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Kowalski86

Best and Worst Hobby Grade RC You've Owned

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 From my best and worst Tamiya thread comes the sequel, best and worst hobby grade RC from any brand! And when I say best/worst, I mean fun vs annoying.

Best:

I would still rank my Grasshopper as my favorite, it doesn't handle and anything more than a 380 flips it over. But it looks neat, goes forever on one battery, and I enjoy the simplicity of it. Restoring it got me back into the hobby and introduced me to Tamiya RCs.

Worst:

If you consider WPL Hobby grade I'd vote my C24, but outside of that I had a Traxxas Rustler (an early one to be fair) that loved to burn motors, MSC meant it was hard to drive. Trying to revive it taught me a lot about gearing, wheel size, and ESC vs MSC, but it almost burned me out on the hobby. Newer models have much better transmissions, electronics, room for proper bearings, and left stock they aren't half bad, arguably better than a Slash for newcomers.

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Best: My first Hotshot I got in 1986.

Worst: Vintage 1/16 RC King Tiger with the 540 gearbox. Turret rotator never worked properly as the cork clutches slipped, clutches in the main gearbox fried after I ran in on 9.6V, ended up rebuilding the gearbox to use 2 540's and 2 ESCs with an aicraft V tail mixer to enable it to drive like a buggy. But sooo much hassle.

 

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Best: Tamiya Rally Beetle. So fun to run around the park and great companion while hiking!

Worst: Losi Mini LST. Technically, It was also my fault, but I had to replace center diff multiple times after few minutes of running on mamba brushless + 3s lipo and gave up on it 15 years ago,

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18 minutes ago, Sogogi said:

Best: Tamiya Rally Beetle. So fun to run around the park and great companion while hiking!

I've been impressed by mine, with just bearings it was pretty quick out of the box, and its not half bad in low grass so long as I'm careful on the throttle. I will confess to trying to jump it once or twice over a curve which didn't damage anything, just scuffed the skid plate (thank you Tamiya for providing a spare), of course I'm not going to do that again though. The only mod that I've made to mine is an 18T steel pinion, I might bump it up to 20T if the weather warms up soon.

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I don't know the best as most of the best usually still need hopups to make them mine, but the worst was this Amazon Willy imitation I got for like $10-15.. 

 

IMG_Jun62021at70446PM.jpg.ede02c8066cdcd4be3472b4666f0efc6.jpg

 

But I saw potential and made it look like this at the end.. right one on the bottom.  

IMG_Dec72021at120610PM.jpg.85d8a0da543f9a3e7e1ce1f8e52520b5.jpg

 

 

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Kit build

Best: Hotshot (flawless)

Worst: 2013 rere RC10 (parts fit was terrible)

Runner

Best: Clodbuster

Worst: Kyosho Heavy Metal tank

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1 hour ago, Willy iine said:

I don't know the best as most of the best usually still need hopups to make them mine, but the worst was this Amazon Willy imitation I got for like $10-15.. 

 

IMG_Jun62021at70446PM.jpg.ede02c8066cdcd4be3472b4666f0efc6.jpg

 

But I saw potential and made it look like this at the end.. right one on the bottom.  

IMG_Dec72021at120610PM.jpg.85d8a0da543f9a3e7e1ce1f8e52520b5.jpg

 

 

Nice work, does the fake Willy still pop wheelies at least?

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Best is just impossible; I’ve had so much fun over the years.

Worst has got to be the Pegasus. Just a disappointing piece of cheese.

BTW, the parts fit of the old RC10 was horrible in the ‘80s, too. There was a night and day difference between a carefully assembled RC10 and one that was slapped together Christmas day. You really had to pay attention.

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Kyosho Pegasus? I had one of those ... the ball joints in the front wishbones came apart after a couple of months, I never properly fixed it.

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Hard to say, really. All kits seem to have strengths and weaknesses, and I've never built or driven anything that was either faultless, or irredeemable.

The Kyosho Optima chassis is one of my all-time favorites - it looks good, all the parts fit nicely, and it's a terrific runner. But maintenance or repairs are a nightmare because of the way it's packaged.

My Carisma SCA-1E crawler was a complete hassle to build, and it feels like junk with all the slop in the parts, but it's bulletproof, and unstoppable on almost any terrain.

Tamiya's kits aren't great builds normally - too many self-tapping screws - and the performance often leaves something to be desired, yet there's a simple charm to them that keeps me coming back.

Most fun I've had recently is probably the G6-01 King Yellow. It's just dumb silly fun, incredibly tough, goes amywhere, and doesn't require anything but a whole lot of ball bearings to be a great vehicle.

Most annoying one I can remember was the Marui Big Bear. Looks amazing, but does absolutely nothing well, and in most ways it's completely appalling. But you just keep trying to make it work, because it looks so good.

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