Remote Control car for 9 year old.

[conkerman]

Hi,

My son is 9 soon and I was thnking of getting him a Remote control car. When I were a ld, Vanessas lunch box was the big thing.

I'd be looking for something that can handle mud and a bit of water without stripping down every time.

Are Tamiya still the default choice?

Looking to spend up to £200, inc batteries and radio gear.

Your thoughts welcome.

[sherman]

Yep tamiya. Buy 2 batteries and a fast charger
https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/tamiya-1...

[conkerman]

Oh Man.

Many thanks for the link

I can feel my wallet twitching. I'll then need to get something for the kid

Have you used the seller?

Also, is it worth getting the ball bearing kit?

Apologies for the dumb question, it has been a long time since I built my brothers Escort Cosworth

[shedweller]

Tamiya are always popular on here - me and my 7 year old son have a tamiya lunchbox as well as an arrma buggy and a axial crawler.
Tamiya is a good choice and having to build them is good for fixing them if/when needed but by the time you have added radio gear batteries/charger etc plus modified them to go and handle properly it can add up - And a large part of the cost is nostalgia.

For 200ish I would stretch to an arrma granite/Typhon (brushed) or an ftx Kanyon crawler or carisma scale adventure crawler depending on what you feel he would prefer more........ Crawlers are cheaper to run in my experience!!!
And either will be much much more competent out of the box than a tamiya (imo)

Or get two - it's much more fun chasing eachother about.

[KingofKong]

I got one of these for my lad at Christmas, plus extra battery pack and a fast charger for about £190 I think it was?

https://www.modelsport.co.uk/index.php?product_id=...

We managed to lose a prop shaft when a grub screw came lose, it was £11 for two new universal props and 5 minutes to fit.

[sherman]

conkerman said:

Oh Man.

Many thanks for the link

I can feel my wallet twitching. I'll then need to get something for the kid

Have you used the seller?

Also, is it worth getting the ball bearing kit?

Apologies for the dumb question, it has been a long time since I built my brothers Escort Cosworth

The seller wonderland models have been in the same shop in edinburgh longer than I have been alive. A proper model shop.

[Bullett]

Jadlam does good deals, Run by a PH local.
I got my 11 year old a Hornet for his birthday, we had fun building it and he's out most days running it up and down the street.

[RobXjcoupe]

My advice is stick with something 2wd as they are more fun to drive. Something with a polycarbonate body so it doesn’t disintegrate on impact. As upgrades definitely fit ball race bearings and possibly buy a slightly better motor. The better motor is bragging rights for your kid between his mates
Tamiya hornet is fab for cheap repairs. Also you could buy a set of rough rider wheels and tyres as road use. Again as a kid it would be fab trying out bits and bobs to see what’s best.

[conkerman]

Hi Rob, I was looking at your thread earlier. Love the Beetle

At the moment I am narrowing it down to

- Hornet
- Neo Scorcher.


Will want a couple of batteries and radio gear to go with it.

I can easily see me buying one for myself soon

[DarthtaterM16]

conkerman said:

I can easily see me buying one for myself soon

It's a slippery, slippery slope...

[RobXjcoupe]

conkerman said:

Hi Rob, I was looking at your thread earlier. Love the Beetle

At the moment I am narrowing it down to

- Hornet
- Neo Scorcher.


Will want a couple of batteries and radio gear to go with it.

I can easily see me buying one for myself soon

Stupid me sold that beetle. But I built another one. Lol. I like buying the odd chassis and parts making up the car along the way.




Same chassis type 3 different cars. None of them original. I’ve just had delivered a frog body to complete another chassis. Just like tinkering with them tbh. The purple beetle chassis had a 16 tooth pinion on a 52 tooth spur but wasn’t that epic in acceleration with those bigger wheels. So changed to a monster beetle gear set and 10 tooth pinion and it’s flipping quick off the mark now. The motor is a vintage 27 stock by eamotorsports. The lower gearing really helps the motor spin up.
The brat chassis is a tester for a small brushless motor 2845 which mounts via the 380 motor adapter. So that uses the 50 tooth spur but a 10 tooth pinion again. With a 3s lipo it has acceleration and top speed. That worked better than I thought. The monster beetle has it standard gear set and drives calmly as I spent a fair few hours getting the body looking good. The frog chassis I’m doing later today uses the 50 tooth spur again but using a monster beetle motor mount a 13 tooth boomerang pinion fits nicely. That should be nice and nippy around the garden when finished. The motor is another vintage 27 turn stock using 7.2v battery. They make 28k rpm unloaded so really suit the low gearing.

[conkerman]

That Brat looks ruddy awesome!

Cheers

[300bhp/ton]

sherman said:

Yep tamiya. Buy 2 batteries and a fast charger
https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/tamiya-1...

I'd not buy that unless it is for nostalgia reasons. It was 10 years out of date when it was launched 30 years ago.

[300bhp/ton]

conkerman said:

Hi,

My son is 9 soon and I was thnking of getting him a Remote control car. When I were a ld, Vanessas lunch box was the big thing.

I'd be looking for something that can handle mud and a bit of water without stripping down every time.

Are Tamiya still the default choice?

Looking to spend up to £200, inc batteries and radio gear.

Your thoughts welcome.

Do you want to build it as a kit or just buy something to unpack and use?


Tamiya are ok. I have a number of them. But over half the fun is in the building of them. Many of their legacy models however are tragically out of date and will massively under perform vs more modern offerings.

You will also need to budget for batteries, charger and radio gear. Which might make your £200 a bit of a challenge when all said and done.

It is also worth noting, none of the Tamiyas are rated as being waterproof nor are the electronics such as the Tamiya ESC.




I would also personally say to completely avoid 1/10th scale buggies, unless you have a good surface to run them on. If you are likely to run on grass or at the local park you will be better off with something that uses bigger tyres and has more ground clearance.



From the Tamiya range the Konghead is one of their newer models and would be ideal as a place to start. As you can use it anywhere. And you can then tailor for slow speed crawling or hot the motor up for some speed too.

https://www.modelsport.co.uk/index.php?product_id=...


But you will blow your budget to get all the bits. But maybe not by a huge amount.




I would also say spares are important, so stick with the well known makes (of which there are many). Just have a browse at the best sellers on some of the model shop sites to get a feel.


Traxxas are good if you want a ready to run. Either of these would do and work better than a buggy on most terrains. But they are a lot more speedy than an old style Tamiya.

https://www.modelsport.co.uk/traxxas-stampede-xl-5...
https://www.modelsport.co.uk/traxxas-rustler-xl-5-...




As for buying things like batteries, check out Hobbyking. Generally hugely cheaper than the high street model shops. And you can grab a decent charger off ebay for about £25.

[aizvara]

I got my son (who is 10) one of these this Christmas:

https://www.wirelessmadness.com/maverick-strada-xt...

Plus a spare battery and charger.

It seems pretty good for the price: good on grass and particularly fun on gravel with jumps/ramps, fast enough for him, and so far seems reasonably tough. I think there's a fair bit of scope for upgrades, but he's not interested in that yet.

(I may go crazy at some point and end up getting myself something similar so that I can do some tinkering).

[RobXjcoupe]

conkerman said:

That Brat looks ruddy awesome!

Cheers

Thank you

[conkerman]

I quite fancy the build part to be honest.

I built an Escort Cosworth back in the 90s for my brothers Christmas present, so Tamiya does appeal.

We'd be looking to use this in the garden or not too crazy terrain.

I think my preference would be 2wd for ease of maintenance and skids

Thank you all for your comments so far.

[Dr Murdoch]

I was advised on here to avoid Tamiya, as the technology is old and you'll spend most of the time picking them up of their roof (due to stability issues). The advice was to get something like this from FTX: https://www.modelsport.co.uk/ftx-outlaw-1-10-4wd-u...

Although I can't gel with the controller with the steering wheel to the side, much prefer one up/down lever for moving and left-right lever for steering.

However, my sons (8 & 9) love it.

I upgraded the battery and it's like fitting a turbo

[300bhp/ton]

conkerman said:

I quite fancy the build part to be honest.

I built an Escort Cosworth back in the 90s for my brothers Christmas present, so Tamiya does appeal.

We'd be looking to use this in the garden or not too crazy terrain.

I think my preference would be 2wd for ease of maintenance and skids

Thank you all for your comments so far.

What do you mean by skids? As in skis or do you mean sliding?

If the latter, you may find a standard Tamiya with the crappy old silvercan motor won't have enough speed to do this very well. Certainly not on NiMH batteries. And unless your garden is very short grass, something 2wd buggy will have a lot of drag and resistance and won't go very quickly.

I'd still put a vote in for the Konghead, it is a lot of fun and would handle a garden well. You can also have 4 wheel steering allowing it to turn on a sixpence. Although 4ws does make it less stable at higher speeds.

This is my Konghead with a 13.5 brushless motor.

[KingofKong]

Just doing some repairs to the FTX Mauler I linked to earlier. I think the grub screw came loose so I've fitted a new prop (we lost the old one) and a smidge of loctite on the grub screw thread.