Who Actually Raced Tamiyas Back In The Day?

[XV Pilot]

Wow! Talk about bringing threads back from the dead...

 

Since it has come up, I too bought a Tamiya as a race car. Back in 1996 when touring cars were taking the scene by storm, my local club raced predominantly TA-01s and TA-02s. I decided to be different, campaigning a FF-01 instead. It worked well - our track was very wide and open, designed for 1/8 nitro, so the lower drivetrain friction of my FF gave me a straight-line speed advantage that more than compensated for my car's relative lack of grip. My FF-01 was the first at the track, but when I left, they made up about 1/3 of the field as others saw the advantage mine gave me on the straights.

[Saito2]

Cool! It was a long time ago when I started this thread. It was neat to read back over it as well as reading some new replies.

[Rb4276]

I used to race my monster beetle at a local dirt track in New Jersey right when the truck racing was growing. I also raced my astute. 

[Wooders28]

I started with a frog , it wasn't the best choice for a racer, with the lack of adjustments and unreliable gearbox, even with a silver can.

Like stated in the original post, I went to an ultima in 2wd once they came out in the late 80's and then to an optima mid in 4wd to be competitive. 

I did race a lunchbox in the monster truck race,( MB's, clod , etc where the thing around then) but got told off for putting brat wheels on it and hornet pinion.I did win though 😀

[bjorklo]

My time as a racer was short, actually just two events. I started in the qualifing rounds with a Bigwig, and won. This took me to the nationals, and i decided i needed a better car, so i bough a modified Egress. It was setup to max performance for 3 min, but nobody had told me that each race lasted 5min  so i was first out for the 3 first minutes, but after that i had now chance. I took a Cab to the nearest hobbystore and bought a new motor and battery. Lucky me i didn't end up in the bottom but in the middle of all the participants. 

I almost got back in in 2005 , but then with a 1:10 serpent impact. I decided it would be to expensive participating in all the races, so i rather just continued to race on the local track with all the other racers. I did sell the car not to long after, and had a break from rc until 2011. 

[racer1]

Back in the day we raced Grasshoppers and Hornets in the local parking lot at my middle school then the first track opened locally and everyone upped their game. I bought a Fast Attack and ran it with a Wild One lexan body then stepped up to a Fox. After that I have to admit I jumped ship and went with an RC10.

About 8 yrs ago someone build a track in a park about 10 miles from me and they had a lot of fun classes including vintage. The most fun and the largest spectator draw was the vintage solid axle class. You could run anything you wanted as long as it had a solid axle in the rear and Tamiya Hornet tires front and rear. 95% we hoppers and hornets but there were the knock offs and every once in a while someone showed up with a worked over Nikko with good electronics.  Really didn't matter how much you tried to hop up the car.  Those tires wouldn't let you use it. The class was a blast and we had a full field every race. The guy with the stock 380 won more times that I can count.  Still miss that track.

[StuartJP]

Yes!

A very few races with my first and only Manta Ray in a school-based club.  Only upgrade was a handful of plastic bearings swapped for ball bearings. No great results, main issue was dumping after a few laps then fighting with my brother over the one fast charger we had between us.  Fun times!  It saw more carpark action.  Seem to remember Yokomo and Schumacher being the proper cars to run at the time.

Anyway, found the Manta Ray again recently in a garage.  It has been brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century, brushless motor, LiPo, 2.4GHz, etc.  Started racing indoors on carpet with it.  Quite hard to get to grips with but definitely capable.