RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

We are all justifiablely proud of our successes no matter what our modeling skills and abilities. It is nice to read other modelers praise you work.
However what about our failures. The projects that are started with high hopes then get relegated to the back of the modeling bench then finally they get binned as a total right off. Or those that languish in a shoe box and you always promise yourself I will sort that one day.

I have decided to bare my modeling soul and come clean about one of my total failures that ended up in the bin.

I wanted to do something unusual and different. I decided to buy the Polistil 1/15 scale BMW motor bike and side car and R/C it. I did my research and found that some bikes were in fact 2 wheel drive with the sidecar linked to the bike with a gearbox and axle. My intention was to use a micro motor to power the two rear wheels, replace the engine with a fake motor built round a micro servo for steering and use a small battery and speed controller and receiver. Everything went wrong the layout of the gearboxes necessitated a complete chassis rebuild the plastic used in the model seemed to turn to powder as soon as you tried to cut or work it. The wheel spokes were too delicate. I just seemed to be repairing or replacing more and more pieces. After a few years of effort I eventually admitted defeat and put it in the bin.


What is your failure?

I had to wave a white flag at making my Asiatam FAMO RC and settle for a static model. In fine, the tracks jam, and no amount of my fiddling with them could get them smooth enough that I could trust them running with electric motors. I'm not the only one: the best explanation is my Sat Feb 10, 2024 11:34 am post at viewtopic.php?t=33379&start=110, part of a multi-page chronicle of problems. The FAMO is now a static model, and I am still puttering with ways to complete it cosmetically. But I have so many projects...

What did old Blue Eyes Say? Regrets,, I've had a few...

My absolute first time painting camouflage. That being said my simple mind couldn't wrap itself around using camo putty.

I like to call it my psychedelic wagon. I repainted but kept the barrel this way as a reminder. And funny enough the wife liked this first attempt better than the subsequent pattern. Rather Avant-garde...

Dogberry wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 4:41 pm
I wanted to do something unusual and different. I decided to buy the Polistil 1/15 scale BMW motor bike and side car and R/C it. I did my research and found that some bikes were in fact 2 wheel drive with the sidecar linked to the bike with a gearbox and axle.

I had a 1:1 Ural motorbike with sidecar wheel drive. It was interesting to ride, to say the least. As they had no differential, and the sidecar drive was engaged with a dog clutch, if you engaged the sidecar wheel, it would assault anything, but only in a straight line. Put motorcross tyres on it and road it through winter. It would drift quite nicely in the snow.

Failures have been many, usually involving my Challenger. Including blowing a gear box to bits, ripping both idler wheels out.

Hi Dogberry,

It's a shame that you binned it, I understand your frustrations though, the plastic can be very brittle if you get an old model and just crumbles away when doing any work on it
I did however manage to rc one though a couple of years ago, I used an N20 gearmotor which only drives the rear wheel of the motorcycle, it runs pretty well on flat surfaces but I'm not sure of rough terrain
Below is a link to my little build and a short test video, maybe you could salvage yours from the bin for another go

Cheers, Lee.

viewtopic.php?t=32001

Fails. I have a few but they are not yet in the bin. Some of you will remember the Ludwig Cromwell. Hasn’t been touched since the thumb incident and I can’t wrap my mind around how to turn the brass tube for the wheel brackets into something that will take the screws to fix the wheels.

Fail number 2 I have a modelbau is3 kit. Bought the torro kv1 hull for it to be built on. It don’t fit and remains a kit at present.

Fail 3 I bought the lee/grand moulds from haya. Cost me 500 quid did one casting and realised the moulds were quite worn and the lee turret was too small and not suitable to produce the m3 as a kit and the like haya did as I also bought the commercial license when I bought the moulds. Castings and moulds went in the bin.