VQS vs Egress vs TF Evo?

[stockae92 16]

VQS vs Egress vs TF Evo as a basher? Is that even a good idea? haha

How do they compare in terms of maintenance, durability and how do they drive on different surfaces? 

Nothing too crazy, no big jumps, just general bashing in the park.

[Superluminal 3750]

I would avoid getting one as a basher unless you have very good spares availability or at least run it carefully. I bent a piston damper on my re re Egress front hicap and it took about 18 months for a spare rod to become available.

[mud4fun 1696]

hehe, now call me stupid or just slightly insane but I gave my youngest daughter my old Vanquish and my middle daughter has a recently 'as new' rebuilt Egress. Both are used as basher buggies and for the postal racing, they've been used on just about every postal racing round so far. I also use my Avante2001 all the time too. 

HOWEVER, and this is a BIG CAVEAT - I have LOADS of spare parts and I have modified all my caars.

I have fitted Yeah Racing alloy hubs, Yeah Racing CVD driveshafts and re-re heavy duty front alloy hub carriers to all five of our Avante class buggies. The two Avante2001's and the two Egress are also using non-Tamiya carbon decks. All ours are using Avante2001 geared diffs (which are trouble free for bashing and for the 13T motors we use) and all the shocks are home made 'Frankenstein' units made up of various parts I had in my very large shock pile. We use bespoke black CVA's up front on all five of them as they are specifically made to give good travel and use off the shelf Tamiya CVA components which are readily available. 

Since fitting the alloy hubs we haven't had a single failure in the hub or suspension areas despite literally 30+ hours use across three (of the five) buggies in the last year. (The Thundershots have a much higher usage though, probably double or triple that).

I have however gone through THREE front gearboxes in a year, mainly due to roll overs at 30+mph where my Avante2001/Egress hybrid landed on the very tall carbon front shock tower fitted to it. The taller tower was fitted to allow for long suspension travel but it has since been reverted to a standard Avante2001 tower so there is a lot less stress put into the gearbox shock tower mounts and we haven't had any shear off since. Also we lowered the cars, reduced CoG by fitting smaller lighter ESC's and receivers on the top deck, fitted new TBG shells for bashing with and we now use LiPo. In conjunction with spending time adjusting camber to suit running on tarmac and using better tyres we have not actually suffered a grip roll since. Our driving has of course also improved dramatically with all the practise we've been doing for postal racing! 

So for most people, certainly people that don't want to modify their cars, then 'kit spec' are fragile and should be treated very carefully and prices of parts (if you can even find them) is high.

Out of the three I would choose an Egress. The chassis is a work of art and it is the most usable for bashing with. It has been re-re'd a couple of times now so there is at least SOME parts available which is more than can be said for the others (even with the new re-re TFE due) and the Egress shares its gearboxes and several other items with the Avante, VQS, Avante2011, Avante Black Edition etc and they have also been re-re too. I would not bother with VQS for bashing, it is a lovely buggy and drives beautifully on rougher ground but it is too fragile and parts are exceptionally rare because it doesn't share much with the other Avante class cars other than the gearboxes (and suspension shared with Egress and Avante2001) which makes repairing it harder.

That is just my opinion though.

I would recommend a Terra Scorcher/Fire Dragon or Thunder Dragon re-re for bashing - rugged, reliable chassis and plenty of parts available cheaply both from the original vintage ones of from all the re-res. Easy to hop-up and can be made to perform very well. Indeed my modified Thundershot has beaten my Avante2001/Egress on just about every postal racing round so far! 

EDIT: Of the three, the VQS is best for grass and dirt tracks, it has the supple long travel suspension and good ground clearance. However the Terra Scorcher was equally as good and half the price and is more rugged. The Egress prefers smoother flatter surfaces and ideally tarmac or very flat dirt or heavily trimmed lawns. Can't speak for the TFE as mine seemed to spend its entire time in my hands broken and waiting for parts LOL but from what little time I spent with it, it too was like the Egress, preferred smooth fast tracks, not a real dirt or off road basher.

[Rich_8717 114]

They will all be fine if you aren't going to be stuffing them into static objects at full throttle or trying to run them on brushless 3s systems.

I 'bashed' an original top force for years and usually run an evo spec re-re top force these days and the only parts that I've ever broken are the front uprights and the ball diff plates, both of which are easily found parts.

The VQS should be equally sturdy out of the box but I would be worried about finding spares for it down the line as I believe it's a limited run kit and any original parts you might be able to find are of no use due to their age.

The Egress is better in some areas than the top force but worse in others, if you do break something it will be a lot harder and usually cost more than the top force to repair but in genral it's no better or worse for its reliability.

 

Due to the sheer amount of 3rd party 'hop ups' for the DF01 chassis I would go for the Top Force myself as almost every part you might end up breaking has a stronger replacement part available, also, if you build it properly it doesn't need any regular maintenance at all other than keeping the driveshafts/hubs clean.

[Problemchild 2149]

How much better is a £500 80s car than a £100 TT02b?

I am just mid-build of a 2011 Avante and have a TF Evo on pre order (I’ve never spent this much on an RC car before) and I won’t be running them.

I have a highly modified TT02b running 3s brushless for a 4WD basher, a modified beetle running 3s brushless as a monster truck basher and a DEX210 running 3s brushless as a 2WD basher.

obviously people can run what they want 

i like to see the expensive kits as eye candy and assets that will depreciate very little and I see the £100 models as repairable and disposable 

 

JJ

[mud4fun 1696]

57 minutes ago, Problemchild said:

How much better is a £500 80s car than a £100 TT02b?

I am just mid-build of a 2011 Avante and have a TF Evo on pre order (I’ve never spent this much on an RC car before) and I won’t be running them.

I have a highly modified TT02b running 3s brushless for a 4WD basher, a modified beetle running 3s brushless as a monster truck basher and a DEX210 running 3s brushless as a 2WD basher.

obviously people can run what they want 

i like to see the expensive kits as eye candy and assets that will depreciate very little and I see the £100 models as repairable and disposable 

 

JJ

Depends on what you are doing but in general bashing, any modern buggy is superior to an 80's vintage buggy simply because the parts are more readily available and cheaper.

It is all very well for people to say 'Oh I never crash' or 'Well if you crash then you are being stupid' but this just shows that these people have never actually driven a buggy properly, I most often hear it from collectors or those that think a 5 minute run on a summers day in the middle of an acre wide flat field is somehow worthy of 'bashing'.

Even the finest racers in the world crash, and crash regularly. Just take a look at any youtube video of the world championships, IFMAR worlds or Euros.

What they also forget is that, as in my case,  my buggies are often driven by my kids, as young as six. Accidents happen and kids don't learn unless they make mistakes. As long as it is cheap and simple to repair then I see no issue with any buggy being used for bashing even in the hands of young children. However common sense prevailed in my case and my kids grew up and honed their skills on Thundershots which are cheap, easily fixed and parts are plentiful. After they developed a reasonable skill level they progressed to my higher powered buggies and now my youngest is running my Vanquish and my middle daughter is running my Egress and even months later we have had no breakages at all.

We race our buggies around our garden track for thousands and thousands of laps and I can assure you that no matter how skilled the driver, mistakes will happen and eventually you will hit a hardwood railway sleeper, or a very large plant pot or a fence post and you will break your car. Anybody that say otherwise is blatantly lying or is plain stupid. The Egress, Vanquish, Top Force, Manta Ray and Avante2001 are all fragile and far inferior to modern buggies in such use unless you are wealthy and have a very large stockpile of parts. 

 

 

[Rich_8717 114]

On 2/2/2021 at 11:31 PM, Problemchild said:

How much better is a £500 80s car than a £100 TT02b?

In reality, they are no better, and in a lot of cases they are actually worse, but that's not really the point for a lot of us, if it was all about performance we wouldn't be buying Tamiya kits at all, we would probably be bashing an associated or schumacher buggy instead.

Quote

i like to see the expensive kits as eye candy and assets that will depreciate very little and I see the £100 models as repairable and disposable 

I can see your point here but I would say that most of the (expensive) re-release buggies are being bought by people who wanted them as kids but had no chance of owning them, as kids if we were lucky enough to get one of the original kits how many of us would have left it NIB as an 'investment'? I know that I certainly wouldn't have. 

Now if I could find and buy an original NIB Egress or TFE kit I wouldn't want to build and run it either as I would see that as not only a shame, but financially a stupid idea as I would immediately lose half of my money as soon as I broke the first blister pack, that's why the re-re kits make so much sense, sure they are still expensive but relative to the original kits they are cheap, and you don't have any guilt in building and running it.

Basically they are a second chance to have the experience of owning and running something that your childhood self had no chance of doing, or for the lucky few, re-living that experience again.

Obviously everyone see's the hobby differently and I know that many guys get more joy out of keeping a kit NIB and just looking at it now and again and that is fine. As for those that just buy these kits to make money, I personally don't see them as wise investments unless you are going to watch the market like a hawk or buy up tons of stock. Those guys are going to have to store the kits for a good few years before they start making any real money and lets all be honest, in 20-30 years when most of us will be dead or over it, there probably won't be any value left in them at all or the market will be so saturated with people selling up that the prices will drop.

Of course I do agree with you that if you are going to buy an Egress for your 9 year old and let them launch it off a ramp then you would be much better with a cheaper kit, but end of the day, people can do what they like with their own money.

[Wez-li 1790]

I remember when my son and I had a little bash with my dynatech powered Avante 2001 shelfer.

Less said about that the better... 

If you drive these buggies as intended then you will crash, a lot, the bodies that you spent hours painting and decaling will be flipped over a thousand times and given the full sandpaper treatement. 

And the delicate parts of the tfe, vqs and egress, of which there are plenty will soon depart. 

Out of the 3, the tfe will be easiest to run and maintain, but for a vintage 4wd basher, just look at a standard Manta Ray (always the answer). Stick a tfe body on it if you just want the looks. 

Or for a more modern equivalent with unlimited spares, a TT02b as suggested above is perfect.

[Problemchild 2149]

@Rich_8717 excellent points

I wasn’t exposed to the huge range of cars when I was younger.

i came to Tamiya quite late in my childhood 

as an adult I bought the 1 car I always wanted (a lunchbox) and still wasn’t really aware Tamiya was going like it was - I saw the lunchbox advertised on IWOOT as a rere.

that sat on the shelf until I saw the beetle rere and when I started googling prices I became way more aware and quite quickly my eyes were drawn to eBay and the cars I used to own - falcon, clod buster and terra scorcher (bought 2nd hand back then and bought second hand now - and restored)

the avante and TF evo ordered this month is me being a child again but also being a sensible adult because I never wanted one as a kid

I think the TF Evo will be the best driver and at least it has more of a parts support 

 

good luck 

 

JJ

[pengoo 41]

Well  I have cancelled my TC EVO  pre order and my Egress order too ....Only as I lucky to buy Egress. one at a price pre built .but still better chance I add it to my collection over waiting with fingers crossed on a pre order being fulfilled...

I choose the Egress over the TF EVO as a matter of taste and true what I think a great machine in looks and style ...

I will how ever sit back and wait till a time the TF  may be on sale at a better price no ...rush ...collection getting a little large now ....finding hard to hide so many from the wife....LOL...

[topforcein 1764]

 

3 hours ago, pengoo said:

 

I will how ever sit back and wait till a time the TF  may be on sale at a better price no ...rush ...collection getting a little large now ....finding hard to hide so many from the wife....LOL...

i would say that will never happen the price will only go up look at the last re-re of the top force i got mine at around £200 try and get one for that now

[pengoo 41]

On 2/7/2021 at 3:48 PM, topforcein said:

 

i would say that will never happen the price will only go up look at the last re-re of the top force i got mine at around £200 try and get one for that now

True at the moment things have gone crazy .. but i am in no rush for the TF .. until i knew the Egress was out ,I was allways a lover of that model first .. So one large payout will do .. for now ...lol