Bit of a Mid of a mid life crisis but I’m just looking for something to build and have a play about with.

I’ve not had any experience of radio control for about 25 years when I have a Tamiya something. All I remember is it being great fun for about 5 mins then the battery going.

This kit has caught my eye as I’m not looking to spend much and I may get bored of it and pass it to my mates son

https://www.wirelessmadness.com/tamiya-1-10-2wd-grasshopper-complete-assembly-kit-58346

Is there anything better than the charger / battery in that deal ?

I remember when I was younger other lads going on about Ballrace Bearings, if I’m building it up, is it worth ballracing it ?

Thanks

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tamiya-58346-The-Grasshopper-RC-Kit-DEAL-BUNDLE-with-STEERWHEEL-Radio-/181886300647

Bit cheaper , no? Edit Ah battery no so good : (

Oooooh I want a frog so bad , muuuussst reeeesssissst!

Been doing a bit of research in this field lately as my son has one and wants to upgrade to a hobby level 1/10 scale.

It seems to be that the main difference these days is between brushed and brushless motors.
Brushed being slower and more expensive to upgrade later
Brushless tends to be about 70 quid more expensive from what ive seen

http://www.redcatracing.com/Tornado-EPX-PRO
This has popped regularly in my searches as a good starter rc nowadays but I wasnt prepared to pay that much so did some more research and found this(which turns out to be pretty much identical) at a much lesser cost.
https://m.nitrotek.co.uk/hsp-xstr-electric-radio-controlled-buggy-2-4ghz-pro-brushless-ver.html?fee=3&fep=9993&gclid=CjwKCAjw7frPBRBVEiwAuDf_LaqU2QOvEQyuEjdYL_hPE7qPXr5_APN-K8-RuWweGvRqQgf6rhMyZBoC-GIQAvD_BwE

They do sell a lesser specced brushed motor version for 100 quid as well

Wait till you have received to deal with nitrotek customer service then you’ll know why it’s cheap. Go to a decent model shop like mb models …with these things it tends to be buy cheap,buy twice!

I was involved in the hobby for probably 20 years on and off and I wouldnt recommend these types of cars to anyone.

Hornet is significantly faster than Grasshopper. Both are pretty basic by modern standards – ie the fixed rear axle RWD design is pretty terrible at putting power down. However it does mean they’re skiddy and good fun to drive.

You’ll do right to avoid nitro nowadays, IMHO.
I’ve a bonkers fast nitro 4wd truck, and it’s a right faff!!

At the time i bought it, electric was a bit naff.

Now with brushless and lipo being more available, that’s really the only way to go..

DrP

The Grasshopper was a bit ‘agricultural’ in it’s day. Now, it’s probably not worth bothering with, apart from perhaps a nostalgia point of view.

I bought myself a Tamiya Neo Fighter a couple of years ago, which was a bit more expensive than the Grasshopper but a lot more capable.

To be honest though, I should have got something with bigger wheels & a bit more ground clearance because most of the available space to use it is grass areas & the lower buggies struggle a bit.

From memory (and it’s a long long long time ago)

Hornet was basically a Grasshopper with a 520 motor and proper bearings in the axles rather than plastic bushes.

Hornet was better

Think my Ultima with carbon chassis is in my parents loft.

Got my lad a maverick strada couple of Xmas’s ago. Brilliant fun – he burnt the motor in the snow – cost £10 for another. Then a mouse chewed through the cable to the on/off switch (yes really) – fantastic customer support too. Got a 5300nimh battery and fast charger for it as the supplied one lasts about 10 mins
Maverick Strada MT

Find somewhere local that races RC cars or you’ll get fed up raging it around the garden. See what they are running and buy the same. Budget for spares as it will break fairly often if you are driving hard.

From memory (and it’s a long long long time ago)

Hornet was basically a Grasshopper with a 520 motor and proper bearings in the axles rather than plastic bushes.

The hornet did have the 540 motor, and had better shocks, but still had plastic bushings in the kit.

Both are good bulletproof fun cars, but absolutely terrible handling compared to a modern RC cars. Look on youtube where people have fitted brushless motors to a hornet, they really can’t put the power down!

I’ve rinsed a fortune on RC cars over the past few years with varying degrees of success.

From experience, Lipo is definitely the way forward and they’re at a price now where you can buy a couple of spare batteries to prolong the fun.

I’ve currently got one of these
Losi

Which is antisocial to say the least. It’s also massive and needs a field to drive about it

Get a 2s Lipo truggy from Traxxas – it’ll not break so easily, go like a bastard parts are available for it

Duly noted spenny… Thanks 😳

I did the same last year. Went for a Tamiya Blackfoot.

It was fun to build and get going. I didn’t bother painting/stickering it because I didn’t want to get too precious about it. Good job I didn’t, the body is scratched and I’ve broken two of the body mounts as well. The rear suspension is shite, it pops the driveshafts out for fun.

I wouldn’t buy one again. It’s good fun for arsing about with but I’d rather have a truggy sort of thing.

that Losi looks like it could be big enough, and powerful enough, to sit on and drive yourself round on….

I went through a short phase a few years ago of buying vintage tamiya RC cars off ebay, fixing them with expensive spares, then selling them on at a loss (doh!). Also used them a bit (nostalgia for my childhood hobby, used to race them), discovering that 30-year old plastic is really brittle, tried to interest my son in the hobby (then about 8 yrs old), but he didn’t go for it.

The brief bit of success/ fun I had driving them was with an Ansmann mad rat – pretty cheap and robust, fast as hell with modern motor/ battery/ electrics. Sold that one at a massive loss too!

You missed the boat Rick as the time to restore vintage Tamiya was a good 15 years ago. Loads of cheap buggies, loads of cheap spare parts, lots of reasonably priced NOS originals. I had loads of fun collecting a room full of Egress/Avante/2001/Astute/Mud Blaster/Monster Beetle/Thundershot/Fire Dragon/Terra Scorcher etc and defo came out the other end with a profit.

Then the cheap donor buggies dried up and all the spares got bought up by one bloke who then increased the prices massively. It’s all far too spendy now.

I’ve got an old traxxas nitro rustler (I think that’s the model name?) in the garage – Its a 1/10 stadium truck with a 2.1 engine. At the time engines that big only went in 1/18 cars, so it was pretty radical to put it in a 1/10 RWD truck.

It really needed the wheelie bar, and went through back tyres astonishingly quickly!

Its not been started for about 14 years, wonder if it would run…

We bought a couple of brushed trucks from Tay Models earlier this year. Despite not being brushless, they go like the clappers and are routinely crashed at high speed, leading to fairly regular repairs..Don’t assume you need to spend the money on brushless – brushed is pretty quick for a kick off, especially in the hands of my kids…

I got a Grasshopper kit about a year ago, purely for nostalgia. Like others have said it’s not the best handling RC car but with a 540 motor and cartridge bearings it’s rapid and good fun…in terms or outright speed not far off more expensive kits. Would love something similar to an Egress next though.

I just got my 30 year old kyosho Optima running again today. New radio gear and now an ESC Vs the original nasty mechanical one. I can see me building something else now.

I want a Traxxas 110 Defender

Realise this thread has ben bumped a bit but meh, it’s a good topic ;o)

That TRX4 is a great model and far better than 99% of Tamiyas offerings if you’re looking at just driving the thing.

I think for oldies reminiscing (me included), Tamiya are the go to with things like the Hornet, Lunchbox, Pumpkin, etc etc. But once built they are not actually that good to drive.

I bought a Traxxas Revo 3.3 nitro years ago and it was awesome out of the box. Sounded like a mini F1 car on full chat – but it was a faff to keep running properly and that noise was a tad offensive.

Converted it to brushless using decent kit and it is now a lot better to drive and faster but, I just don’t have the desire to use it any more.

Fancy the TRX 4 (land rover above) as it still goes decently but scale driving and having a battery last more than 15 minutes appeals nowadays.

I’ve been bitten by the bug hard (I used to be into them in the eighties), and AFAICT some of the vintage rere Tamiya stuff is actually surprisingly good to drive, but the mid-2000s Tamiya buggies (Durga, Baldre etc) are also terrific, a bit more competitive and not actually that expensive on eBay.

If you want to go for a new vintage released one, then I’d look at the Boomerang or Bigwig – not too pricey, and a LOT of the handling issues of the Hotshot, such as bump steer, have been designed out. New designed ones? The Tamiya stuff also seems pretty good, although it’s not that competitive if you want to race without a ton of hop ups.

For some reason the newer race buggies (ie the ones with the forward cab), whilst being MASSIVELY fast – like up to 50mph) and capable, seem to leave me cold. They days of the Frog and the Hornet at the local clubs is, sadly, long gone – although vintage racing is now making a huge comeback. Other companies (specifically Schumacher) are getting on board and it looks like it might take off again – nostalgia is a powerful mistress.

The difference between brushless and brushed isn’t actually all that massive; it’s a matter of torque, smoothness and where and when you can put the power down. Programmable electronic speed controllers help massively in that regard too. The biggest difference it seems to me is Lipo vs Nimh in terms of consistency of power over time; Lipo is massively better; lighter, with more power and less of a power loss curve throughout the charge.

And as someone said up there ^^, find a group on facebook or somewhere and get together with folks to play with them on a track, even if you’re not racing. It’s a lot (I mean a LOT) more engaging than puttering around your garden…

🙂

Hi. Modelsport is the place to go for Rcs. Hobbyking for the lipos. RC technology has come on leaps & bounds since the grasshopper. Comparing a grasshopper to a modern RC is like comparing a milk float to a Tesla. The msuk site is a mine of information. Have a look on there 😁

I want a Traxxas X-Maxx! I had a Yamiya xr311 followed by a Rough Rider waaaaay back in the day! I reckon a the Traxxas will be a right giggle 👍

Fancy the TRX 4 (land rover above) as it still goes decently but scale driving and having a battery last more than 15 minutes appeals nowadays.

I have one and it is great fun – as it is a rock crawler it doesn’t go silly quick but it can get over pretty much anything and I have yet to run the battery flat – it can go for a good couple of hours on the slow setting.

If anyone’s interested, I’ve got a Tamiya Super Fighter GR (DT-02) that’s for sale. Twin stick controller, Ni-MH battery + charger and runs for about 10 minutes flat out round Hartlepool BMX track on a charge.

My Traxxas X Maxx arrives this afternoon, excited!