Anyone into RC cars?

G

groovy_hippy

Member
 Derby
Just wondering really, and we might be selling a few...

I used to race 1/5 off road buggies (HPi Baja 5B!) . Excellent fun. Replaced that with a Contrast Fuego but never raced it (serious bit of kit - all machined aluminium, hydraulic brakes and a 26cc 2 stroke engine!). Also have an 18th scale stadium truck, brushless, goes like stink (Team Associated RC18T). I started off with a 1/10 electric buggy (Schumacher CAT2000), then had a 1/8 truck (Traxxas Revo) - nitro - great but damn fussy. Even had a centre diff, and inbound horizontal shocks!

The other half has a brushless touring car and an RC18T also.

Amazing how the tech on these has come on over the years...
 
Very nice Jess, but surely anyone that still has a whippy basically has a large scale RC car?? :D :D

Mike

Long live the stubby!
 
Ducklakeview said:
Very nice Jess, but surely anyone that still has a whippy basically has a large scale RC car?? :D :D

Mike

Long live the stubby!
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Well, with better radio now (2.4ghz, not 27 and 49mhz) the aerials don’t need to be so whippy-like! They’re all inside the shell on my current cars I think...
 
groovy_hippy said:
I started off with a 1/10 electric buggy (Schumacher CAT2000)
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I ended with a CAT XLS, so a few years before that. I raced a lot in the late 80's/early 90's, both electro buggy 2wd 1:10 and 4wd. (when 1700mah was a lot :rofl: )
If I look now where I live that hobby (electro 1:10 buggies) have almost disappeared. Somehow this hobby isnt as popular anymore as it was in the 80's and 90's (huge national and european championships with lots of entries)

I'm now starting again in 1:28 onroad (so mini-z and stuff) after 25 years.
Love all the brushless electronics, 2 way communication etc. And everything became very cheap compared to 25 years ago. A lot of big brands went bankrupt though. (novak, tekin, LRP etc etc)
 
GuidoK said:
groovy_hippy said:
I started off with a 1/10 electric buggy (Schumacher CAT2000)
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I ended with a CAT XLS, so a few years before that. I raced a lot in the late 80's/early 90's, both electro buggy 2wd 1:10 and 4wd. (when 1700mah was a lot :rofl: )
If I look now where I live that hobby (electro 1:10 buggies) have almost disappeared. Somehow this hobby isnt as popular anymore as it was in the 80's and 90's (huge national and european championships with lots of entries)

I'm now starting again in 1:28 onroad (so mini-z and stuff) after 25 years.
Love all the brushless electronics, 2 way communication etc. And everything became very cheap compared to 25 years ago. A lot of big brands went bankrupt though. (novak, tekin, LRP etc etc)
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The Mini-Zs are interesting - much smaller and cleaner, plus you can set up a track in the garage... The idea has been floated in our household!! :D
I guess with electronics being so cheap to produce a lot of the ‘specialists’ went up the spout. A shame really...It’s a shame the hobby isn’t so popular now either - it’s excellent fun and you can travel a bit too if you want to!
 
Used to love RC cars, I had a Thunder Tiger EB4 S2 nitro 1/8th scale buggy - it was great fun! I remember losing a wheel nut in a playing field and my dad found it somehow!

I always wished I could save enough enough money to build a HPI Baja SS.

Hopefully I’ll get to re live this sort of thing when I have kids...
 
I'm still thinking about a Traxxas, not keen on the stadium trucks and the monster trucks , there do appear to be a couple of rally style cars out there, but I keep looking at the bunkers at the golf course and thinking "sand buggy" , I had a Grasshopper once when I was younger .... good fun.

my main thing was always building a Tiger tank, the 88mm cannon is exactly to scale with a 22Hornet .... or just stick a Ruger 10/44 in the turret and rip apart a cheap drone for a video targeting system.... not to scale but sounds like it could be fun :)
 
groovy_hippy said:
A shame really...It’s a shame the hobby isn’t so popular now either - it’s excellent fun and you can travel a bit too if you want to!
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Yeah also strange because its now more affordable. I think online gaming lead to its decreasing popularity in the end 90's early 2000.

Its still also a really good way to learn about car suspension setup in general. Virtually every suspension/alingment change is adjustable and affects the cars of course in the same way normal cars do. But its much simpeler to change camber, caster etc on an rc car so you can get a feeling really quickly on what every aspect of those adjustments do to a rolling chassis in competative driving.
Much easier than hiring real tracktime, a real pitbox and a team of mechanics :wink:
 
GuidoK said:
Much easier than hiring real tracktime, a real pitbox and a team of mechanics :wink:
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Although one of the guys who used to race 1/5 gave that up in favour of real banger racing because it was cheaper!! Towards the end of when I was racing, some of the guys were spending £2k on a car and £50-£100 a race meeting...! :o Alas, going to uni took priority and I gave up...
 
Only raced an RC car once. Was my mates Tamia buggy. I had not a clue how to drive one when we started. Yet some how managed to win a trophy. :lol:

Really peed him off. :wink:
 
srhutch said:
I did still have my petrol air boat, which must be about 30 years old now.
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Is that a duplex/lesro airboat?
I also have one of those, still somewhere in the attic. I'm thinking of converting it to Lipo/brushless.
 
Just googled and it’s a lesro.

Would need a new engine as I lost the muffler in a lake, but other than that it’s good to go.
 
I think I was 12 or 14 years old or so when I used that boat. Bought it 2nd hand (I think it was already an older boat back then) and fixed it up with my dad.
I thought it was always interesting to control. But the nitro engine was a hassle. I converted it to electro back then but motors and batteries back then werent powerful enough to make it spectacular like nitro did. Now that would be no problem with lipo/brushless motors.
See this vid on youtube
https://youtu.be/Q3qGccqJ2OM
plenty of power by the looks of it.
 
I’ve done the lot. RC cars boats and planes, petrol, electric and nitro.

Boats were a pain as I always ended up in the lake when they conked out.

Won a few trophies with 1/8 nitro gran prix back in the 80s, but that became too expensive so I bought a motorbike!

Used to do exhibition flying with a 1/4 scale ultimate and 52cc zenoh petrol engine. Knife edge loops were my thing.
 
slick said:
My son and I race Losi 5Ts off road nationally ( 5th scale petrol )
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That’s cool - I thought 1/5 LSOR had kind of flopped in the UK? Which tracks do you go to? There was one near me - Notts Derby off-road, but I think they only do 1/10 and 1/8 off road now :( I remember Nene Valley in Northants was a good one!
 
I used to race 1/8th IC (nitro) back in the 80's, mostly locally at Bournemouth & Southampton & occasionally Mendip, Bournemouth & Southampton are long gone but Mendip is still going strong.

Happy days, I give up the 1/8 IC as it was hugely expensive & definitely not because I was cr@p at it :wink: , most of the top guys were sponsored & so there was quite a bit of hand-me-down cars, spares & radio gear going on.

I also did 1/10th electric at a local church hall for a while, thinking back now what a pain it was, we used to roll out carpets every night, mark out the track & then at the end of the evening roll & keep the carpets under the staging, we also used to wreak of the special tyre goo that we used to apply to give us more traction.
 
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