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My son has some Carson wheels on his DT-03 Racing fighter, and they work really well on tarmac and the hard packed gravel/dirt that we normally drive on. They have lasted much longer than the tires that came with the kit. He beat me today round the postal racing course using those wheels too! Here is s link if you are interested. https://tamico.de/Carson-500900027-Buggy-Tire-Wheel-Set-All-Terrain-22-black

I've decided to try and join in this time, and that track looks much more suited to my driving skills than last month! We can do layout 1 or 2 in our space. My son and I are planning to do a few practice laps tomorrow but it is still quite icey at the moment so I doubt we will be very competitive yet!

After a couple of years break from the hobby, I rebuilt the DT-03 this morning back into its racing fighter form after a spell being a big wheeled monster beetle type thing. Me and my son then took it out for a bit of snow stage rallying, it was ace. I've been reading the forum to catch up on everything I've missed, and the Postal Racing and Budget rally builds have really caught my eye. We marked out a track using frisbee golf frisbees and then did some three lap time trials. Obviously the kid won, but it was great to do something together. I have also discovered a treasure trove of half finished projects to get my teeth into again!

Thank you for your replies and suggestions so far. I like the look of the F104, it does have a very simple layout, that could well be a good starting point. I am currently working on some other elements for the show, so I still have a few more days to figure out what parts I will need. The other thing I need to figure out is some kind of track and guide system. I will visit the local hobby shop soon and see what parts i can get hold of easily, as that may well dictate the direction this build goes in. Will I have problems that forward and reverse are different speeds?

I have been building tamiya cars for a while now as a hobby, but for the first time I have been asked to do something similar for work! I work as a set builder at a theatre and have been asked by the designer to build him a radio controlled Parisian metro train. The train needs to drive forwards and backwards across the front of the stage and into a tunnel at each end. I have only ever built standard tamiya kits, so a custom build is quite a big step up for me. I was hoping to get some advise as to how to start. I had initially thought of using an M-chassis car to contain all the electrics and motor and then find a way to connect a few more pairs of wheels along the length of the metro. It doesn't need to steer, just drive forwards and backwards at the same speed with lights on front and back. I will be building the shell from styrene or a more light weight board. The dimensions the designer is hoping for 150mm wide / 150mm tall / 1500mm long I am aware that it may become quite heavy, but it doesn't need to drive that fast. Would a 4wd option such as the mf01x help, or does this make it more complicated? I could make aluminium chassis rails and attach axels to that, but I am not sure what type of axels to be looking for. Any help or advice as to where to focus my search and design would be greatly appreciated. The budget for the train is not huge, but I have a few hundred euros to spend on parts. I would love a few pointers from anyone out there if you have any initial thoughts or ideas.

Thank you for your responses, even if it has tempered my temptation a little! I have recently almost totalled my holiday buggy with a combination of high speed crashes, deep puddles and generally poor driving skills making it look a little worse for ware, but much fun has been had! A slower more sedate drive might suit my skill level quite well! The ABS body being even more fragile does worry me a little as I know I will spend many hours modifying and painting it etc, but I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy that side of the hobby recently, finishing off my as yet un-driven lowride pumpkin. My son would love us to have some sort of monster truck or a wild willy 2, which I guess my well be more sensible backyard basher options to compliment our buggies. I love building them and he loves driving them, so at the moment we make a pretty good team. I've still got a few days to think this over!

I can't help myself but check the Tamico offer of the week every Monday, and this weeks CC01Isuzu Mu offer seems to be tempting me even more than normal. I have been thinking about getting a CC01 for a while, but I haven't found a good enough reason to pull the trigger just yet. The ABS body that comes with this model is quite appealing to me as I would like to try and make some customisations with styrene sheet, and I am too nervous to start with a scorcher shell! The main thing that is holding me back is I have no experience of running this type of vehicle. My son and I mainly drive our cars in our yard which a has compacted gravel road and large loop with grass in the middle which we race around, so it is a basically like a gravel rally stage. I drive my dt02 Holiday buggy and he has a dt03 Racing fighter, would the stock CC01 be able to keep up with his basically stock dt03 or would I just be pottering along in his dust? We don't really have a place for rock crawling, so I'm not looking to do that, I mainly want to do similar type of driving but with a truck that I can modify the shell a bit. It is up for 120Euros, which seems like quite a cheap way into the CC01 world, but I don't want to get something that will just be frustrating! So if any of you have any experience of rallying or bashing with the CC01 I would love to hear about it.

Thanks so much for the dremel pic and breakdown, it really helps. There are so many different attachments available, it's good to know where to start! A few of those parts came in the starter pack I bought, it's great to know what I can try and do with them now! Thanks again

Another fantastic build! I have been silently following your builds since I joined the forum and it has been great to see how your skills and destinctive style have developed. I have to say that your builds have inspired me more than any others and I am hoping to follow in your footsteps to some degree if I can. I really like the way you show us things that go wrong as well as right, it has really encouraged me to try stuff and keep working on things until I figure it out. I am doing my first hard body at the moment on a lowride Pumpkin, and trying to make it my own with some wooden running boards, load bed and fences. Without your detailed and beautifully photographed build threads I don't think I would have had the guts to try my own things, but you make it all sound so fun and achiveable that it has encouraged me to try, and I am loving it! So basically, thank you! Only thing I could ask for is a photo of the different ends you use on your dremel, so I know what to get for which jobs!

That Astute gator was exactly the kind of thing that I had in mind! Thank you ThunderDragonCy ! I actually have a DT-02 at the moment as a holiday buggy, but I had hoped to be able to run them together as they both have a nice retro look, so I don't really want to break that one up, but I could get the measurements from that to build up a shorter version out of aluminium or carbon fibre plate. But I guess it might be a lot cheaper to just buy a new tub! The scorcher body hasn't arrived yet, so I can't test the fit yet myself, I was just getting excited and looking into what parts I might need to order to get this build going.

I have just bought a sand scorcher body set but I currently don't have a chassis for it to sit on. I was wondering if it would be possible to use some of the parts from a dt-03. I currently have all the parts except for the chassis. I was wondering if it would work to make some kind of aluminium plate or chassis rails to bolt the front and back end onto? Or is there a better way? Would I need shorter arms?

Spent the afternoon racing my holiday buggy against my son and his dt-03 racing fighter in beautiful sunshine on some gravel tracks. It was fantastic except it is becoming painfully obvious that he will be a much better driver than me! We also had our first full speed head to head crash which seemed to come out in the Holiday Buggy's favour. I have a broken front decal, he has a cracked shock tower and chassis, oops! Luckily they seem to be from the same C- parts tree, so I just need to track one down and rebuild the whole car!

Great thread, they're both looking very tidy so far! I'll be interested to hear how you get on with drifting the tt02, I'm currently contemplating a very similar project.

The MST prices do seem to be quite reasonable on Asiatees, thanks for the heads up! The guy at the club was also driving a RWD car with gyro, as he felt it looks more realistic. My main concern is wether I have the skill to set up and drive such a beast! Perhaps one of the 4wd version would be an easier way into the water. I am a little nervous of buying a non Tamiya as I have only built Tamiya cars so far and I feel reasonably confident with them. Is it a similar experience building a MST or 3racing kit? Also we are still using Nimh batteries, will they fit in these chassis ok?

I have recently joined my local rc club and descovered that they have a carpet drift track. They let me and my son have a try with one of their cars and we both really enjoyed it. I'm now planning to build a drift car of my own, the guys at the club said that any touring car chassis with drift tyres would do to start with. But as I currently don't own any on road chassis I am a bit unsure where to start. I have been looking at the TT02d as a good value start but everyone at the club seems to be using belt drive cars. Would I be better off looking for a belt drive option instead like the 3 racing sakura or is there another Tamiya option? I don't want to buy something that needs lots of hop ups from the start. I am quite tempted by the tt02's ability to transform into a buggy though if the thrill of drifting wears off! I would love to hear some thoughts and opinions on this.