Jiada F1 Cars
by
Dickie Pearson
"nhdungeonracer"

First off, I have to say awesome service!! I ordered these 2 F1 cars on Friday night (like at 10 o'clock!) I received an email at about 3 am Saturday morning saying they were on their way. Sure enough, they arrived with today's mail, along with a spiffy looking pen.

As suspected from seeing pictures, at 1st glance these look very similar to SCX cars, with some noticeable differences.

First thing I noticed is that there is a solid axle in the front. SCX has a steering system on their cars. With what I eventually intend to do with these cars, the solid axle might work better than SCX's fragile steering set-up, though the A-arms on these Jiada cars don't look very strong either.

Flipping the cars over, the chassis looks identical to a SCX chassis (ignore the OZ-Race motor in the SCX  ). The motor is different though, like it's a long can Mabuchi. The motor is completely enclosed, unlike SCX's motors which have the brushes out in the open. The Jiada cars also have the same adjustable magnet arrangement that the SCX cars have.

Taking the cars apart is the same as taking SCX cars apart. Undo 3 screws, and the bottom part of the chassis comes off, as does the body, leaving you with the "central" part of the chassis that holds the motor and drivetrain.

Here's a side-by-side shot of the two makes (SCX on left with Fly motor).

Gearing on these Jiada cars is your standard 9/27 ratio. And other than being a different color, they look identical to the SCX gears.

The wheels also look identical to the SCX ones, so switching tires could be done easily. On the subject of tires, they felt quite hard, so I don't have much hope for them on my wood track, especially since I have copper for power, so there's no magnet downforce to help traction. The tires did seem to be fairly true though, as there was very little wobble to be seen when turning by hand. I've seen a lot worse on the more expensive cars.

One nice surprise was the rear axles bushings, or should I say "blocks"? Looking at them in the chassis, they appear to be square blocks. With the chassis apart, I went to "pull out the rear axle assembly. I barely had to touch the axle, and the whole assembly fell out into my hand. My first thought was, "this can't be good". But upon closer inpection, I found that while the bottom the the bushing is square, the top part of the bushing is rounded which matches the chassis. This arrangement means there is no chance of the bushing spinning inside the chassis, so there's no need to glue the bushing (block?) in place. The bushings are held firmly in place by the bottom part of the chassis when the car is all put back together. Also, there was very little axle "play" inside the axle. I was very impressed with this set-up.
Here's a poor pic of the axle assembly. Hopefully it's good enough for you to see what the bushings look like...

Performance? you want to know how they run? Course you do...

As I predicted, the tires did not provide any traction on my track. They simply too hard. The best time I could get was in the mid 8 second range. On the plus side though, they should last a looonnnggg time for someone who likes to run with magnets on plastic track. Checking my Indy Grip tire chart, I see that IG # 4006 will fit the SCX F1 cars, which means these should fit these cars. However, I didn't have any of these, so I searched for something else that might work. I ended up using Supertires, #1001, which fits the Fly Vipers. It wasn't a perfect fit, but since I wasn't expecting these cars to set any speed records, they would work here.

Back on the track, the car now had plenty of traction. It wasn't long though, before there was another problem. During left hand turns, the car would just stop. After adjusting the braid a couple times with no success, I figured out the problem. These cars have the same set-up as the SCX cars in that there are brass strips coming from the motor to the guide, and where this strip drops down to contact the guide is where the problem was. It had lost it's contact with the braid in the guide. Once this was corrected, the car perform very well.
On the subject of the guide, this is one part that definately not a SCX part. To me, it looks like an Auto Art guide. It has a post where it looks like tierods could be hooked up to have steering on the front wheels. As already mentioned, these cars have a solid axle, so there's nothing hooked to this post on the guide.

Back on the track, the car was very smooth and fairly quiet. It's speed is definately faster than a Artin Stocker, and just slightly faster than a Ninco Cobra that has a NC1 motor in it. This Ninco Cobra can run laps in the 6.0 second range using it's stock tires. The Jiada car, with the Supertires, ran best time of 5.614. Running 5.6-5.7 laps was quite easy, and the car was very easy to drive. For comparison, a good running Slot.It can run as low as 4.7's, so for a $20 car ($26 if you count the Supertires), I felt this car is a good running car for the money.

I would place the motor between a NC1 and a stock Scaley/Fly Mabuchi in terms of performance. Seems to have plenty of torque, and a good amount of brakes. Has more rpm than a NC1, but not as much as a Mabuchi.

I have plans to turn this car into a serious contender for our Open Wheel class at our HOST club events. I've had some success converting SCX cars into strong runners (which is why you see those motors in the SCX cars I've pictured), but the weak steering front end usually does them in. I've broken 3 of them so far. I'm hoping the solid front axle set-up will hold up better, so time will tell...
I'll try and update you of my progress...

Bottom line, I think these cars are a good value for the money. If you can get them to have traction and make sure the brass strips make contact with the guide's braid, you will have an excellent running car to enjoy.