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Best 2WD buggy- Frog, Falcon, or Fox?

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Just curious what your opinions are- box stock. I had a Frog (still have it) growing up and was interested in the Falcon and Fox but never acquired them. I had heard that the Falcon and Fox were supposed to be improvements over the Frog, but they were never as popular. So, which was the best performer out the box?

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The Fox not as popular as the Frog? Crazy talk!

The Fox wins and out handles the Frog all day long.

Never had a Falcon though.

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I would say the Fox has the best gearbox. The Frog might be the nicest one to run, because of its special configuration, but the Fox is definitely a better runner. On the other hand, the Falcon is... not too pretty to consider, haha. :P

Oh, and yeah, the Fox wasn't as popular as the Frog.

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The Frog is a bit too bouncy for my liking. The Fox looks awesome and when fitted with the sway bar is a really good runner. The Falcon looks great box art and with soft shock oil handles surprisingly well for an 80's entry level buggy. The only problem with the Falcon is the weak front end but crp do a brace that works pretty well.

Overall it's got to be the Fox.

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From my experience (I had all three and was running all them), the Fox is the best RC car of them three. The Fox handles very well is fast as funk and looks great too. The Frog, compared to the Fox, is stone age technology to space age technology. The Falcon was a simple made and maintainable, well working low budged 2WD buggy. However, due to the Falcon's rear trailing arm type suspension and the towards position of the shocks, the rear end did not work so well on bumpy terrain as the Fox's did. The only downside of the Fox was its rear dog bones which wore out when running on hot motors and the fact that the well sealed chassis was a pain to maintaine the speed controller or change frequency. The Frog, at the time when it came out was a very good performing buggy. But lack of oil shocks and the strange suspension layout at front and the hard rear suspension made it a bit difficult to handle but was state of the art at its time.

So again, for me, if you compare these three in one speaking, the Fox outperforms the Frog and Falcon.

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The Frog wins. Why? Because of it's history. Because it came first. And because I have one. Actually two.....

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Back in the day when I was a kid and competitively raced (in Australia), The Fox was the 2wd buggy to have.

To stay competitive, a Fox was purchased for me (and then the mandatory Tamiya front sway bar was purchased, shortly followed by a Techigold motor).

My club used to race in an indoor gym which had a fine carpet/felt floor. The other "essential modification" to be competitive was home made foam tires (made from pipe lagging, fitting to rims and then 'machined' down by spinning them with a drill on sandpaper). On race day the tires were prepped by rubbing sun tan cream into the foam!

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When I first started racing it was all Tamiya, I raced a Hornet in the novice class, then a Frog in the regular buggy class. Then the RC10 came out, I had to a gold pan to be competitive. That being said, my vote is for the Frog for the simplicity of it and what you can do with the platform. Yes, it had issues with gearbox (sometimes) and dog bones, but on the available power and batteries of the day, it was quite good. You can keep the Frog a buggy, put Brat wheels / tires on it and make it a off road pickup, convert it over to make it a MT, lower it and put foams on it for on road, just about anything you want to do with it. Back in the day you could just do so much with a Frog platform.

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I had the Frog and the Fox. My neighbor had the Falcon.

I would say Fox especially the water resistance chassis can just about go anywhere and low maintenance too. The Frog close second.

My neighbor seems to like the Falcon but no match to the other two.

I did enter the Fox at a beach race it was held on slippery rock road with sand but the Fox will have no traction and kept spun out. It was all stock, perhaps different tires will help at the time.

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Don't discount the Falcon. It's quite light, and if you can get the rear suspension working better with softer oil and springs, it handles quite well. The front suspension on the Falcon is the best of the three, it's such a shame the rear suspension geometry is all wrong. It feels very stable, similar to the Fox. The other big downside is its lack of gearing options.

Weights (no RC gear):

Fox 1140g

Frog 1020g

Falcon ? (I'll have to measure mine!)

The problem with the Frog is the front suspension is too underdamped, and the rear is too stiff. You need the original pneumatic balloon tires or it doesn't have enough suspension travel or damping. The wheelbase is short, which gives it a tight turning circle. It feels sharp, almost to the point where it feels 'twitchy'. Unfortunately, while the motor is mounted amidships (just), it is mounted too high which gives it a high CoG, so it can grip roll easily. Frog has some unusual adjustments that can be made to it such as the front steering caster angle. The Frog is quite light weight, once you ditch the receiver batteries and use BEC. Many people remember running Frogs before BEC with the extra weight of the 4xAA dry cell receiver batteries. Once you remove this weight, the Frog is very fast.

The best advantage the Fox has is its gearing options, and its wide track and wheelbase gave it excellent stability. Its handling is more consistent, and it is less likely to be upset by rougher terrain. As a chassis, it generally lacks steering with its poor steering lock (Novafox fixed this somewhat). Adding the front stabilizer takes more steering away and actually makes this worse. The motor is rear mounted rather than mid mounted, and can lead the car to snap oversteer, especially on loose surfaces. The downside of the Fox is its weight and sluggish steering make it feel heavy.

- James

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Nothing that cannot be fixed.

Max

On 5/5/2014 at 7:31 AM, HunterZero said:
The downside of the Fox is its weight and sluggish steering make it feel heavy.

- James

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Have not had a Falcon to compare, but between the Frog and Fox, I'll take the Fox, remember my first run, was really impressed with the handling and speed for box stock.

The old Frog just seemed to bounce all over the place :) fun buggy to run and hop up though!

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Perfomance wise the Fox out paces them all. With a few hop ups like the front sway bar and thorp dogbone drive shafts you had a competitive car. Problem was that the RC10 came out around that time and killed everything on the track.

The falcon had issues. Dog bones that would pop out all the time and a front bulkhead that was prone to breaking. The frog had the worst differential that would grenade in a heatbeat.

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Nothing than cannot be fixed.

Max

Will the solution inspire another awesome kontemax tutorial?

It is interesting that these buggies are compared - to me, anyways, since I never remembered the Falcon being pushed as a racer while the Frog and the Fox were. But I figure the Falcon was a good club-level racer from members' experiences on here, and as the Madcap would be later in the 80s.

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Nothing than cannot be fixed.

Max

Of course, but we're talking box stock here.

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Shodog has it spot on, I raced in the eighties and what a lot of people don't realise is what was available back then. When I first started racing with my Brat everyone was running SRB's Holiday Buggies / the odd Kyosho. The Brat when it came out was a revelation compared to those - lightweight quick with a 540 and pretty stable for a standard buggy. Then the Frog came out 6 months later and wow - that was fantastic and the model to have. You had to keep the stock tyres to help the rear damping (as has been mentioned) But otherwise it was great - Mine had a seasons hard racing and never blew the diff, I wrecked the shell but that was it,

Then models started to come thick and fast and the Fox was a great car, but sadly for it the RC10 came out and that was the one to have, I had the option at the time to buy a new Fox or a used RC10 and I opted for the RC10 and never looked back - had some serious fun with that car until the 4wd's started to take over and my love affair then turned to 1:1 cars and the RC never had a look in..

Now a days it's all too easy to compare with modern stuff and say the Frog is (poor) I disagree with this but just stating that it's too easy to compare with a lot of other stuff. When I racing Tamiya was at number 58060 when I stopped racing - look at the numbers now !!!!!!!!!!!!!

my local club has just started racing 2wd buggies and I'm giving serious thought to turning up with my Frog, no I wont win but i'll have the biggest smile..

Nowadays I've just bought a NIB Fox and it will be my first build and proper drive so will comment more then, as for the Falcon, no idea as that's one model I've never owned or driven...

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I always wonder whether both falcon and fox share s Ame gearbox and diff?

AFAIK, both frog and fox has the same diff.

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7 hours ago, FC5687 said:

I always wonder whether both falcon and fox share s Ame gearbox and diff?

AFAIK, both frog and fox has the same diff.

All three buggies have different gearboxes/gears/diffs.

 

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What parts are compatible for the Fox?

i'm hoping after i build the Frog i'd like to build The Fox......................

Vintage Tamiya Fox Astute Avante Frog S10 Lunch Box Wild Willy Brat Posters LOOK

 

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I used to have Frog with thorp ball diff and all CRP upgrades probably between  85 and 86. Very good runner 

I bought the rc10 in 87. But still missed the frog as it was fun to drive

 

 

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10 hours ago, ACCEL said:

What parts are compatible for the Fox?

Virtually nothing. The Fox stands out as the one Tamiya buggy that never got a clone or shared many parts with other buggies. Its design is very much like a 2wd version of the  Hot Shot series, but the parts are unique to it. Still a great, beautiful buggy though and, stock to stock, a far better performer out-of-the-box than the Frog, IMHO.

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Well it looks like the Wild One is coming back in stock in October and i Dig Juggular's, it's that Fantastic Red One and my Birthday is in October (the eighth month:lol:),

so i will be pre-ordering it Monday.

If and when the the Fox comes out i'll purchase it also.

I really like it's character and stance.

i have the The Frog on the table now. just rear drive shafts and bearings, it'll stay stock, box art, since i gave mine to my nephew 45,000 years ago, and since then he had given it to a friend (i didn't know, i was dumb, deaf, blind and numb, married with children) dang! but i still have all my toes and fingers:blink:

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11 hours ago, Mrowka said:

absolutely no offence intended, but to be honest, that article doesn't impress me much. The people who did this can't possibly have had mcuh actual experience with the Fox before doing the modifications. It doesn't take much running and experience to know that the GRP plates of the original optional front sway bar break easily. So modifying the front suspension without doing anything to protect the protruding parts of the GRP plates clearly reflects that whoever did this didn't care to get any real experience with the Fox before starting to modify. A basic mistake.

Also, when running the Fox with the optional sway bar, handling is so much improved that I seriously doubt that fitting a two shock design with clearly inappropriate geometry is an improvement. I bet handling actually deteriorates with any of the two modified front suspensions. Also, placing the cylinder end of the dampers on the suspension arms, thereby unnecessary increasing unsprung mass, isn't particularly clever.

The only good thing I see in this article is replacing the original hex drive shafts with dogbones. Apart from that, none of the other real flaws of the Fox are addressed.

Harsh critcism of the article? Sure, but legitimate in my humble opinion. There has always been way too much snake oil in this hobby. Some get "experts" that way whereas others get rich selling snake oil, but it has never done anything good for the hobby.  

Finally, thank you for sharing! Despite being rather poor modifications, the article is a nice piece of nostalgia.:)

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No offense taken. I didn't write the article or endorse it. That said, other than dog bones, what if anything do you advise doing to a Fox?

What I don't get is why the author didn't suggest doing something about the Fox differential. This may or may not have something to do with the state and availability of aftermarket parts in France at that time.

Note that the article also doesn't say anything to the effect of "buy an XYZ aftermarket widget (available for 49.99 francs at your local hobby shop) and install!" All parts referenced in the article are either Tamiya or are homemade.

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