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To date I have seen two Mini Inferno ST’s, mine and my dad’s, and both had the same issue with the steering.

Basically, with the steering trim at neutral, the transmitter will overdrive the servo when turning right, and this in turn limits the lock when turning left.

This could also result in premature damage to the servo and makes it more likely for the steering to get stuck after a crash.

The solution is pretty simple and goes something like this.

Step 1: First job is to turn the steering trim knob on the transmitter to the left until the servo stops getting overdriven on full lock. Basically when the servo stops buzzing with the wheel at full right.

Step 2: Now shorten the threaded steering tie rod by a couple of turns until the wheels are straight ahead again. You need to remove the steering top plate to do this, maybe even take out the whole servo to get access as it is pretty tight for long-nose pliers to reach. This should result in close to equal steering lock both ways.

Job done!

Forgot all about the road test, me and my dad had a good blast around outside his house and the cells seem pretty good! Definitely a lot faster than the tiring Alkaline AA’s my dad had in his car at first. Ran for quite a while (maybe 15 minutes or more?) with no sign of the batteries dumping.

The only thing I did notice was that the cells are a tight fit in the standard battery holder, I couldn’t get the holder lid on at all, but it didn’t matter as the cells were snug enough not to fall out.

All in all a decent cell for the car, good value too at approximately £5 for 4 from various eBay sellers.

…trust me, I found out the hard way.

Plugged the Corallies in the wrong way by mistake, heard a crack and a spark. Tried connecting the speedo up the right way, and although the servo was powered, there was no throttle, just a flashing led and a faint smell of burning.

Opened up the case (breaking the tabs as usual) and saw this…

I should make it clear that I am not an electronic engineer and I don’t have a clue what I’m doing (so copy me at your own risk) but this looked to me like a blown circuit track along the negative side.

A rummage around the pitbox found an old motor brush which donated its braid…

…which was then tinned and used to bridge the break in the circuit board.

End result looks a little like this (hope you can make it out)…

Standing well back I plugged the speedo back in. Nothing blew up. So I switched it on and tried the throttle…

SUCCESS!

I’m more surprised than anyone. Hopefully it will hold up, hopefully it will still run as fast as the other cars too.

If it does work it has saved me £20 and taught me not to plug things in backwards ever again… stupid boy.

Continuing the theme of cell testing this week I have been checking out the Vapextech 2700 AA cell, to see if it a good choice for high-drain use (i.e in my Kyosho Mini Inferno!).

You can download a spreadsheet with my findings here - Analysis of Vapextech 2700 AA

To sum up, the cells cope will with the 2.5A fast charge and cope well with a 3A and 5A discharge. But 10A is beyond them and they dump after only 700mAh.

The proof of the pudding will be a road test in the Mini Inferno - a report on that to come.