This lockdown period has been an interesting time for me.  I've enjoyed the working from home and not putting ridiculous amounts of dead dinosaurs into my car.
So much so it's felt like a considerate payrise.  Luckily my work agrees that this can continue so I'm based from home on a more permanent basis.

So I've had petrol money burning a hole in my pocket.  What better to spend that money on than rekindling an old hobby....RC Cars!
When I was younger, I had a collection of RC cars, no idea where most of them have gone to be honest.
I started with a Tamiya Midnight pumpkin, my first proper RC Car.  Then I had a Tamiya TL-01 with a Lotus Elise shell, and a Losi XXX buggy.  Which a friend crashed, bent the drive shaft and cracked the carbon fibre chassis, so that got recycled into my mates Traxxas.
This is the only photo I have of my old cars.


We started here, A Tamiya Vanessa's Lunchbox and a Tamiya Rising Fighter.  The rising fighter is completely stock and belongs to my eldest.  The Lunchbox had a Tamiya Sport Tuned motor, oil shocks and Ball Bearings instead of bushings.


Got bored.  Decided I wanted a buggy too.
Bought a Absima AB3.4 - A rebadged Chinese RC Car that came in kit form and pre-painted.
Took the fast motor out of the Lunchbox and put it in this car.


Bashed it, broke it, upgraded it.  The purple spoiler mounts aren't stock the original is made of leerdamer cheese.  The orange looking motor is an entirely too fast chinese banggood special "GoolRC".
No idea how fast it goes, as no matter how well I glue the tyres on, it likes to rip them off and fire them into trees and neighbouring gardens.

Then I started watching some youtube video's on some entirely too fast RC cars and thought I wanted me some of that action.
So I bought an Arrma Granite.  Supposedly does 50mph.  I don't doubt it.


Supposedly the servo is a weak spot and the transmitter/receiver combo are pretty laggy, but both easily fixed.  Last night I fitted a 20kg servo and change the reciever/transmitter out for one with a gyro.

But still I wanted more.  I've got bashers and buggies and plan was forming.  Crawling looks a lot of fun, there's some good areas near me to go so lets have a look at that.
Traxxas TRX-4 Defender.




Has front and rear locking differentials, and a low/high range gearbox.  All selectable from the transmitter.
As well as portal axles for better ground clearance.
Took it out crawling with my eldest at the crags near my house, where it performed brilliantly.

Genuinely, the most fun I've had with an RC.

Planned upgrades - Probably a different steering servo, as it's all plastic gears.  Entirely unsuitable for a crawler.
Lighting controller, beadlock wheels and dual compound foam inserts and brass portal weights.

Anyone else into this stuff?

That looks pretty awesome, I want to get in to FPV drones, some will do 70MPH+

I've seen many FPV trucks too, so it's like you're actually driving it, goggles are pretty much the most expensive part of that hobby though otherwise I would have jumped on it already!

I've thought about the fpv thing, but like you say the googles can be silly money, even ones from the usual chinese sources.

Do people ever race them on made to scale tracks, or is it just too tricky to race like that? That would be awesome.

That VTOL is pretty awesome, part of the reason I like the FPV stuff is that I just couldn't fly a plane, I'm fine flying away but as soon as you turn around and have to do the opposite my brain just can't handle it..

Pretty much for RC everything is done to scale (some vids below), I was trying to find a video I saw the other day of a drift race track, where the drivers were drifting RC cars in an arcade setup, but what was on the screen was just FPV.. but I can't find it, but here's an old cool drift fpv setup:

 
Largest construction site

Twin turbine
 

I never owned an RC Car when I was young, but I always remember my mates having them. Combinations of Argos specials and Tamiya kits. I recall they all used to eat batteries.

Anyway, having a boy allowed me to have a peek/poke. I did what I always do, and massively over egged the research. I ended up looking at £200 kits for a 2 year old. So dialed it back in massively. I bought a 2.4GHZ McLaren "style" car from Amazon for ~£10. Perfect for the kid. He loves drooling on it and chasing it.

Having a small amount of fun with that, I started to re-research, got up to the £200 Schumacher/Tamiya stuff again, and dialed it back, ending up with a £20 WLToys A959B, cheap, chinese & way too fast for the living room! Probably just as Nathen said, too fast for its own good. Its sat gathering dust

I never owned an RC Car when I was young, but I always remember my mates having them. Combinations of Argos specials and Tamiya kits. I recall they all used to eat batteries.

Anyway, having a boy allowed me to have a peek/poke. I did what I always do, and massively over egged the research. I ended up looking at £200 kits for a 2 year old. So dialed it back in massively. I bought a 2.4GHZ McLaren "style" car from Amazon for ~£10. Perfect for the kid. He loves drooling on it and chasing it.

Having a small amount of fun with that, I started to re-research, got up to the £200 Schumacher/Tamiya stuff again, and dialed it back, ending up with a £20 WLToys A959B, cheap, chinese & way too fast for the living room! Probably just as Nathen said, too fast for its own good. Its sat gathering dust

My kids have had the argos ones and they just frustrated me with how quickly they chewed through batteries, non proportional steering and throttle controls.
Granted, that's £10-15 for a car vs £100 for a tamiya but one of those will end up in landfill, and one will have spares and upgrades for decades.

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