Hi,
If you find something in the UAE that helps with some aspect of this hobby then post it in here. To keep the thread useful only post things that are available now in the UAE and where they can be obtained, I have two great finds to get the ball rolling and one not so great find that you might want to avoid.

The good -

1) Titen - I am really suprised that this stuff actually works. Its marketted as a product to fix stripped threads and on the two occasions I have used it, it has worked beautifully. You can find it in the adhesive section of Ace Hardware, its sold in a white tube and is cheap enough that I dont remember what I paid for it. I have used it to recover threads in plastic and metal, its a thousand times better than super glue which has rarley ever worked fixing threads for me. Once a thread has been fixed with Titen its as good as new and can be rescrewed time and time again.

2) Soldering Paste - Again this one is from Ace Hardware and if you havent used it before it will transform your soldering. Basically its an acid in a resin form, you dab a tiny amount onto whatever it is that you want to solder then when you touch the surface with a soldering iron the paste evaporates and very aggresivley degreases the surface you want to solder. This small and simple step makes soldering unbeleivably easy and you always get a nice flowey, shining solder joint. You will still need to tin both sides of the joint and use a reasonable soldering iron which you can find in the same section of Ace. There are 40W soldering irons which are about right for soldering motor and battery leads. A 25W or lower iron is better for small leads like radio and server leads- again you can get these in ace.

The bad -

3) Its not all good at Ace. Masking tape needs to do two things, a) stick to your model and b) not let any paint through. Ace masking tape doesn't manage either of these but does somehow leave glue marks all over your model which is astonishing given that the tape itself doesnt stick.

Over to you -
Duane

OK, as most of you will know. Grease and oil mixed with dirt are bad.......

This leaves three options for moving parts
- run them dry with no lubricant. (I used to do this with my off-road kit back in the day)
- Use oil or grease and attract dust which could cause excessive wear.
- use a 'dry' lubricant.

So recently I visited one of the cycling shops and purchased a dry lubricant that is used for cycling. It is wet when applied so that it will penetrate into the bearing or where ever it is applied, but the 'wet' evaporates to leave only a dry Teflon lubricant.

I brought it few weeks ago and applied to some of my touring wheel bearing, but also to my ball diff after cleaning. So it is still early in my trial, but so far my diff is still very smooth after a couple weeks of light use. The bearings I applied it too also seemed to free up after application.

Anyway I think this is probably a winner, and well worthy a try. I may update this in a few months, especially for the ball diff which is pretty easy to monitor for smoothness.

The product I brought is

http://www.finishlineusa.com/products/teflon-plus-lube.htm

Edit - not suitable for motor bearings.

Hi Lancelot,
If Ace masking tape works for you, let us know which one. They carry a lot of brands and all of them are cheaper than Tamiya so if one works let us know which so we can all get some.

Hi Greg,
I have also been bike lubes mainly because I have almost as many bikes as I do cars. I have the same dry lube as you which would seem like a great idea for exposed parts like universals and dog bones. I have also tried it in bearings. I also bought some of the wet lube with Boron particles, I am using this in the gear box.

I have no idea how effective these lubes are in terms of reducing friction and long term wear. If I spin the rear wheels on my mini, they spin freely for about 15 seconds with no noise so I guess thats good.

Something else that I didnt think of last time I was in the bike shop but should be available is degreaser. Bike degreasers should be ideal for us as they are designed no to attack all of the plastic on a bike like cable housings, decals and paint. But they do a rapid job of shifting grease and oil.

Duane.