Tamiya and other R/C vehicles (not just for Christmas)

I had a TL-01 with long suspension arm and oil fill shock kit. I had hours of fun with that back in the days.

Reading this thread make me look again. I was looking at Tamiya originally and then found this:

Losi Mini 8ight-T

I keep thinking it’s too good to be true but seems genuine. I am now £139 poorer but what a deal! I will see on Monday.

Well that does seem like a much more sensible idea, much cheaper and probably a better, more modern car.

But that’s not the point of a Tamiya

I don’t care how good it is, it looks weird

Has to be 1/10th otherwise it’s a toy

If you did get that losi for that it is a great deal I have two of them and they go for £120+ second hand

That Losi seems too good to be true nearly brought the one for sale on this very forum for lots more money, we shall see 😆

I have both the buggy and truggy versions, thinking about selling the buggy now though as having two is a bit silly

Hi Wiggles, how have you found them lots of horror storys about bits breaking etc on the internet?.
You run them standard or lipos battery etc?.
I am hoping it will be reliable and fast enough standard.

Well I found a fun new game with the Neo Fighter chasing the boy round the car park tagging his back wheel, great laugh!

Well, it was until I mis-judged it and went between his wheels, chassis snapped when he ran it over. Bah.

I don’t blame anyone though, certainly not myself anyway. Impossible to forsee that happening….

Hi Wiggles, how have you found them lots of horror storys about bits breaking etc on the internet?.
You run them standard or lipos battery etc?.
I am hoping it will be reliable and fast enough standard.

They are pretty strong for their size, mine has a faster than standard motor and I run it on 2s and 3s lipos(crazy fast) only things I have changed because I actually broke them were the rod ends and shock eyelets (about £10-15 for upgraded ones) and has been fine since.

Definitely use lipo batteries.

can you recommend a decent cheap lipo from ebay to fit this losi?

I use these batteries and this charger

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-2200mah-2s-30c-lipo-pack.html
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/accuell-s60-ac-charger-uk-plug.html

Its a tight squeeze I had to trim a tiny bit of the plastic on the battery mounts but I dont really use them anyway and just use velcro to hold it down. you will need to change the conector on the battery or esc or just get an adaptor cable if you cant solder

WEEEEEEEE. I hadn’t quite realised a) how big my madbull would be and b) how fast it’d be even with stock motor. What a laugh, it’s lucky it’s tough as I keep driving it into our apple trees. Clearly I should never be allowed anything faster.

Unfortunately the transmitter that came with it is pretty much worn out… Fair enough, I knew it was a nearly-new buggy with someone’s old kit thrown in and the price is still happy-making. Anyone recommend a good value replacement? I don’t know the first thing about it tbh.

I’d like to use it to drive at least 2 vehicles- I plan to spruce up the blue truck a bit. So it’s got to be simple to do that, I assume I just stick a receiver in each? I think I prefer twin stick at this point but maybe I just need to get used to a pistolly one?

Some great cars and stories in this tread. My latest purchase was a Tamiya Sand Scorcher body on the eBay 20% off day. I will probably buy a re release grasshopper or frog to donate a chassis and build it up for Mrs Racer as my Re release scorcher is the only R/C has ever shown an interest in.

Northwind – Flysky GT3C

About£35 for transmitter and receiver, rechargeable battery and has multiple model memory and extra receivers can be had for about £5

Cheers Wiggles.

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing I’m returning that cheap Madbull. And buying, a new Madbull. Hurrah! My cheap entry into the hobby is not so cheap but still not bad. Ordered from Jadlam and got the buggy for £75 and a lipo for it instead of nimh since I have a fast lipo charger.

Only now I want a scaler very very badly.

What Scaler are you thinking of Northwind? There are some nice kits out there now and there has never been more choice!

Not sure tbh, need to keep it cheap (and sell some other stuff to pay for it) so an Outback 2 seems likely- good enough to just go, cheap enough that I can get some pocket money hopups for it over time. But open to suggestions. (it’s kind of a shame you can’t get a kit Outback- you can get a rolling chassis but it’s barely any cheaper than the RTR)

Aside; the little army truck responded excellently to a 180 motor upgrade, I reckon that’s what they did the website videos with as the stock 130 was gutless. But it didn’t like a 2S lipo quite so much and now the steering chip is dead. Ah well! I’ll find a cheap servo and esc for it, it looks like a standard servo on its side will work. I think it’s given me £20 worth of fun already though

I don’t have any first hand experience of the Outback and run Axial or RC4WD normally but I was quite impressed with the Carisma SCA-1E I saw at a competition earlier in the year, it’s a bit over budget at £229 but it has a lot of features standard that would normally be hip ups at that price point … there is also a kill t out soon so that might be cheaper.

That’s definitely got the look doesn’t it. Cheers! I’ll definitely not be buying anything more for a while anyway so I’ll wait and see what happens with the kit

Blew the ESC on my 1/5th Savage last week, running 8s lipo.

Just ordered a new ESC and might drop down to 6s from now on, cars are afteral not supposed to be air bound 99% of the time.

Had some good sales on ebay so lashed out on a used ECX Barrage that came with a nice selection of hopups, and 3 lipos for some reason. The shell is frankly disgusting but it’ll take the shell off the FTX Outback no problem, and all the basic model’s issues are sorted- proper servo, wider stance, and the ECX comes with better electronics stock.

(previous owner’s picture:

Blew up the motor on the second day, thrashing it around in the snow in a very uncrawlery way, my bad. So it’s donated one of its lipos and its servo to the Madbull for now. I’ll get some more bits for it (it’s amazing how much you can spend on ebay and aliexpress while never spending more than £10…)

Oh and the madbull’s in the middle of paint which I think is turning out quite nicely, and, because of the 20% off ebay deal after christmas, gained a brushless motor for maximum damage. The servo from the Barrage is ridiculously strong for a buggy, 15kg IIRC but it’s good for muscling all that bendy blobby tamiya steering out of the way.

Hopefully the 2 are different enough that I can enjoy them both but I have to say, the scale crawler thing suits me down to the ground

I think I am going to have to get a car/truck.

I decided to get an RC plane a few months ago, well I bought a sim programme and a transmitter, I was told the sim is very good and it saves lot’s of mending planes. After lot’s of trying I can’t keep a plane under any sort of control!
Start with a car I think, how hard can it be;-)

Love the idea of planes but I don’t think I could deal with the heartbreak of crashing them 😆 Whereas crashing a buggy or a crawler is more or less the entire point.

Northwind – Member
Whereas crashing a buggy or a crawler is more or less the entire point.

You’re right, however after building up my new car I fear that it’s going to be too nice to crash 😯
Just finishing painting the shell now, hopefully be able to run it tomorrow 🙂

Northwind – Member
I’ll definitely not be buying anything more for a while

1 week ago 😆

A week IS a while.

It’s not quite the same issue with modern foam ones. The micro ones don’t have enough momentum to do huge amounts of damage and you can fix them with tape, however I have found that you do end up needing to replace some bits. However with the slightly bigger ones all you need is EPS glue. I have one of these http://www.bananahobby.com/4-ch-fms-blue-mini-f4u-corsair-v2-rc-warbird-airplane-rtf.html – once flew it pretty much full throttle straight into the ground and the only thing I had to replace was the prop, just glued the rest of it back together again.

That looks like a great base Northwind, looks like it’s had a tyre ungrade too, RC4WD Iroks?

Copies sadly but considering I know nothing, they seem fine. (that’s another thing I like about the scaler thing, there’s no point in worrying about top performance- it gets me in the fatbike nerve)

The stock ones came with it too, they’re a lovely looking Falken licenced tyre but they’ve got no tread. I have some metal beadlocks on the way just to add some low down weight so I’ll maybe mess around more once they arrive. Or I might just get another set of rear madbull wheels and put it on those, they’re all 12mm 😆

(also, had a proper LOL about the price of balancing weights if you add “RC” or “crawler” into the description, might have to add some to my ebay store 😉 I have about a million in the garage that came with my bead breaker)

Last night, i changed the oil in my rear shocks (four of them) as they were running a bit soft on the stock 25wt oil, gone up to 30 and feeling better and have a spare bottle of 35 just in case. If still no good, change of springs will be required.

Today my new 150A ESC should arrive allowing me to run 6S Lipo’s (running 2 in parallel for balance and run times) which means the car could exceed 80mph given the room and if I can keep all 4 wheels on the ground.

Wow, two sodding months, but it’s finished.☺

Only managed about an hour a week, but thoroughly enjoyed the build.

Managed to strip a chassis screw, but fixed it using the plastic tube from a cotton bud as a plug. The self tapping screws are an unbelievably cheap touch and might put me off another Tamiya.

Couldn’t fit the receiver box without a low profile servo, but it’s all together now, just waiting for the paint to dry on the shell (have been running it without the shell for a few days).

Can’t believe how much fun the bloody thing is to drive – instant childhood. Fast enough, handles well, hasn’t broken even after a trip to the local skatepark.

And I built it myself. Useless me, who struggles to put a shelf up.

The manual was great until I had to install the servo, ESC and receiver, it assumes a level of competence I only aspire too, even if it is aimed at 8 year olds.

Not had so much fun in ages.

It’s purple, obviously.

Thanks for all the responses and inspiration.

Next on the agenda looks like the M-05 Citroen 2CV.

Once again, thanks for all the responses, very much appreciated.

Pete.

Nice work fella.  TTIUWP.

Cheers mate. Struggling with TTIUWP though….🙂

Just finished a battle  with the decals – just about got the hang of it at the end – lots of big pieces, not easy to line up.

Anyone else finished their impulse builds?

And can anyone recommend a photo hosting site which plays nicely with the new forum?

Thanks.

I’m still finishing paint on the Madbull, I got a bit carried away…

Having a lot of fun with the crawler though. Fixed the Barrage and decided to sell it on as a runner, and got this:

Literally the same thing but 2 generations newer so it has a better motor and axles and is a bit longer. And is hideous and orange. £140 brand new… Stabbed in a lipo, got a used killerbodies Pajero body that’ll go on it, and some standard cheapie bits- some pressed steel beadlocks, a hobbyking esc and an aliexpress winch and light bar. I can’t ride just now so it’s been getting bounced around the local woods a lot- but I just twisted a cv shaft off it so waiting for a warranty replacement on that.

(oh, photo is from flickr, just copy in the basic link from “share” and the forum photoises it without you needing to do anything. Progress!)

Northwind, I really fancy one of those crawlers, and have resisted buying one for about 4 months. Your pictures aren’t helping my willpower!

I sold my Hobao Hyper 10 chassis and Tamiya Mondeo for not much yesterday, but the drift car didn’t sell so I might play about with that. Or I might just leave it untouched for another couple of years…

Well, if it’s any help if I was starting again I wouldn’t buy this truck- it’s great value but the drivetrain’s a bit suspect and it’s taken some effort to get it solid. And since I’m not using the stock electronics and I’m replacing the body, the point of the RTR seems a bit lost… Now this, I would buy:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3RACING-KIT-EX-REAL-RC-Crawler-EX-REAL/332544079911?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649

Sorry, I missed that reply. Yeah, that’s useful actually. I was looking at the Carisma Coyote around Christmas, but thought that the FTX Outback 2 offered better value. Now I am not so sure.

I didn’t make a lot selling on my old stuff so I am trying to forget about RC stuff, although I am tempted to buy a lunchbox and fit the old motor and radio gear from the drift car that didn’t sell, because  Lunchbox! We used to have a Lunchbox and Pumpkin about 20 years ago, well I still have it but it’s fairly broken and I suspect it will all be really brittle now too.

The Coyote looks lovely tbh. Though I think in some ways it falls into £1500 Mountainbike Territory- where everything’s a little bit better than a £1000 mountain bike, but not enough to be gamechanging, and definitely enough to be annoying if you then upgrade bits.But the shell, mmmm.

The Outback 2 and its cousins are superb value tbh but realistically you’re going to strip a diff spool sooner or later and spend £15 an end fixing that, and they need a new servo on day one really so that’s another £15… And then you’ll probably want some steel beadlocks to get the weight down low. Basically, it’s crack cocaine and the first hit’s free.

Ugliness aside, my RGT is pisstakingly good for £140.