Set down your beverages, trust me!
I hope that these two stories make you laugh. I finally can!
1. Setting: Indoor carpet oval racing. In March of 2002 I was racing my Factory Team B3 at a race in Oshkosh, WI and had a bad accident. My steering servo locked in the straight-ahead position just as I applied full power to the Monster Horsepower Stock motor coming out of the corner. I flew off of the track, went through six folding chairs, knocked over three tool boxes, hit four spectators, and finally hit the cinderblock wall. This cracked both RPM A-arms, bent three of the four front hinge pins, bent one shock shaft, popped the cap off of the other one, split the shock tower, broke two turnbuckles, and cracked the chassis. Not to be outdone, a soda fell off of one of the tables that I hit and shorted out my ESC. I was thrilled!
2. Setting: Indoor carpet roadcourse racing. On November 6 at the local Hobbytown in Oshkosh I was cleaning my Team+ TC3 motor after a good run. I let the motor cool off while I was marshalling. After I disconnected the battery from the ESC I sprayed the motor with Niftech R/C Electric Motor cleaner. On the back are two warnings. Both stress that the fumes are flammable (bet you can guess where this is going...). I let the drippings come off of the motor and put it in front of a fan to dissipate the fumes and waited about three or four minutes. I moved the fan, connected the battery, connected the DSC from radio to esc and hit the throttle. RESULT? Instant flame from the back to the front of the car! I tried to put it out with a towel but as I swung it on the car I realized that I had soaked the towel in Niftech too! After about 2 furious mins of swatting with wet Brawny paper towel the flames were gone. My team mate Tim looked up and said, "How's the heart rate?" I responded with "Oh, about mach 2!" There was no damage luckily. Just the fumes burned.
I will have more stories later.