Anybody have any experience with nitro r/c buggies......

[jdoc]

I am thinking about buying a nitro buggy to screw around with around my property. I have been looking at a few different companies but I know nothing about these things.

 http://www.kyoshoamerica.com/cars/index.php?part_num=31096

 http://www.redcatracing.com/RC-Cars/1-10-Scale-Nitro/Tornado-BB

http://www.traxxas.com/products/nitro/nsport4510/trx_nsport4510.htm


I've looked at these three companies mostly and was wondering if any one had any experience with any of them I've heard of traxxas but their kind of pricy. From what I hear of redcat they break if your kinda ruff with them and I've never heard of kyosho. So can anybody give me some info these things look like a blast. Thanks in advance for any help.   

[mgdavis]

I had a CEN 4WD car for awhile. Nitro is a PITA if you ask me, I could never get the danged thing to run right. Get an electric one.

[Werewolf]

My current Boss was very heavily into RC Cars for about a decade. He did the whole thing from electric to the Nitro stuff. Raced up in Seattle at an old Boeing plant every weekend. Thousands of dollars invested.

For our annual company get together this year he bought a couple of electric RC cars - about $200 a piece for one of the intra-departmental competition events.

That got my interest piqued when he pulled them out of the box for inspection. He told me that for a beginner electric is best. He also said that more and more guys are going electric these days and that electrics were getting good enough to compete with the gas powered/nitro cars.


He recommended the traxxas site as the place to buy. He did not recommend any particular brand.

[jdoc]

I have had electrics before which is why I was considering a nitro. I'm thinking about the  redcat its a bit cheaper than the others so if I screw it up to bad being a noob I'm not out too much. And I can order extra parts off their web site. I might do some more looking into that kyosho. I was kinda trying to stay away from traxxas a friend of mine says their customer service sucks.

[bedlamite]

I've got an Associated RC10GT, and I used to race regularly.  I've since moved to airplanes, but I keep the RC10GT for when the field is too muddy to fly or all my batteries are on a charger. In the 5 years that I've beat the snot out of it, It hasn't needed anything other replacing one set of rear wheel bearings, tires, and occasionally cleaning the crud out the recoil starter.

Similar to electrics, Associated and Losi are the two everything else is compared to, and you will be able to get replacement parts for them anywhere, even for a buggy that is 20 years old (A friend of mine still runs an Associated TQ10 that I sold him over 10 years ago). Traxxas has improved in the ~15 years they have been in business, but they never really impressed me. Tamiya cars look awesome and have a lot of cool features, but the ABS plastic they use is too fragile.

AVOID KYOSHO AT ALL COSTS! I made the mistake of buying a Kyosho buggy once. Expect them to discontinue anything you buy so you won't be able to find parts. They used to switch distributors almost annually, and they had no US distributor and were completely unavailable about 5 years ago. I heard they have a distributor again, but I haven't followed them since. As soon as I found a used gearset I on Ebay that worked, I sold that hunk of junk. Another friend is still trying to find replacement parts for his old Kyosho USA-1

Stick with one of these:
http://www.losi.com/
http://www.teamassociated.com/

[zahc]

That got my interest piqued when he pulled them out of the box for inspection. He told me that for a beginner electric is best. He also said that more and more guys are going electric these days and that electrics were getting good enough to compete with the gas powered/nitro cars.

I'm not sure about cars. I think Nitro is really really cool just for the noise and smoke factor, but in RC airplane land, electric has completely taken over from a performance standpoint. The only people that run nitro are people who can't afford good LiPo setup, or really like smoke, noise, hot parts, castor oil all over everything, and planes that are simultaneously heavier, slower, and have shorter run times than electric ones.

[grislyatoms]

Look into Associated.

I raced an electric RC10 for two years in the early 90's. Lots of tweaks/upgrades/tuning to fiddle with.

Great buggy, and fun hobby. Met a lot of good folks.

[mtnbkr]

I raced an electric RC10 for two years in the early 90's. Lots of tweaks/upgrades/tuning to fiddle with.

Me too!  Got mine in 1988ish and sold it in the early 90s.  Great car and tough as heck.  I lowered it, threw on some foam tires and a "car" body, and took it to the local carpet track.  In it's offroad trim, I chased the local cats. :D

That is definitely a hobby I don't need to get back into.

Chris

[41magsnub]

I loved my old RC10 also back in the late 80's and early 90's.  I started with  a traxxis and broke the frame jumping it.  That RC10 was invincible with its carbon fiber frame!

[mtnbkr]

Mine was the aluminum tub frame.  The RC10 also came with some killer oil damped aluminum bodied shocks, which were great.  All in all it was a killer car.  I wish I had kept mine, it would be fun to play with again.

Chris

[41magsnub]

I did a few stupid things with mine.  I had a cheap RC plane that my dad assembled crooked for me with a 4 channel remote.  It never flew so I appropriated the servos and remote and rigged up a Estes rocket motor on the back of the car with a 3rd servo to complete a circuit off of a 9V battery to fire it.  It kind of worked.  The ejection charge did a few messy things.  I'm lucky I still have all of my fingers with that rig.

Next, I used the same setup and a rocket motor igniter to light the (shortened) fuses on on a bunch of bottle rockets in a tube on the car.  That worked much better!  :)  A Roman candle worked too but I thought I was going to burn down the neighborhood.