mardave cobra anyone had one?

[quincey]

just aquired a new cobra and was wondering as seeing though it was brought out years ago what mods did anyone do to make them better?
and what breaks the most?
no daft comment please!

[Welshy40]

Well I drove Kristen Wiles (I think I spelt it right but its been a while) prototype Cobra (I was loaned it for an event) and his had a carbon fibre flat chassis with an associated gearbox fitted and ujs but other than than standard. The car is superb indoors on carpet - he made 7th at the indoor uk champs with it, and works rather well outdoors to. Cheap to run and maintain, cant really say a bad thing about this car.

[peetbee]

Pretty robust cars. The original clutch was a nightmare to adjust though. I believe that it's now been redesigned along with some other parts.

In terms of what people changed, it was just about everything bar the gearbox and wishbones.
For some reason you could get carbon fibre everything including chassis, not that it seemed to make that much difference!

[Welshy40]

Originally Posted by peetbee

Pretty robust cars. The original clutch was a nightmare to adjust though. I believe that it's now been redesigned along with some other parts.

In terms of what people changed, it was just about everything bar the gearbox and wishbones.
For some reason you could get carbon fibre everything including chassis, not that it seemed to make that much difference!

True, just the carbon fibre chassis made it look cool. The shock towers however were a requirement as they didnt break as easily as the standard ones. Still as you said a very robust car and I liked it a lot when I used it.

[DCM]

I think Kristian had made different rear wishbones, braced the originals and cut them to increase rear toe plus the use of thicker pins to make it more resilient to crashes.

[quincey]

just found that hot bodies d4 driveshafts fit!!,just got to modify the diff end.

[qatmix]

I really loved those cars, maybe mardave will re-release them soon..

[tjf]

Originally Posted by qatmix

I really loved those cars, maybe mardave will re-release them soon..

As far as I know you can buy them now They show up on their website.

[peetbee]

They've been out for a while, they've made some improvements to the originals too

[super__dan]

I don't remember Kristian running a stealth on it, sure you're not mixing him up with Paul Gardner who used to have a stealth box on his Cougar?

Steve is right about cutting the rear wishbone at the outer end with a hacksaw blade and then screwing it back together from the side to get more toe in. Fybrelyte chassis were common, the aluminium ones bend all over the shop, a front end hit and you get added front kickup.

The steering was gash and needed the servo saver glueing up and replacing some of the links. As James says carbon towers, were essential to improve consistency as were replacing the shocks with something that actually work properly. Traxxas shocks were used quite a lot back in the day along with associated ones. I used Schumcher ones, though god knows why.

Oh, proper carbide diff balls are needed as the stock ones are made of cheese.

To be honest all this is reminding me why I was glad when I upgraded to a Losi XX. The Cobra was good indoors but not very good outdoors.

[Welshy40]

Originally Posted by super__dan

I don't remember Kristian running a stealth on it, sure you're not mixing him up with Paul Gardner who used to have a stealth box on his Cougar?

Steve is right about cutting the rear wishbone at the outer end with a hacksaw blade and then screwing it back together from the side to get more toe in. Fybrelyte chassis were common, the aluminium ones bend all over the shop, a front end hit and you get added front kickup.

The steering was gash and needed the servo saver glueing up and replacing some of the links. As James says carbon towers, were essential to improve consistency as were replacing the shocks with something that actually work properly. Traxxas shocks were used quite a lot back in the day along with associated ones. I used Schumcher ones, though god knows why.

Oh, proper carbide diff balls are needed as the stock ones are made of cheese.

To be honest all this is reminding me why I was glad when I upgraded to a Losi XX. The Cobra was good indoors but not very good outdoors.

Dan, yup he had an associated on it, possibly done later on as I do believe he ran the standard gear box casing with a few mods inside before he bunged in the associated gearbox, and he ran the associated shocks as well. His was quite good outdoors as well but I felt that this was more of an indoor buggy, which proved itself a several big events including the indoor champs in the hands of Kristian. Still I did enjoy using it, simple, cheap and good fun (yours I remember went rather well too).

[super__dan]

It was OK, I remember one Christmas basically either 'having' to spend a load upgrading it or completely changing to the XX. Overall I was MUCH happier with the XX. The cobra parts were like 1/3 of the price, but they broke 3 times as often.

[Smartalec]

Originally Posted by super__dan

To be honest all this is reminding me why I was glad when I upgraded to a Losi XX. The Cobra was good indoors but not very good outdoors.

I remember Lee Romang making a National A final with a standard one of these back in the day ...... if i'm not mistaken he was the ONLY one ever to put one in the A at an outdoor national.

[Welshy40]

Originally Posted by super__dan

It was OK, I remember one Christmas basically either 'having' to spend a load upgrading it or completely changing to the XX. Overall I was MUCH happier with the XX. The cobra parts were like 1/3 of the price, but they broke 3 times as often.

Actually I think I recall you contimplating the jump to Losi. Good move thou.

[JBL]

Looking on the Mardave website, the Cobra has been re-released. It is now the Cobra SE, with options such as slipper clutch etc. The price for the base kit is just over £100.00 and the options are cheap. I remember when the Mardave Meteor was realised in the late 1980's and they were quite competative in there day.

[tjf]

The thing is if you add £20 to that price you could buy a b4 and you dont get a slipper in that price so its sadly not as cheap as it look

[JBL]

You are completely right, the Cobra would not be as competative as a B4 for the same money.

[burgie]

if you want to "tune" your cobra, this is the site for it!

don't know what you were doing to break parts on the cobra, my son had the same one for three years, raced it weekly indoors and out and hit practically everything solid on the track every lap at least twice. Took him 2.5 years to break anything.

Anybody who saw it around the southport track can testify as to it's strength, and there are still some marshalls with a slight limp as well.

[qatmix]

Ive found a near complete front and rear section of my old cobra in the garage this weekend. I'm now tempted to buy the missing parts (mainly the middle chassis) and take it out for a spin

[P_B]

Not sure what you'd break either, they tended to bend but still finish the race. Only probs I ever had were ripping the wishbone mount from the gearbox casing a couple of times and the idler gear made from cheese.

Tempted to give mine a whirl at the Bury indoor meeting this weekend...

Pic: Jimmy Storey/oOple.com