Some would say that I have too many hobbies. I can’t help it! Ifind most things (particularly things with gear) to be amazingly interesting. It’s just part of my personality. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to figure out how things work, and hobbies are great for exercising that desire.

About 5 years ago (really, 5 years) I got into remote control cars in a big way. I think another guy at the office (can’t remember who to blame offhand!) got one and then a few of us decided we all had to have one as well. We all got the HPI Racing RS4 MT with electric motor. The electric motor made these a lot easier to build and operate than the gas cars. We all got them running and had a few days of fun racing them around, jumping them and of course breaking them.

A subset of us thought this was all fun but wanted to get into the real thing, gas cars! I bought the HPI RTR Nitro RS4 and started to put it together. This all happened in about 2 months. I’m a little obsessive and when I focus on something, it’s all mine.

Then it stopped.

We didn’t get together to race them. One of the guys with a gas car got his working but then we all just kind of forgot this obsession and moved on to other things to assimilate. That was over four years ago. My gas car was only half put together.

One of the things about me and hobbies (err, obsessions) is that I may give them a break, but I rarely just leave them forever. A few weeks ago we were driving out of a grocery store by our house and there was a race track setup where guys were racing their RC cars. I announced to Tammy “I should get my cars going!”. A few shipments from RCHobbies.org later and I got everything going – including finishing and getting my gas car going – 5 years after I bought it! (It is now a discontinued model!)

I finished the gas one this weekend and primed the motor up. I’ve ran a few tanks of gas through it to break in the engine and tuned it up a bit, it’s working great. The electric car needed a new chassis plate so I replaced that and also took an opportunity to finish routing cables on it and re-tensioning the cable.

They are both a lot of fun to drive. I need to tune the gas one further, the steering isn’t quite in alignment and the clutch doesn’t release soon enough. I’ll get to that later, maybe four years from now. 🙂