Any RC enthusiast here?
I recently decided to get a new hobby and have been interested in RC's for a while. I wouldn't mind getting into racing buggies/truggies, however in order to see if I even like the hobby I decided to get and a decent used basher I can tinker with. I picked up a Arrma Kraton 6s V4 complete with batteries, chargers, and a few other extra's for a good price on FBMP.
I ran it for a few hours and loved it, right now it's tore down into the three major sections and I'm waiting on parts. Previous owner was a 14 year old and it appears it was a pandemic buy, so maintenance is lacking/non-existant.
Before I realized it between running it this morning, tearing it down, research on parts it was 10:00pm at night, lol. My pittbull is currently sulking because I'm late to bed.
I was seriously considering building myself an RC rock crawler and still want to in the future, but after doing a deep dive into the hobby, I realized how much money it can be (less important), as well as the time investment, between taking it out, tearing it down, cleaning, replacing parts, etc etc.
Seems really awesome and I still want to try RC crawling, as well as a basher, but I have too many hobbies already that eat up my very little time. Maybe when my kids are a bit older and I both have more time and can introduce them to it.
Same here, but when I was a kid the biggest thing was absolutely the expense. Just the cost of a RC plane controller was astronomical to me. I was amazed that my parents could afford to buy me a PS2 for Christmas a year or two after it came out, and those plane controllers could easily cost double, to my memory. Add to that the planes were really hard to fly and could easily break when they crash and it just seemed like a bottomless money pit. That was really hammered in when I got to play with the computer simulator (which was by itself very expensive since you had to buy the expensive controller to get the full experience).
RC cars were a lot more affordable but still out of reach for a young me, but at the same time it had a lot less appeal than the planes.
Do you know who I am?!
What a delightfully appropriate video, hahaha, thanks for that.
I know it was a very low content post, but after watching Love Liza several years ago, I immediately think of that scene whenever the subject of RC comes up.
If you haven't already seen it, the movie is excellent (largely because Phillip Seymour Hoffman is excellent), but has rather less to do with the hobby of radio control than you would assume from the clip, and despite being billed as a tragic comedy falls more on the tragic side and is not something you should watch if you are inclined to depressive moods and want to avoid anything that might set one off.
Up until high school, my exposure was only the toy store cars that would run slowly around the house for 5 minutes after 5 hours of charging. Garbage for kids.
Then friend of mine got an HPI Savage 21 monster truck. Beautiful, whopping 1/8th scale, heavy duty, liquid fuel, and cool as hell. Watching that thing fly down the street was unbelievable, and I’ll never forget the first time it screamed into second gear. It was a revelation.
I ended up getting the same truck shortly after.
We spent hours tinkering, swapping parts, troubleshooting and DIYing. We went for speed down the quiet roads and open field, then took them on homemade dirt tracks and jumps in the nearby woods.
I think that truck’s still in my parents’ garage.
I'm not a racer but have a larger than it should be connection. A Granite, Senton, Infraction, some Axials, a pile of Tamiyas, some WPLs and an MST for good measure.
My boss even understood when I said I kept a kit car under my desk to wrench on during pointless meetings.
I'd say, honestly, I'm an equal part fan of driving and of working on them. I'm not a crazy YouTube thumbnail basher trying to launch my cars into low orbit nor am I a hot lapper - probably mostly due to not having a local track - but I like to build my cars and drive them around in circles for a bit every now and then.
A 6S V4 is a hell of an entry point though! Do you have a track local to you that has any class leagues or anything?
I was into racing a it back in grad school when I lived in a city with several tracks. Now the nearest track is a forty minute drive out of town, so I haven't raced at all in years, but I kept most of the cars and trucks.
My first rc love was touring cars, but I never got into formally racing them due to the high cost of that particular niche, but I built an ofna short course truck that I raced pretty competitively in my old city and once at the local place. It's a lot of fun. Also built out a nice tamiya buggy for the 13.5 class, but didn't ever get to run it. I have lots of lower caliber touring cars, an ofna hyper 10 tt that I jacked up into a monster truck, and lots of airplanes and helicopters.
Flying is where my rc passion ended up now that I don't race anymore. Sadly that's gone by the wayside now that I have a baby. Once he's old enough though, you can bet I'll be breaking the toys back out for us to enjoy together. Just recently I caught him staring at a little rc buggy at the park and it got me thinking.
Anyway, the arrma stuff is pretty well known these days and respected for rough bashing. Even a kid with pandemic levels of free time shouldn't be able to make one unfixable. I'd do just what you said - - pull apart the main bits of the chassis, drain the diffs and fill with appropriate silicon based oil, rebuild the shocks and use appropriate weight oils there too, and probably check spring rates. Then as you reassemble you can tune the chassis for things like ride height, camber, and tow. It'll cost a bit, but you should have a stout basher. People post a lot about how to improve a vehicle, but before dropping loads of money on fancy metal upgrade pieces I'd strongly suggest looking into tires. They're by far the most effective thing to change out to suit where and how you drive.
Maybe we should have a thread for sharing albums of rc projects? I'd love to see what other tildes folks are doing!
It's similar but Tamiya Club has a "What have you done today?" Thread where people share updates on their builds...
That said, just from my point of view, it might be better if we all just folded into the What have you done this week posts so we're not having a whole thread for the one screw I've gotten to add this quarter! Life certainly has a way of getting between me and the tiny cars.
If this is something I wanted to get into, do you have any good websites, forums or vendors I could check out?
Do you want to build or just run right out the box?
Do you want something cheap or high end?
Off road, on road, track?
Right off the bat, if you want to build, get a Tamiya TT02. Good primarily on road but basically the entry for building.
If you want something cheap but from a 'reputable' brand, Arrma has the ready-to-run (RTR) Granite Voltage. It's not fast or particularly amazing but it's about as cheap as US brands go for an off road vehicle.
To begin with, something to run right of the box would be good. Something on the cheaper end to get started, $100-300 maybe. If I could find something to get my kids away from their screens that would be great. I was always fascinated by the RC cars, boats and airplanes as a kid, but never had the money to get some of the nicer ones. I have a decent sized driveway that is crushed granite and concrete. I don't think there are any tracks around me, but I don't know and not sure how I'd find them, Google would probably help, but I'd start in my driveway. I imagine they don't do as well in grass?
So, for that budget you could get two Arrma Granite Voltages. They're good and can take a 2S LiPo (Lithium Polymer battery, much more fun but also a fire hazard that requires more care) when you're ready to eek out a bit more performance. Spare parts are readily available but that's also dependant on your local hobby store. If they're majorly Traxxas you might end up having to wait on parts.
I'm suggesting a monster truck style because the wider wheels will have an easier time running over grass and a 1/10 scale because it being larger will also get it over more obstacles. If size is a concern, look into a 1/18th scale but be warned that means you need a flatter area to run on as well.
If you just want to get one, with that budget, continue to move up the Granite line. The Voltage and the 4x2 are both 2WD but the 4x2 can be upgraded to 4x4. Drive trains are generally user choice if you're not competing but 4x4 is usually easier to control.
If you want to search around yourself, a Truggy would also work for your criteria but the MT has more ground clearance. Also, check to see if you have a HobbyTown near you or any other independent hobby store. They might have some used RCs you can get a deal on.
Also, when you do get your RC, make note of the screw style it has and make sure to get a quality set of those. Invariably, one of the kids will drive it into a tree or ditch (hopefully not on purpose) and something will pop out. Better to have a multitool on hand for field fixes than to torpedo the whole day.
Twice I've gotten into the hobby grade RC's, its something about the allure of it and then when I have one I have no interest in it. I've had a Slash previously which is fun to rip around, but didn't have anybody to race them with. With a dog or kids I'm sure it would be a blast.
I then went to build a RC crawler, and bought all the parts and pieces to build a K10. But just lost interest after having all the components.
A bit off-topic, but dog tax?
More on-topic, but it sounds like you’ve avoided doing what kills (many) hobbies for a lot of folks: buying the cheapest no-name model then becoming frustrated when it breaks (usually quite quickly.
Way back in the day, I used to race at a track in Costa Mesa, California called Radio Controlled Hobbies. I was probably thirteen or fourteen at the time, but the track had a vast spectrum of ages and skill levels in attendance. Looking back, it was an amazing place to be able to get into the hobby.
It was an indoor dirt oval and off road course, with all the jumps on the inside of the oval so that different heats could happen without needing to do more than move two barriers. Everything was 1/10 scale electric, but within that were various levels of stock, modified, two and four wheel drive and amateur/pro classes, so all skill levels had a chance to compete. There was a large pit section right next to the track where you could charge up and repair between races, and the pro shop had an impressive collection of parts and kits available.
I ran a Tamaya Hornet, which was the second cheapest, entry level kit available at the time, but it let me hold my own against a lot of more expensive kits as I got better and learned the ins and outs of the track. Once in a while, I managed to earn enough money racing there to buy upgrades for the Hornet, and later on, a serious kit called the AYK Radiant.
What a trip down memory lane! Now I'm wishing something like that track existed near me, as I've got better means today and could really have fun with it. Sadly, my area only has stores, not tracks like RCH.