looking to buy a nitro powered buggy for my boy for xmas, he’s got a tamiya mad bull so after something like that. it’ll be used on a big grass carpark and on hard sand on the beach.

we have radio gear, will probably need servers, and i’m undecided between a ready built or a kit. if i can get a better car for my cash with a kit then thats the one.

want to spend up to £150 ideally, but suggestions over would be good so i can maybe track down a bargain.

‘For the boy’? I have tried to use that excuse also but babybgoode is only 15 months old and it doesn’t wash with Mrs Danny…

Honestly I’d stay away from Nitro R/C cars. It stinks, is messy, people get offended by the noise, needs loads of maintenance and gets very expensive when you end up breaking something every time you use the car.

If I was getting back into R/C I’d look at an electric one for sure. I’d look at RTR prebuilt kits and buy some spare battery packs. Unless you enjoy building of course, but it’s not for me.

Edit oh god they’ve re-released the Tamiya Hotshot, this is going to cost me!

I’ll echo what randomjeremy said. I ran nitro car for a while (Traxxas Revo) and it was great fun. However I did seem to spend more time fixing and tuning it than driving it. If I was buying again I’d go electric.

i hear what you are saying, but the mad bull takes a deay to charge and the battery runs out in about 10mins. if theres a way to do electricity better i’d be keen to learn.

that hotshot looks cool though!

buy more batteries, be a lot cheaper.

I bought a nitro car, it was awful, the stuff stank and leaked everywhere and it broke a lot, particularly the bits needed to get it started.

You should look into going lipo and brushless (electric), perfectly possible to get 45 mins runtime from a single battery, with lower maintenance and better performance (speed and instant torque = smokey doughnuts) than nitro. Not sure if you’ll find a deal for one for £150 though.

Just search ‘lipo brushless’ on Youtube. It’s amazing how far electric has come over the last decade.

i cannot agree more with what others have said. do not under any circumstances buy nitro unless you have a lot more than £150 to spend and an equal amount of time. when they are working they are brilliant fun but when they arent they are extremely infuriating and expensive to repair. they tend to be quite heavy (relatively speaking) and can go very fast. this combination can lead to some sizeable damage both to the car and whatever/whoever it hits.
get something lipo powered. i would seriously look at a rock crawler. buy him a pile of rocks/logs at the end of the garden and he can make courses over that. the advantage of crawlers is they dont go very fast so have less scope to self destruct on impact with a car/kerb/fencepost/tree/wall/person/another car.

if its speed you want buy him a

Losi Mini Eight

these are great fun, cheap to run and repair and are very upgradable.
failing that look at what classes any local clubs run and try and get a 2nd hand setup to go racing with them.

You need to really like stripping cleaning and repairing to get fun out of nitro. Mine shakes itself to bits. And the noise is an issue.

oh yeah the noise. forgot about that. if you live in the arse end of nowhere you’ll still get people moaning. local parks often have bans on nitro cars too.
i know nitro seems like a good idea but i spent a lot of money finding out that it wasn’t. and i started out only wanting to spend a relatively small amount of money. at the clubs i was a member of we saw so many guys turn up with a new cheap car only for them to crash it pretty quickly and damage it. they would go away completely disheartened never to be seen again. or they would rock up at the next meeting with the latest wonder car having spunked a heap of cash.
i would absolutely go electric is i was starting again.

I’d have to agree with all of the above, had a nitro car once (Kyosho), fuel stank, was expensive, fuel tank leaked, thing never quite ran properly, still have to charge glowplug starter, wouldn’t always start etc etc, was a nice idea, and great when it was working 100%, it just very rarely did.

Bought a cheap, electric, Tamiya mini cooper (monte carlr rallye edition)a couple of years back, much more fun, charge and go, no hassle, no noise, it has reverse, and the ‘J’ turns are awesome.

I fancy an RC rock crawler, but can’t find any cheap ones……..

Get a 2nd bigger battery for 20quid and a fast charger. The fast charger will even run from a car 12v socket. Charges in less than an hour from memory.
Got 2 madbulls and 3 batteries.

a mate just brought one of these for £135

(i know its apex again but i find their website easiest to use.)

Just to add a bit of balance, the club I race at is almost 100% nitro http://www.NDOR.co.uk but the few guys who race electric cars break them just as often as the nitro boys!
Lipos need treating with a certain amount of respect as well.

Cheers guys, didn’t know about brushless/lipo and after googling some interesting stuff to read up on. Think it may be the way over nitro for what we’ll use the car for. Also found info on converting the mad bull to brushless so that could be fun too.

Why can’t someone invent a 4 stroke car. Nothing gets my goat more than a 2 stroke that doesn’t change gear.
Buy one if you positively have to **** off everyone in a mile radius.
My very clever next door neighbour is going to build a jammer. That should be worth watching.