Scott.Buffington.me

When I first got my XMod I thought it was pretty cool and fast for a small RC car from Radio Shack. I even played around with some of the upgrades, including the motor upgrades that make the little cars even faster. I read articles around the internet on making the cars even faster.

The XMods are powered by 4 triple A batteries, but of course to keep from spending a fortune on batteries you need to buy the Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. These allow decent amount of time and allows for some fun racing. I noticed people were adding battery compartments to their cars, instead of being powered by 4 cells they were powering with 6 and and even more cells. I had to do some cutting of plastic to get two more cells to fit under the car body so I am not sure how they are getting more than 6 cells in their cars. Adding two more cells just involved soldering on a battery compartment from another XMod. So this was a easy hack for the car. The body holds the battery compartment in place so it can just sit atop the car.

Here is my 6 cell Xmod, which my friend Tom Steck can attest is very fast. The car is so fast I cannot race it around my basement like I can the other XMods I have. I am not exactly sure of how fast this car is, but it at least goes 25mph, as I was keeping up with Tom as he left the house one night.

XMods are solid little RC's, I have flipped this car many times on the road and it just keeps running. The only thing is, I am going to have to look for some outdoor tires and metal lug nuts to keep the wheels on the car. The plastic lug nuts and the basic tires that come with the car just cannot hold-up on the blacktop. I have cracked about 8 plastic lug nuts and the tires are visibly worn. You should have seen the neighbors stare when I was keeping up with Tom's Jetta as he left the house one night.

Those that saw some of my prior posts on the XMod will remember me complaining about them not offering any muscle cars. Well, they now offer body styles for some traditional muscle cars.

When I first began working, I almost chose the Electronics Field. I was maintaining video games when I as not moving them for about a 9 month period( I spent more time moving them than maintaining them). An opportunity to begin working and pursuing a IT career then presented itself and I left Electronics in my past.

I have always been interested in how things worked however and deep down I always wanted to know more about Electronics. I recently decided to pursue learning a little about Electronics and recently I procured a breadboard and today I began perusing the manual.

I just finished building my first circuit. A very simple LED flasher with buzzer. Kinda cool, but very elementary. :)