap hop ups
Cross compatible with some Half8 spares & hoppups
Dislikes:
Radio (Eeeew....)
Fact that the screws needed a good tensioning
Slop on steering
Plastic exhaust
No explaination of carb screw functions in manual (for newbs..)
No recommended glowplug type (MC-9 should do)
No turnbuckle wrench
No chassis cutaway under the flywheel for starter box support
Finally
This thing just has to be fun! A Micro people will actually hear!
I can't wait to run it over the weekend, so I guess it's off to the LHS to get a receiver and a failsafe unit for it.
I have ordered some Half8 parts for it like alloy standard sized Hexes, touring car wheel adapter Hexes, alloy shock towers, alloy threaded oil shocks and a spare set of pre-mounted wheels/tires
I'll let you know how it goes..