Tamiya 1/16 RC Kubelwagen

[EddyK]

Hi, Tankers!
Last week I won on the ebay Tamiya Kubelwagen. I got it on the last weekend and started to built. It takes aprox 2,5 hours to made it. I have to say that I has a great helper to make this kit - my son, he's 9 years old. This is out first Tamiya kit we made.

















After the test drive, we decided that it runs as simple cheap RC toy. So I decided to make it more better and built in Taigen 2,4 GHz brain. It was easier that I thought before. I found some info in French on the internet. All I had to do was just connect the wires. For driving I used one of the motor pins, for steering - turret rotation pins. It was necessary to remove covers from the Taigen unit, because there are not so many place in the kubelwagens body and I had to remove cooling fan... So there are some photos from Yesterday:





Since the model has Taigen control unit, would be a shame not to use the more opportunities it provides. It was decided to equip the car with light and sound. There's the fist stage in the light mounting:



The work will be continued this evening.
Regards!
Edmunds

[doc larsson]

nice build eddy cant wait to see a video !

[PainlessWolf]

Eddy,
I've been thinking about one of these for years. Thank you for the nice build report. It is good to see that it can be modded to something much more realistic with just a little work (tho' I was hoping that Tamiya had already gone the extra mile with lights, etc, on this one) Yes, please, a video on how it runs with the improved brain and functions. ;o)
regards,
Painless

[MichaelC]

Eddy,

Wow this is great ! I have been eyeing mine for a while trying figure out how to fix it up and I would love to do this. Just one question, where is the power coming from ? Did you just use the same battery source as the original ? I can't remember how many AA battery it uses.

MichaelC

[EddyK]

Eddy,

Wow this is great ! I have been eyeing mine for a while trying figure out how to fix it up and I would love to do this. Just one question, where is the power coming from ? Did you just use the same battery source as the original ? I can't remember how many AA battery it uses.

MichaelC

Hi, Michael!
It needs 4 AAA batteries, but they came empty very quickly. I bought today rechargeable 1000 mAh batteries. I hope they'll work much longer time...
I'll place the video a little bit later.
Edmunds

[EddyK]

Good evening!
Guys, I need Your advice... There's one problem - when I press the direction joystick to the left or right more than couple seconds, the kubelwagen shuts down. To make it run again, I should switch it off and then again switch the power on. Then I can drive it again.
What could be the problem and its solution in this case?
Regards!
Edmunds

[MichaelC]

There might be a short and the Taigen board is shutting itself down.

BTW Eddy, I noticed that your kubelwagen steers with a motor......... Mine steers with a servo. I wonder if it is because yours is a newer one. I didn't know they changed the steering mechanism. That means I might have to keep the servo which is fine since I will probably put in a clark board anyway.

MichaelC

[MichaelC]

Sorry or overload........ Either will shutdown the Taigen MFU I think. Or low battery.

[scalawag]

I wonder if it might be a low voltage thing going on as the Taigen Mfu will shut down as you have described if battery power is low.

The 4AAA batteries in the Kubel Wagen will be giving out approx 6V (4x1.5v) for regular batteries, or 4.8v (4x1.2V) for most rechargeables. The taigen unit is designed to run on 7.2v, so I wonder if it is switching itself off as the voltage is lower than it should be. Might explain the short battery life too.

[EddyK]

Thanks for helping, guys!
I think, that low voltage could be the right cause... What do You think about using camcorder bateries in this car? I saw, that they are 7,2 v and aprox 800-1000 mAh and very small size to fit instead of 4 x AAA bateries...
Best regards!
Edmunds