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

Am I correct in saying the only difference between these two is the shell?

https://www.scmodels.co.uk/shop/axial-124-scx24-deadbolt-4wd-rtr-green/

https://www.scmodels.co.uk/shop/axial-124-scx24-jeep-wrangler-jlu-crc-rtr-yellow/

@Merak when I was researching ours I think I discovered that the Deadbolt was their first one and they made some very small revisions for the Jeep and Chevy models. Cannot for the life of me remember what they were, we got the Chevy C10 in grey. Might see about picking up the Jeep body for variety, or just an extra one so we can race 🙂

What’s the runtime like on that SCX24? Been considering one for the boy as he’s a bit bored of his Tamiya buggy now.

It was about £50 to buy in December and it’s really quick – 30kmh according to the specs.

Find out for certain

Speed Flea

@northernmatt I’ve not stopwatched ours but I feel like it goes for about an hour – it’s often longer than the boy’s attention span for it anyway. The charge doesn’t take too long either. I have heard that the supplied charger is sensitive about power so I’m only using it through PC USB ports rather than plugging into phone chargers, apparently they can blow it through supplying too many amps. It’s still complete in 2 hours or so.

Here, I’ve been meaning to put together a little edit of our truck and today’s conversation tipped me over the edge into doing it. There’s a silly yeehaw tune on the first half just to put something over the chatter. And I had to blur out my wife who’s sofa nap became an obstacle, not sure she’d thank me for broadcasting that one to the world! As the description says, this is my kid at the controls, it’s possible to handle it with a little more finesse but he does pretty well actually.

Excellent.

Next time my missus falls asleep on the couch I’ll run over her with the tank.

Looks like our house, wife trying to nap on the sofa, Lego and KiwiCo box detritus, dad and kids doing their best to stop mum napping.

Battery life in a crawler is ace. I very rarely go full throttle and the technical moves are more interesting anyway. in a buggy i’m basically full throttle the whole time so battery gets some serious use

@milko9000

Superb! Im defo after one of these now.😬😁

Sold my Escort shell…

Got another one, the pre painted kit one felt like cheating anyway.😬

I’m going for a non box art livery on this one.👌

Had the trx4 out for a wee crawl in the dark with a light kit. Says it’s waterproof so thought I’d test that out properly in some Scottish bog. It survived the bog, and was an absolute blast. Made it up some amazingly steel muddy hills. However a bit later it died. Upon examination after a hose down, seems I lost a brush from the motor. A cheapish fix and worth it for the fun!

Well…in all honesty, it would have been a really cheap fix if I hadn’t also spotted a hobbywing sale on and bought a brushless motor and wax combo!

What a great idea @mrmonkfinger! Not sure I can justify the cost but I like it 🙂

Just brilliant!

@Merak that’s awesome, do you print your own stickers or are they from another kit? I’ve been going at my Subaru shell here and there for about 2 weeks now and I’ve not even got to the stage of paint and there’s you doing that in 2 days!

@Bullet

Cheers, that’s kind.👍

@northernmatt

I did this yesterday start to finish 8hrs give or take. It’s really not that bad once you’ve done a few.

The decals are from eBay.

If you don’t get round to it send me your Subaru and I’ll do it for you.👌

Gob.

Smacked.

*Applauds* 🙂

yup, that’s a beaut!

@Merak – I would but this is the first I’ve done for about 20 years so I’m going to see if I can not cock it up. I’ve procrastinated a bit, shell is cut out I just need to sort sharp edges. In the mean time I’ve been cutting the stickers out. Painting is the main issue as I’ve got nowhere inside to do it so I’m at the mercy of the weather.

The boy has asked me to paint and sticker his Rising Fighter as well so may use that as practice even though it’s a different material.

@Merak – That is great work and only took 8 hours!

With working every day, only get half an hour every night to do mine, cutting a bit out every night, spray 1 layer a night and maybe 1 – 2 stickers per night ended up taking 2 months and look no where as good as yours.

This is an M03 chassis that I picked up from someone who had it sat on a shelf with a body that doesn’t suit it:

Had it upgraded with full bearing set and a set of Mini CVA shocks that I have sitting around. It is surprisingly fun and handles just like a real Mini so decided to get a Mini body for it. Tamiya has discontinued all the Mini bodies so I had to get one from L & L and a set of decals from RCdecals. The main complaint is the windows stickers were too small, I would have just use masking tape if I had known, also, a lot of the original details were replaced by sticker but here it is:

I bought a set of mini wheels for it but it just looked a bit boring. The white wheels seem to suit it.

Ooh, I like that. Gives me an idea…

@nicholas_yiu

Loving the Mini👌👏

Can thourougly recommend one of these, if you are after somthing cheapish, bloody fast and tough as nails…Banggood special

@merak – your Escort looks superb once again!

@nicholas_yiu – like the look of the Mini too.

I’m excitedly waiting for the delivery of my new one – a 2CV Rally. I ordered it at the end of Jan to go alongside the Unimog. I’m looking forward to the build, thought the Unimog was really fun to put together. I’ve got the bearing kit already and also the ‘sport tuned’ motor to go in so we’ll see how that goes.

I didn’t really enjoy doing the body on the ‘mog and didn’t make a great job of it. To take away some of the pain I bought myself a Dremel and spent my lunchtime quickly cutting out the spare shell I ordered for the 2CV to practice on. Definitely the way forward, I’ve got a couple of edges to smooth but so much easier that using scissors and craft knives like I used on the last one. And once it’s painted (another bit I don’t enjoy) should be a good alternative to the Citroen shell. The MO5 is FWD so the Maxi 5 body feels ‘wrong’ – but I suppose I could pretend that it’s just a regular one with a Dimma kit on it 🙂

R5 by Chrispoffer Lawrence[/url], on Flickr

So….. gluing tyres? Had the mighty ‘mog out at the weekend on the scoot track again and all the wheel spinning caused a couple of tyres to come off the rim. I’ve had this in the past – when I first built it at Xmas I had the special Tamiya glue which I ran around the inside of the tyre before popping on the wheel. After we had another tyre pop off I tried a couple of blobs of gorilla super glue gel. Same again – so what’s the best method?? Super glue all the way around?

Obviously not using full throttle all the time isn’t an option 😉

I’ve super glued the tyres on my And Bull.

Guys, I’ve got an old Tamiya TL-01 that I dragged out of my parents loft when back in the day. Turns out that ‘young me’ wasn’t particularly kind to the old body shell and what is left of it is largely held together with tape and hope…

Is there anywhere online where I can source a reasonably priced body shell so that I can spruce it up again. Mechanically, it seems to work fine still so seems like a nice project to work on with my lad.

Thanks in advance.

eBay is probably your best source.

Just type in Tamiya TL-01 body in and you should get some hits.

I’ve also used Modelsport for odds and sods and they’ve been great. Might be worth a squint at their website? I would think you could probably use any 1/10 scale shell that you fancy really, they’re all pretty interchangeable.

I have read this and many other threads with interest. It is solarider jnr’s 6th birthday, and as much as I don’t need an excuse to buy one for myself, I would like something we can share (well, OK, it’s for me really!).

I have narrowed it down to either:

FTX Ranger XC 1/16th
FTX Outback 3.0 1/24th
Axial SCX24 Jeep 1/24

There is quite a range of prices but they are ultimately all affordable value end models. I want the best out of the box experience (but I am sure that tinkering will follow!).

Of the 2 1/24 models, the Axial always get better reviews, but is it really worth twice as much as the FTX? Will 1/24th be just too small outside and would I be better off with the 1/16th which is still cheaper than the Axial?

I have definitely focused in on a Crawler in terms of low speed, long run time and more engagement than just watching it wizz round in circles (having ruled out something like the FTX Comet for example).

WWSTWD?

I got an axial scx24 for my daughter. It’s really good but I suspect the FTX will be nearly as good at a lower price. 1/24th is a good size for indoor use. Think 1/16th might be a wee bit big for tabletop crawling.

I’d defo go with the SCX24

I don’t know what size the FTX 1/16 model is, my mate has the FTX 1/10 and it’s HUGE! Much bigger than my SCX10.2.

In general the FTX isn’t that well built, but it’s good entry level stuff. If you’re going to get serious the build quality comes into question

I have the original Outback 1/24th, it was disappointing tbh- the combined esc/radio was very unreliable, I warrantied it twice then just stumped up for a proper esc and put it on my other radio. I think they might have changed that for the newer one. GOod fun around the house though.

The MN99 (and other variants) is decent, and good value- it’s picked up a good aftermarket too. It does feel plastickier than the outback 1/24 and definitely much more so than teh little axial but I’ve not killed mine yet. It’s a bit bigger and can crawl on a lot more stuff, but still “feels” and drives small compared to a 1/10. A lot of people seem to go daft for upgrades but mine is stock apart from the electronics and some wheel weights, I might add a little more metal just to improve the steering.

In a strange change of direction, we are now considering the Carisma Range Rover. Can’t quite justify the Traxxis R4 Defender as a first car but this looks decent and a cut above the FTX stuff.

In reality we will probably use the car outside on walks and the 24th scale stuff seems better suited to inside.

It’s a bit more money, but is it a bit more car or are we just better off sticking with the FTX type stuff?

Carisma is good. Much better than FTX. Looks pretty cool too

@Merak – there you go finishing another shell before I’ve done even one. It’s half painted, I’ve got the blue on but I’m waiting on a can of silver coming to make it look a bit nicer. I also realised the spoiler is ABS so needs different paint, waiting on that as well.

@Merak that shell looks fantastic, as do the others that you’ve posted on this thread.

@Solarider my brother is currently building the Carisma Coyote kit and a mate has picked up the Range Rover kit. Although they’ve not driven them yet they do seem happy with the quality of the components. I believe some Axial SCX10 parts fit too so there should be plenty of scope to upgrade later on should you wish.

I’m enjoying using my WPL C14 around the house, I’ve seen they can be quite good outdoors too but their size limits things a bit. As such I’m considering building a 1:10 scale crawler/trail truck.

More top Escortage up there Merak.

Just so everyone knows, it’s actually possible to do a slightly less than awesome job…. Thought I’d share this to prove it :-).

My 2CV Rally turned up on Tues so I’m going to have some fun this weekend building it. I’d ordered this R5 Turbo Maxi shell a few weeks ago to try and improve my woeful record with bodywork and have a bit of a practice. Cut it out an awful lot better than the Unimog but the paint’s still ropey. Hopefully I’ll have learnt some lessons by the time I do the 2CV shell…… Hopefully it fits over the M05-RA chassis, resting on the wheels there’s not much clearance. Might have to cut the arches a little more.

r5 turbo2 by Chrispoffer Lawrence[/url], on Flickr