RC cars

my first proper rc car was the black foot! (afaik its the same chassis as the monster beetle, gravedigger etc) powered by the might 540 motor. it didnt take long to buy a stock motor (couldnt afford a proper modified motor) for it and then it really went quick with battery life also dwindling!.

i got fed up of gluing the front grill back on as the bumper was poorly designed to knock into it with every crash. (or just my crappy 10yr old driving!) my brother had the next one up in the line but cant remember the name (purple comes to mind) but it had a much lower sturdier bumper to protect the shell and better suspension.

Also had various mardave mini's/ beetles that had foam wheel. ridiculous quick with a 6 cell battery's that also ate its tyres in no time due to road use.... got a few nitro / carbon chassis cars along the way but its always the blackfoot that held a fond memory.

Still got a alfa tl-01 chassis stuck in my loft with the full bearing kit, oil shocks, various other hopups! and a random brand 4wd nitro Subaru Impreza in my parents loft thats probably long since seized with no parts to get running again.

A frustrating hobby for a kid who could never afford spares/upgrades!!
 
Usel said:
One is 2wd and the other is 4wd. They both come in brushed and brushless versions but the 2wd model you have specified is brushed. (Reading again the Rustler 4x4 you specified is also brushed.)
2wd and 4wd have different skill disciplines so depends what you want to do with it.
I have an Hpi efirestorm flux which is the 2wd Rustler equivalent. The biggest downside of 2wd is that everytime you brake hard you do a handbrake turn. Every time you accelerate hard you pull a wheelie, and then can't turn. You also have a little less air control when trying to level the car mid air from a jump.
Imagine driving a real car without front brakes. 2wd needs a higher skill level but only because it's essentially worse.
I still enjoy 2wd but I have 4 4wd cars and only 1 2wd car.
Get a car with a brushless setup now if you can afford it. Look up the price of Traxxas brushless Esc's and motors if you want help trying to justify it.
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Thanks. I have a budget of around £300, ideally including the battery and the charger. I'm guessing the battery included in the bundles aren't the greatest so not sure if its worth doing that. Any other suggestions for the price?
 
Andybtsn said:
Thanks. I have a budget of around £300, ideally including the battery and the charger. I'm guessing the battery included in the bundles aren't the greatest so not sure if its worth doing that. Any other suggestions for the price?
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Chargers are about £30‐£40, LiPo batteries are about £30 a pop each for chinese zop power or floureons. Traxxas branded batteries are lot more expensive.
You might be best to save up a bit more and get an Arrma Outcast 4s. They seem very strong out of the box with no modifications needed. Here's Kevin Talbot bashing one on YouTube, fast forward to 4m 30s https://youtu.be/oDeuhMNDzEY
They are about £340 for the car and then you need LiPo batteries and LiPo charger.
If you want to stick to under £300 all in then you are looking at starter models like the Maverick Strada range or FTX Carnage which are ok but they are not very strong.
Maybe try looking into getting a second hand model?
 
Tamiya are scale models that RC. They are not, bar the proper competition cars, designed to go fast; rather they are designed to perform to scale at scale speed. Of course there are lots of tamiya stock racing cups/series for all sorts of models in the range but not many rc clubs in the UK.

No matter how much money you throw at most of the Tamiya range, they don't perform, nor ever can perform, even close to the other cheaper lipo rtr options on the market or traxxas etc etc.

Tamiya are also 100% focused on their core japanese market. The rest of the world is pretty much incidental to them.

All being said, I love Tamiya. Going 50-70mph with a traxxas x maxx gets boring very quickly.
 
I've got a Tamiya form years ago, also had a cheap one form Argos or Tandy etc... the one my sister had from Tandy wasn't too bad tbh... had some turbo boost setting that was quite fast - can still pick those up for like £20 on eBay etc.. if you want a cheap but reasonable RC car @Vidar


I do wonder re: the Tamiya ones - given the prevalence of spare parts on e-bay etc.. and the desire to often replace the speed controller, suspension and electric motor - I wonder if it is cheaper to just buy all the required spares directly with the desired upgraded versions just brought directly in place of the standard parts instead of buying the complete kit.
 
Some of these car names brought back some fun times when i raced these cars in my younger days, even remembered a video from one of the world championship races that happened a few years after i stopped racing them.

 
For Christmas 1988 I got a Tamiya Thunder Dragon which I raced at a local Sunday R/C Club for a year, upgrading the motor and several other parts along the way. I also started to saved up for Schumacher Porsche 911 which I was planning to race on tarmac events but I lost interest and it didn't happen.
Part of the fun back then was building them up, like Lego but usable :p

I also remember drooling over the Tamiya Avante which just looked amazing in the catalogue.


I've bought my son a few R/C cars which he's used a couple of times but doesn't seem that interested. His PS4 and iPad take all of his attention :(
 
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Scrutinize said:
Tamiya are scale models that RC. They are not, bar the proper competition cars, designed to go fast; rather they are designed to perform to scale at scale speed. Of course there are lots of tamiya stock racing cups/series for all sorts of models in the range but not many rc clubs in the UK.

No matter how much money you throw at most of the Tamiya range, they don't perform, nor ever can perform, even close to the other cheaper lipo rtr options on the market or traxxas etc etc.

Tamiya are also 100% focused on their core japanese market. The rest of the world is pretty much incidental to them.

All being said, I love Tamiya. Going 50-70mph with a traxxas x maxx gets boring very quickly.
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Tamiya are like the Apple of the RC world. I would buy one if I wanted a hobby and something pretty to look at but there are plenty of other firms that are your Android. Not quite as pretty but a far better driving experience.

Saying that if I was going to buy a RC car now I would more than likely buy a tamiya but at least get one with a decent chassis or the required upgrades.
 
Going back a few years, we had a huge nitro RC thread on here and I got caught up and bought a couple, a truck and a buggy. I built one of them but getting the engine started and run in was such a pain that I think I only actually ran it up and down the street outside once. The other one just sat in the box with all the upgrades I bought at the same time and then got sold for a huge loss a while later.

I could be tempted by an electric car but wonder if it'd just get used a handful of times and forgotten about.
NoobCannon said:
when did rainforests start selling products?
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Yeah, @wazza300 OcUK don't sell RC cars so you're allowed to say Amazon.
 
@Feek See that's what I'm worried about, it's his birthday coming up in a few weeks and I'd get him a better one since he's destroyed the box on this one already... but knowing him he'll forget about it shortly after.
 
Oh man I had the Typhoon Hovercraft, I was too worried about using it on water though... sold it to cash converters for some reason and always regretted it.
 
Ah the Typhoon. Clearly the video must have been sped up, it was great but slow. I tried mine on water once, in a lake. Went a bit far and then started sinking but a swimmer rescued it for me.

Was great on wet grass, however.
 
Had a Typhoon too, and used it on water at a boating lake in Runcorn. Worked well until the miserable old ******** of the local model boat club came out, as their controllers effectively jammed mine, so my Typhoon was left spasmodically circling in the middle of the pond as the battery ran ever lower, while they refused to turn their controllers off for just a minute or two to let me recover it, despite the chairman of the club asking them to. Luckily, one member took pity on me, and used his model Tribal class destroyer to nudge it to the side so I could get it out.
 
To go back to the OP's original question: Why are RC cars so naff these days?

Little kids need fairly slow, abuse-tolerant cars. Older kids then want consoles, drones, new phones, etc. Not RC cars.
The sector that is suffering in the 'one or two steps up from beginner' models- the sort teenagers used to buy in my day- lower-end Tamiya buggies and the like.

Now you have the little-kid ranges, then a *few* slightly better models, then it's into the expensive adult hobby side of things. It seems to be the £60-120 segment that has thinned out.

Same is happening with model railways. Cheapo basic plastic tat for little kids, then full-on Hornby mortgage-fodder with very little in between...
 
Mark A said:
I remember wanting a Tamiya soo bad when i was a kid (I think it was a Tamiya Ford Cosworth rally RC car that was on display in the hobby shop window), but my family had no chance of buying me something that expensive, so I always got the crappy £20 ones that ran out of batteries after 20 mins and never got used again :(.

I have a couple of 1/10 scale Tamiya RC cars now a TB-01 and TB-02. Really need to get some more batteries and have a go with them as they have just been sat unused for like 10 years. Might even look into upgrading them to brushless if it has dropped in price since I last looked into it.
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yes ! The repsol cosworth is what I got for my 11th birthday! Great car :D
 
great find that advert for the Rebound. Remember mine, put the thing through hell and survived (most tests...)! Was a great machine. Growing up on farm we had plenty of space to let it run, jump of things and things to make ramps out of, different terrains to drive it on.

Finally succumbed to a unsuccessful water jump where battery sapped and ended up in the drink as didn't have enough speed compated to the last attempt. Not even the wondrous drying powers of the Aga warming oven could bring it back :(
 
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