Meatball Racing

Radio Control Blog

PandaHobby Tetra X3 V2

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It’s been a minute! Actually it’s been almost a year 😓 Remember how I said I saved $300 on a G500? I’ve reduced that savings by half by purchasing another 1/24 scale Tetra X3. Am I a glutton for punishment? Probably. I really wanted to love this rig, but there were some disappointments I couldn’t get past.

PandaHobby did listen to all of the feedback and shortly after the X3 was released they acknowledged the problems with the suspension and ESC and shipped a fix to anyone that requested it.

However, the suspension components they sent to me didn’t completely fix the issues of the shocks binding up. Then the stock servo broke and it sat on a shelf for the better part of a year 😥

Version 2

I hadn’t been paying much attention during that time and recently noticed there’s now a V2 of the same model. I thought that I already had all of the things that brought it to Version 2 spec, but there’s actually a lot more.

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PandaHobby Tetra X3 1/24 scale crawler

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I saved $300 on a portal-axle G500 crawler!

Or did I?

I was at Hub Hobby, my local hobby shop, getting some body posts for the LaTrax Prerunner after they busted out on the ice.

I wandered into the RC section and noticed they had a few of the new PandaHobby Tetra 1/24 scale portal-axle rigs. I asked the sales guy if they had blue. He said they did in the back and went to go get it.

I didn’t expect to buy anything besides LaTrax parts, but I guess I’m doing this! I already knew of some of the 1/24 Tetra’s shortcomings – having subscribed to a Tetra Facebook group a while ago.

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Garden Railway Track Work Part 3 – Paint and Ballast

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Racing against incoming snow in 2021, I was working to get the track work (including ballast) down before it was buried for 4 months. The last step was to finish painting and add ballast over the top.

The tracks were already covered with a silvery-gray base-coat primer. The next coat of paint would be a rusty brown to paint the ties and the sides of the rails. I purchased a quart of the cheapest flat exterior paint I could find at Menards. The color I landed on is called Fudge Truffle 😋

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Garden Railway Track Work Part 2 – Decking

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Looking at several garden railway roadbed installation methods, I wanted to mount my track to boards for smooth operation. We’ll use the crusher fines as a base under the boards, and later on the top and sides as ballast.

I started by cutting my 1″x4″ cedar boards to the exact length needed for the straight sections. I did rough cuts for the curves on 1/2″ pressure treated plywood:

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Garden Railway Track Work Part 1 – Base

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With my area leveled, I laid the track out to make sure everything would fit. This was when I discovered I had to make a few minor changes to my design.

You can’t have a left turnout switch immediately following a right turnout switch. This is because the manual switch mechanism on the left-hand switch will interfere with the track coming off the right turnout. You have to put one straight section in-between the switches. You can see the first left-hand turnout operation switch between the tracks here:

You can also probably spot my SCX24 Subaru brat up there. I wanted to make sure there was room for a small fire road between the tracks and the garden edge.

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