Firelap Gone – Here’s Comes NanoXXXXX?

[Aaron]

Well it seems that after leaving many retailers in the lurch with the massively late iWaver 02M (We’ve had cash down for about 8 months now) iWaver/Toyeast is at it again.

This time the “Firelap” brand is going missing and has been replaced by the “Nano” branding, So now the trustly old iWaver02, which became the Firelap2.0 is now the NanoRacer2.0

New for 2007 is the redesigned Transmitter than now runs Tx modules letting you swap AM/FM or Spectrum boxes into it.

Confused?

Me too!

I just hope that someone at TE/iWaver knows what they’re doing…

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[betty.k]

found a review at miniz racer

http://www.mini-zracer.com/forums/showthread.php?p=248669#post248669

locwan wrote:

A buddy of mine that wants to get a cheap starter car had just orderd one directly from the firelap website, and it arrived today. I just want to give a quick review for those interested.

There are apparently no changes to the design and electronics of this nanoracer from the old firelaps, other than the new name and new plastic colour, and a Tx that can be used w/ futaba modules. The car is also still without brake functions.

I had my hopes up, but I was a bit disappointed, as the build quality is still subpar. But you do get what you pay for, as the price is really cheap, and the radio seems very decent and packed w/ features. This is an okay car for my buddy as his first 1:27 scale r/c car.

I had a chance to try out the car and found it to be drivable around the track, but it was only after I had finished repairing the broken motor wires and replaced the c-clips that mysteriously snapped (both of them!) when I tested the front suspension by pushing down on the car.

Another problem is an antenna hole that is in the wrong spot on the Enzo body, as the hole was direcly in the center of the rear windscreen right above the rear top-shock; there was no way that the antenna would fit there without interfering the shock’s movement. So, a new hole had to be drilled in the more conventional upper right corner of the windscreen.

After the above fixes and modification, we ran the car after breaking in the motor, and the car seems fine at first, but later developed a tendency to not recenter properly coming out of corners.

I later had time to take the car apart to get a good look.. and found some more problems…

The plastic bushings that came w/ the car were no good. The center hole was too large and had a lot of slop when placed on the steering knuckls and rear axle. This caused a lot of wheel play and the wheels would not spin freely as the whole wheel wiggled on the shafts. Not a big problem if you immediately replace them w/ bearings, or even stock kyosho bushings.

When working on the car, care must be taken when trying to take the screws off, as they are made with very soft metal and strips very easily.

When the cover of the chassis came off, revealing the servo, I saw that servo gears were a bit slanted and had a lot of play. I also noticed that the “servo saver” was not fasten on properly, as the center shaft of the saver did not notch correctly into both sides of the plastic pieces that held it in place, therefore allowing it to pivot back and forth when trying to steer, making the steering feel like it is sometimes not responding. That was fixed easily by taking the “saver” apart and re-attaching the shaft properly, aligning it back into both sides of those plastic pieces. In case you’re wondering why the words “servo saver” are in quotes, that is because it is not a saver at all!!! It is only a plastic piece that resembles a servo saver. It looks like Firelap just copied it for the sake of copying… it had a spring.. looks like a saver, but in fact it was one solid piece of plastic, molded to look like a servo saver!!! Very tricky here.. one can certainly still break a few servo gears if not careful.

After the car had all its pieces put back and tested, a few more laps still revealed steering that would not recenter completely at times.. (although it is very minor) A few more looks inside the servo and tests later, we concluded that it is very likely due to a weak servo motor, and binding servo gears.

Although acceptable as a starter car for someone just learning to drive slowly around the track, I would really not recommend this for racers. However, on a more positive note, the Firelap package came w/ a lot of extra parts for replacing those broken pieces. The package also came w/ an extra RM motor pod and shims (which is curious as FL did not sell a RM model), all the different sizes suspension limiters, extra C-clips, wheel nuts etc. And the best thing I liked about the stock parts are the tires. It seems like it came w/ standard soft wide tires in the back, and slighly harder tires up front, much softer and grippier than standard Kyohso RTR and ASC tires. These tires had good grip and played a big part in making the car drivable on the track, coming out of the box.

Sorry of the long winded review, hope it helps anyone considering it.

the tx looks promising though :8ball:

[kevsta]

That’s some interesting info on the servo saver. 😀

[Aaron]

Not all iWaver/Firelaps have the fake solid servo saver, seems a random thing that they’ve done over the years.

Interesting read though, and while it’s probably not a 100% normal occurence for these to need work out of the box I doubt iWaver has moved forward (most probably backwards) in recent months.

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[mini-g]

man i am only gonna get kyosho cars, had one of the first i-waver’s and it was stuffed out of the box, woulds only go full speed in reverse. forward was like a crawl.:gatlin:

[Aaron]

Well last week officially iWaver finally reimbursed our pre-order cash for the iWaver02M cars we ordered back in May 2006.

They’ve hooked up with a new distributer here in Australia, and I suspect it’ll be yet another failed attempt at the market here, this time starting in Melbourne.

If anyone wants the details you can get them from the iWaver website.

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[mini-g]

cool good to hear that aaron, have you heard about availability of the 010 kit??? and any idea on price???

[TallduDe]

So what is iwaver releasing?

are they doing there whole overlander and 4wd things still?

[Aaron]

@TallduDe 225161 wrote:

So what is iwaver releasing?

are they doing there whole overlander and 4wd things still?

They’re currently a year late with the 02M, and I guess we’ll never see it honestly. The others are probably equal pipe dreams.

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[Author]

Posts