New to Mini-Z’s…

[Admin]

G’day Guys,

My family and I are currently into 1/32 scale slot cars but are looking at getting into another form of scale motorsport.

My wife and I used to race Tamiya Tamtechs at an on-road R/C car club in Brisbane back in the 80’s, we loved this scale of racing, but unfortunately Tamtechs were a bit of a short lived fad.

Anyway I was surfing the web last night and came upon the ausmicro site. Wow, excellent stuff!

These seem to be the way that we will go (not into off-road R/C, which is currently the only R/C car club in the Toowoomba region of QLD).

Some questions if I may?

Do the Ford GT-40 bodies advertised on the Ausmicro site fit directly onto the iw02 chassis? (We are thinking of buying the iwaver as its cheaper and we need to kit out ourselves and the three kids)

Is the IWaver competitive with the Micro-Z? (quality, performance, etc.)

Is there any lap counting systems that are available through retailers?

We intend to race them in a community hall and hope to encourage some of the other locals to get involved as well. We used to use a half a dozen press button counters tacked onto a piece of timber back when we did Tamtech racing, each with its own colour (corresponding coloured piece of tape stuck onto the ariel of the car). Hopefully lap counting systems have come a little way since then!

Anyway, thats about it for now, thanks in advance for any advice or answers to my questions.

[mini-g]

hey, the gt-40 fits on the waver 01 but not sure about the 02.

i had a i-waver for 2 hours…it was no good, they seem to be a hit and miss thing, most good but some not good, mainly the electrics. you can pick up mini-z 01 for not much ore than the waver if you look around the hobby shops.

as far as lap counting the setups for mini-z are expencive if you want to use transponders, but you can get computer lap timing that does a real good job and can run a whole race meeting but you still need to manualy count as the cars go by, this is free. it is called alycat, look arond and you will find the site. best of luck.

[dgs73]

Welcome to the forums O.M.!! The 02 in Iwaver and Kyosho is a wide body setup only… and the GT40 is a narrow body. As for quality, as Mini G sez, it can be a hit and miss thing. Afew of my mates have/have had Iwavers, and I noticed things tend to go wrong more frequently. Not bad, not great either. If a Mini Z isthe Mercedes of 1/28 scale, sorry buti’d have to say the Iwaver is the Daewoo.

[mini-g]

you have pm out house

[Aaron]

Welcome aboard!

There are a few options. iWavers are definately getting better witht he IW02 being a lot better than the IW01s. The bodies are typically Narrow unless you buy Kyosho…. BUT I will do a mount test of a GT40 onto an iWaver chassis tonight.

iWaver are currently re-jigging their line-up and supply is very limited, it is probably worthwhile waiting for the Firelap 2.0 modesl due Real-soon-now… They are the next evoltion from the IW02.

Timing systems are hard work, a former collegue of mine (the dude behind DingoTimer which is big in Slot-car these days) looked into a transponder version and the costs of development were stupidly high, as ways the cost of implementing a system.

One advantage of Kyosho is braking 🙂 IW don’t do brakes except psuedo braking in their up-scale transmitters.

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[peteWah]

Greetings Friend.

Jay-Z might have a couple of 01 mini-z racers for sale, But you might have hassles trying to raising him…

Might see him later tonight if not he will be brought up to speed ASAP as he has said on many a time that he wanted to get rid of a couple…
I will get him to put prices up here… :smiley2:

Again welcome to the forums and hope you have fun with the scale… :huh:

[betty.k]

g’day bloke!

if you’re happy to tinker and put up with a few shortcomings in quality then iwavers are ok. but if you wanna be sure and avoid disapointment then stick with a kyosho mini z.

there’s changes at iwaver. they have created a side name called ‘firelap’. this is kinda like their clearance sale brand. so the car we’ve always known an the iwaver 02 is now called the firelap 2.0. there is a reviseddesign chassis coming out soon which will adopt the ’02’ tag.

same deal with the 04’s. old school 04’s are now firelap 4.0’s. the firelap stuff comes with the old school simple transmitter.

[TallduDe]

the firelap is different aint it ,

has a carbon fibre chasis and new design set up.

anyway if you can get an iw02 but i think they are no longer avaiable from toyeast ther realising the firelap which looks good(im getting 1)

even the iw01 were good bu u get what u pay for plus by the time you finsh modding the iwaver with kyosho or after market parts they are good worth the money but needs further development parts wise.

the gt40 wont fit a mr02 but will fit the new firelap 2.0 coming out they also got marclaren f1”s!!!! the bodies are only 13 US and they fit the mr02.

Edited by – TallduDe on 14 July 2005 17:38:25

[Aaron]

Actually just to correct things about Firelap… No-one (myself included) knows how TE will be using the iWaver and the Firelap branding. What I do know is I have a pair of Firelap 4.0s coming in and currently have 2x IW02 in stock and a IW04 🙂

MR15 may be a cheaper entry to Kyosho… (and has brakes)

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[ken_wyleung]

do you guys be have a look of Kyosho GT40? It will release on July 21, it is design for Kyosho MR-02 MM.

http://www.mini-z.jp/modules/catalog/photos/128.jpg

And I will say Kyosho Mini-Z MR-02 and MR-015 are much better than i-Waver.

If you want more details, you can check on this web-site: http://www.kyosho.co.jp.

If you want to see more latest news and information about the Mini-Z, try them:

http://www.mini-z.jp

http://www.mini-z-bar.com

http://www.minizracer.com

For the lap system, I am using Lap Wizard (http://www.squat.co.jp/rcbearing-squat/mini-z/lapwizard.htm); it is good but not the best. If you want a professional lap system, try KO-Pro (http://www.shopatron.com/index/166.0.1059.0.0.0.0); as I know, the Japan Kyosho Mini-Z and PN Mini-Z Cup are using it.

at the end, this is for you.. http://www.kyosho.co.jp/web/download/movie/2005shizuoka_hs/wmp/miniz_cm.wmv

Welcome to Mini RC!

Edited by – ken_wyleung on 14 July 2005 23:00:44

[Aaron]

OK Current iWaver GT40s are not MR02 compatibale (almost but not quite)

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[dgs73]

about those f1’s; they’re still a mid mount in Iwaver form, yeah?

[Aaron]

We’ll know for sure when they lad, but they look to be 02MM

--
Site Owner Guy.

[dgs73]

I can see i’m going to have to get an MR-02 mm some time soon…

[Author]

Posts