What does the Frog mean to you?

[Shodog]

The frog was my first really good R/C car. I got it for my birthday in 1984. It was a used one built by the owner of a shop that I was working for at the time. My mom came to pick me up from school one day. As I got in the car, there it was on the floor board of the passenger seat. Car, Radio and a 15 minute timer charger. Man I was grinning like a chestshire cat. When I got back into collecting vintage car, I was really happy when I was able to pick one up at the flea market for $55. I ran it a few times and then started collecting parst to restore it. The frog in my showroom only uses the rear tires and body from that car.

Lets have this thread stay specifically for talking about what the Frog meant to you.

Jim

[stulec52]

I guess I always remember seeing preview shots for the Frog, and thinking OOOOO that would be a fun race car, was never sure about pink though......

Then as it turned out I missed out on getting one at the time, and went for a Hirobo Rock N City top race with instead ( wonder how different things would have been??)

So, a couple of years agao I finally got the chance to own one, so I jumped at it ( 50 pounds from a friend)

[Porsche 928_gts_02]

For me it was my first REAL competitive 2WD race car. I had a SS before that and I modified the badword out of it and won races. But I kept crashing and breaking. The Frog was the first durable race car I had that would take punishment without breaking!

Darin

[TamiyaMan]

This car would take eight feet of air and land on concrete no problem. What I remember most was the weekly trip to the hobby store for new half shafts.

[Guest Carsnboats]

Both that I owned were bought 2nd hand, the first one was used competetively, on the then outdoor track in Hereford, there was a huge banked corner with a fence behind. It was a challenge to jump the corner and try to clear the fence. I only ever got to within a few inches of the top. But the car always took the abuse. I even used to car crush it with my Big Brute and it still survived. I am not so brutal now, even if I did destroy a ceramic plant pot with the stadium blitzer I had (was accidental that one, misjudged the distance [)])

[Supershot]

When I think of legendery Tamiya cars,the one that sticks out the most is the Tamiya Frog!The Frog was the profoundly popular in it's time and introduced many people to real R/C.Just a truly legendery car!!

[jerzirccar]

I bought one BRAT NIB wich I converted fast to an FROG. That one was good but then one day my friends father brought one HORNET to him from JAPAN with an LEMANS 480 GOLD so I had to buy an 4wd car[!]. But the FROG has an place in my heart. If you have seen my showroom you understand what I mean. The car is fast but drive train is not so good. Nice little car.[]

Jerry

[SJoerD]

Remember when feeding the birds they are actually far grand-grand-grandsons of the dinosaurs. The T-rex was actually a big ugly chicken. []

The same goes for the Frog. The Frog's spaceframe design still lives on today in the King Blackfoot. I think that shows what impact on the RC world it had, though changed it's still visible today! []

Whe I first saw the Frog, it was like: "What an interresting thing to make a buggy with a King Blackfoot chassis." Not so strange as I look at older RC cars in sort of a reversed way. [|)] [] As I never owned one of these or even saw one the car on itself doesn't have much of a personal meaning to me. [] Still I like it a lot! [^]

[ShenUK]

well like most this was my first Tamiya and at the time a hated it, it was always braking and cost me a lot of money & as i had the chance to drive a hotshot (my 3rd car)always wanted a hotshot but looking back i can't of hated the frog that much as i spent a lot of money on it and looked after it well and as this was my first i don't own one now but am looking out for one at a good price anyone????

[Dazmeister]

To me it means a little bit of pocket money if you keep buying the repro shells from me []

Darren

[RETRO R/C]

Balmy summer afternoons spent making jumps out of mounds of dirt.........competitions with friends as to who could do the most "doughies".......and evenings spent in front of the TV on the floor with the car spread out out on a towel in a million bits - cleaning and regreasing ready for the next day's / weekends torture.......

ahhhhhhhhhhh - the memories.[]

Cheers

Darryn

[terry.sc]

The Frog was my first competition buggy. Previous to that I had a Sand Scorcher and Sand Rover for messing about with. I had raced 1/12 scale cars for 6 years before, but when I moved to Manchester there were no clubs nearby that ran them. I went to the local club, saw what was competitive and then went out and bought a Frog.

Got my best result with my Frog. I qualified it on a C final pole at a BRCA national off road championship meeting, although I did not do much off road racing with it.

The Frog also seemed to be the most high maintenance car I have raced, the diff needing rebuilding and reshimming each week to make sure it worked smoothly for racing. At least I had a constant supply of development plastic rear dogbones for it from Specialist Turned Parts. These were given to local drivers to try out until the right material was found which did not wear out.

A great car .

[bholio]

My early experience with the Frog was negative. in the 1980's my brother had a Falcon and his friend had a Frog. They built the Frog together, but it never ran nearly as smoothly as the Falcon. The gear box constantly made grinding noises. It never ran properly. If that kid (er, man) still has the car, I'll bet it is in mint condition as I don't think it got used much.

For some reason, my brother then bought a used Frog (actually converted Brat as I found out recently). He got ripped off. It was junk. When we finally got it working, again the gear box slipped. Never used it long enough to wear out a halfshaft. I took it apart recently, and found badly worn diff gears (which I can still buy today). Today it runs a Brat non-diff. Someday I'll take it apart again and fix it right.

I now have that Frog, a Blackfoot and a Brat. To this day I dislike that chassis, but Tamiya has made some of their most popular cars on it.

[quiksilver007]

The frog...where to begin...it was a car i had but briefly...my brother traded some dude for it...he let me have it for a bit...i loved that car...and the rear end coming with the like 3 different gearings was cool....but I do love the legacy of the frog more...im addicted to my blackfoot..it was my second car...still have her...and enough parts to build more...much to my wife's chagrin[]

[TamiyaBeaterFleet]

Just got a frog. Bad shape , but ive been fixin it up, Runs like a champ. I did notice the front of the car looks like frog legs. Is that why they named it the frog??? Any1 know??

[bholio]

Now that you mention it, the Frog was Tamiya's first animal-named car. I don't see the resemblance to frogs leg in the front suspension however.

I do see grasshoppers legs in the reae suspension of the grasshopper.

[Shodog]

Lots of good stories here. On I remember was that we were going to visit my uncle out at a nearby lake. I really wanted to impress him with my frog. I meticuously cleaned it. Took apart the gear case and cleaned and regreased the transmission. I get to the lake an pull out my frog. Plugin the batteries and hit the throttle. All we hear is the grinding of gears. the wierd thing was that it ran fine in reverse so I ended up running the car in reverse for the rest of the day.

Jim

[HunterZero]

The Frog was my first and for a long time only radio controlled car.

My parents bought it for me with Sanwa Dash transmitter as a present, and I had the chassis built and running about the carpet that evening with the normal gear ratio. Next day, it was time to run it out of doors - sans body, which was yet to be painted in the box colours of pink and white.

First run, and what do I decide to do but test the transmitter range. BAD idea, since the car immediately took off, ran onto the road (thankfully a quiet dead end street), and 200M later struck a kerb, breaking the steering horn.

A few days later, with new steering horn and body painted by my mother (she worked with my dad doing trace and paint for his animation studio, so it was pretty good), it was time for some off-road fun. One thing I did notice about my car was that it was easy to flip, if cornered hard at high speed. I had to back off the throttle to turn it. Luckily the steel antennas acted as sort of a roll cage, and were easily bent back into shape after a flip.

I enjoyed dismantling and assembling all the parts almost as much as running it. I enjoyed it so much I would clean and regrease the car with molybdenum grease once a week. This method must have paid off, since the diff and halfshafts never needed replacing, and still run fine to this day. I do remember wearing out a few pinion gears. Once the plastic bearings wore out, I added new uprights and replaced all the bearings with ball bearings - this helped too. I wore out quite a few sets of tyres, two motors, and the front suspension. My grandfather, who built model steam engines, turned some custom brass lugs for the front suspension on his lathe. I ran a Technigold in it, and ran it through a timed speed trap, clocking it at around 40kph.

I regularly raced with friends who had a Hornet, a Falcon, and a Fox. Wow, was the Fox cool. I attended a couple of off-road race meets, and my only memory was leaving the other cars in the dust on the straights, but getting caught up on the corners, then running out of battery before the end of the race!

We stayed in a house on a farm, and the car came with me. There was a 2 foot wall I would jump the car off, which it handled with ease all but once, when it flipped and broke off a light.

Eventually, the slop in the front end got so bad I had to shelve my beast. The car would 'waggle' quite badly and wouldn't travel a straight line due to wear. I've nearly amassed the parts to rebuild it. Ah, what a fun car.

- James

[Twmaster]

The Frog was my first model buggy. I used to race 1:1 buggies and after winning this on eBay and bringing it home (local sale) I really liked the looks of it. Looked a lot like a real buggy, at least to me. I am going to be restoring the Froggy very soon. I am awaiting some new parts and I have a pile of blue aluminum hop-up parts so this Frog will have the blues. And like it! [8D]

[DerAlex]

Altough I never owned one the frog was one of the first real rc cars that I saw in a race. Around '84 there were a lot of people who raced their Tamiyas at a big park near in my city.

There were Ascona, Audi Quattro, Subaru Brat, Frog and later Wild Ones and Monster Beetles .... and of course a lot of Willies.

Thats the time when I got my first real RC Car the Hot Shot I.

To my the Frog means a lot because without it there were no Monster Beetles []