Radio Control Cars

[GTI]

Hey guys,

I bought my 5 year old boy a relatively high performance (40 km/h) radio control car off Amazon for his birthday, not knowing how he would be able to handle it.


The good news is that he drives like a champ, and had little issue mastering the proportional throttle and steering. The only problem is the size of the controller for his small hands, he can't reverse without changing his grip.

Anway encouraged, I now want to buy him (and myself) something a lot better and start building a little garage of spares, batteries etc.. so I want to stick to one brand (Kyosho, Tamiya, HPI, Traxxas etc...) to reduce redundancy. Any thoughts on the best brand in terms of speed, reliability, durability and most importantly availability of spares?

Cheers

[EvilBoB]

RC cars are great fun. Ran a company selling them (and parts) a few years ago and it's great fun to do on the weekends too.

You have the big names there really. Tamiya tend to not be as good in my opinion. HPI parts are easy to come by and their cars are tough. Look up the HPI Trophy

If you are thinking of parts it will end up costing a fortune. Some parts will break more than others - it's all trial and error. I would highly recommend Wheelspin Models or Modelsport for your parts. They are the main two that I've used in the past.

At the moment I still have my 1:10 brushless Team Associated TC5 touring car (Won a few comptetitions with this), 1:8 brushless Caster Fusion off road buggy and a 1:5 HPI Baja clone (Mostly upgraded parts). All good fun but such an expensive hobby.

Do yourself a favour though. Stick with electric Much more fun, less maintenance and cleaning and not as fiddly but still give as much fun. Also the electric ones can jump higher Check out some of my vids on youtube : https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...ive&gws_rd=ssl

They are mostly from a few years ago but some of the vids are insane If you have any specific questions lemme know.

[GTI]

Great vids Evilbob, those things really do fly. Completely agree about electric, I also fly RC planes (I have about 8) and since making the switch from glow fuel I will never go back. I also have all the charging paraphernalia e.g. balancing charger, parallel charging boards, and a stack of 2S and 3S lipos.

[Little John]

I used to race 1:10 electric but have not raced or ran for years, everything seems to have gone nitro over the last 10 years and as EB said its messy well it was back then and I cant see how it can improve, never mind the noise they make. I ran a Tamiya 4WD thundershot which to be honest was crap but it worked and was good for some 4WD fun and Associated RC10 2WD which was epic in its day.

Stuff moved on from back then everything was plastic/nylon and a few carbon fibre or fibre glass parts became available but yeah replacing suspension arms and wishbones was almost a daily occurance, replace them for stronger parts and the chassis mounts would fail the thundershot was notorious for part A5 that held the front wishbones together the slightest tap on a front wheel and the mount would self destruct and it was attached to the tree with the gear boxes on so was the most expensive tree of parts to buy. but it was a laugh and great fun I would like to get back in to it but finding the time is difficult at the moment. just avoid anything you can buy in toysrus. a kit will allow you to build and learn miles more and repair it yourself.

[stevo25]

they are great fun, I remember my brother getting one about 27 years ago from Otley modelsports , and they are still around

[plug1]

The best nitro buggy I had was a mugan mbx . But get one with a drill start or even pull cord , as bumper boxes are pita .

[wakadoo]

i went the traxxas route, they really are tough and reliable.

very happy with all the range we had and then the waterproof stuff came along and that was just great for us.

once brushless and waterproof was in the house then it became all weather non stop fun.

as stevo says, modelsport at otley (leeds) is boy toy heaven and traxxas parts that were abundant.

1/10th was brill, 1/16th was rubbish and 1/5th was like an rc lawnmower and tedious (also super expensive)

2.4ghz was the cherry on the cake as we had over 20 cars by then and chucking out them crystals made life sooo easy.

get a few packs of them footy markers, find a muddy field and go for it, get em home, hose em down, oil em up and be ready for the next day....

have fun with it, we did...lol.

[EvilBoB]

The best nitro buggy I had was a mugan mbx . But get one with a drill start or even pull cord , as bumper boxes are pita .

My Caster Fusion is basically the Mugan MBX with some different parts and electric . Replaced lots with carbon fibre upgrades and stuff and it's now rock solid.

[EvilBoB]

Kits are great but also quite scarce these days. Most models are RTR so you just put in batteries and go. Shame really as I used to love building the Tamiya ones back in the day

I think the designs are a lot better these days though - much more solid. Plenty of hop ups available. I think the last one I bought was a 1:16 brushless buggy. Think it was an FTX Fury IIRC. It was so fast it would leave most 1:8 models for dust but because it was so small it would regular get totalled. Replaced most parts with ally bits - must have spent about £300 on parts! lol.

I'm going to have to get my Baja dusted off. That things is a beast.

[Mobileman]

Xmaxx is the boyo at moment without having to go mega expensive comes in at £700, few problems with it chewing pinions using the self righting button but videos on net are cracking

Biggest thing I've learnt over last few years is how many aren't standard seems be huge modding scene over standard stuff

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