Keyence Mad Tune with pics
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Ok here are a few shots of my Keyence Mad Tune Toyota Celica GTR.
These little cars are fully digital proportional control and come in 4 frequencies all around 27MHz. It feels a little strange to drive a car this small and have full digi prop steering.
A close up of the car. They have reasonable detail in the bodies. They are not painted, this is the colour of the plasic all the way through. The windscreen is a seperate piece of plastic glued in from underneith. The aerial is a piece of fine spring/piano wire about 120mm long, pushed into a tiny hole in the back corner of the car. You can see the hole in the nearest rear corner.
They arent as high as a BCG (only 2mm ground clearance)and can tend to pickup any dirt and dust on the driving surface. So the “track” needs to be clean for this car.
Internals all sit very low, the battery is the highest part. The cell is an N50AAA, same as an original BCG cell. The car plugs into the controller to charge, but unlike the BCG, the controller will first discharge the remaining current in the battery, then fully charge it. (So you cant ‘double charge’ this car) The whole process takes about 2&1/2 minutes. The car runs for about 7 – 10 minutes now with a new cell depending on how it is driven. The controller is also capable of trickle charging the battery if it is left connected.
The electronics are all mounted on film circuit boards that are stuck into the chassis with thin double sided tape. This is very secure but does tend to give dust somewhere to collect on the exposed tape. You can see the black tape under where the battery sits.
The motors have a tendency to loosen and the steering picks up fluff. This is probably why a tiny screwdriver comes in the box with this car that fits perfectly all the tiny phillips head screws that hold the car together.
With all the fluff cleaned out, a shiney new cell was soldered and stuck in place, it was back to brand new again
The performance seemed to improve with the cleanout of the chassis. And runtime increased with the new cell. Previously I would have said that the speed was like a BCG with a 2.2 motor. After cleaning out the gears and lubricating the motor, gears and axels it probably runs more like a 2.6, and more quietly now too. It is a whole lot more torquey than a BCG, being easily able to accelerate up a 30 degree slope.
The large motor (in comparison to a BCG) is screaming out for a higher voltage, but I am too scared of frying the elctronic in this little car so it will remain unmodded. I will just enjoy this one the way the maker intended.All back together, this is how the Mad Tune is charged, by plugging it into the controller using a plug under the door in the front of the controller. The controller has a telescopic aerial about 80cm long and takes 6 AA batteries, 3 for the R/C and 3 for charging the car. The range is about 5 to 7 meters indoors, but my batteries weren’t fresh so it may be more, the instructions say 10m which sounds about right.
The controller does look a bit dorky but it is from about 7 or 8 years ago. Well ahead of their time given the current micro R/C craze. As far as I know Keyence stopped making them in about 1996. There arent many around (for sale at least), and not many articles on the net for them either.
Here’s the two together, Mad Tune and BitCharg, controllers and cars. You can see how much larger the Keyence controller is. It is almost the same size as a regular ‘stick controlled’ R/C transmitter.
Edited by – micro_Amps on 24 April 2003 12:19:37
Edited by – micro_Amps on 19 June 2004 00:05:29
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