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Expensive kits vs cheap kits.

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This is something i would like to hear your thoughts on,cheap kits like the grasshopper and expensive kits like the avante.I have the grasshopper,hornet,novafox,hotshot and bigwig re re buggies.The hotshot and bigwig are more expensive and hornet and grasshopper cheap kits but i get more fun running the hornet and grasshopper than hotshot and bigwig,this is probably because they are tougher and easy to fix.I would like an avante but i know i would be afraid to run it as its so much more money than a hornet.What are your thoughts on this.

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The Hornet and Grasshopper are RWD. Personally I'm only interested in driving RWD cars because I find them a lot more fun.

I have bought a Hotshot and various other 4WD cars because I either find them good-looking, or I want to build and paint them, or both. I'm not really interested in running them much though.

I'm not really bothered how easy they are to fix, as long as parts are available.

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I am new back to the hobby and while I look at the more expensive kits with envy I probably would be less likely to blast them round the track.

I have recently restored an original Grasshopper from my childhood and have really enjoyed blasting it round the back yard track. I also have my Kyosho Raider repaired and working but as parts are a little harder (and more expensive) to get I am more selective when and how hard I run her. I would be the same with a more expensive kit!

For my daily runners they will always be cheaper models with good availability of spare parts. DT-03 and TT-02b are fun and fine for me at the moment.

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Everyone’s ideas of running their car is different. The new avante re releases are tougher in places than the original but hitting a kerb will be pricey and they were never built to land jumps. Running on a flat dirt area round cones is going to be fine other than some dirt and scrapes on that nice body.

I prefer the 4WD kits generally as moving to likes of the manta ray or terra schorcher was such a step forward in handling back whenwe ran them years back, but saying that, lunchbox is so much fun and completely different feeling and I’d drive that more and more often.

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I just want to add that i have no problems with anyone who has an avante or egress and dont run them.Its your money you can do what you want with your cars,i bought a never run fox from ebay £530 with intentions of running it but when i got it that changed as i was afraid of breaking it due to cost and rarity.I just feel relaxed running a hornet or grasshopper as i know it didnt cost a fortune if i break it.

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If I may chime in:

Over the past year and a half that I've been back into the hobby after a 25(!) year hiatus, I predictably went all in and bought several cars and buggies of various price ranges. Despite having built up (or almost built up) most of them, I find myself always going back to my lunchbox, my TT02B, and to a lesser extent my TT02S when I want to run something. This is mostly because I'm always worried that if I was to break any of the others while running them, I'd have a hard time finding and sourcing spares, since they've apparently never heard of Tamiya where I live lol. My 3 runners seem tough enough to hold up to pretty much any abuse without issue, so I just run those. I keep telling myself that I want all my vehicles to be runners, but my subconscious keeps holding me back.

I've become a shelf-queen builder by circumstance I guess. 

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If the goal is to have fun driving, then I would keep driving the car you like and build the Avante and drive it on special occasions.  
 

In my case vintage cars can be pretty pricey and parts can be very difficult to find.  I still drive them as I enjoy doing so.  It’s not the price; it’s the enjoyment factor that matters at the end.. I believe. 

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2 hours ago, Alangt4 said:

I prefer the 4WD kits generally as moving to likes of the manta ray or terra schorcher was such a step forward in handling back whenwe ran them years back, but saying that, lunchbox is so much fun and completely different feeling and I’d drive that more and more often

I have 2 , 4 and even 6WD drive models and I can agree the lunchbox ( or MP in my case ) chassis is one of the most fun to drive. 
CW-01 handles like trash and yet every second of driving is fun. 

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Haven’t gotten around to building a re re Avante yet, so can’t comment on how it would hold up. But I’ve run my re re Egress a lot the last five years without any breakages. Granted, my homemade track hasn’t got very big jumps, but still. Same goes for my re re Optima, re re Tomahawk and Terra Conqueror. 

Re re Monster Beetle and Super Hotshot are the main offenders when it comes to needing repairs. I drive all my kits with the same kind of enthusiasm and lack of skill, so it’s not due to the Egress et al being treated more carefully. 

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4 hours ago, Fuijo said:

as long as parts are available.

The whole key to this hobby, unless you can make or fab the parts yourself, the only silver lining is it becomes a shelf queen or used for parts for another.

 

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I enjoy driving my cars, but I get the greatest amount of joy from building and modding them, so when choosing a kit, I try to get the most build for my money. Cheap kits are typically simple builds, while the really complex ones are also typically really expensive, so most of my purchases are between the two extremes. TA and TB series touring cars, 4WD buggies, chassis that can take custom shells, base-model chassis with lots of upgrades available, etc.

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i have always assumed that at some point i would run whatever i built. Now this to me is a touchy situation. I run my cars. And i enjoy it. However, I also have NIB kits stored to fix the runners assuming parts will not be avail. What i have found is that from 1988 till today i have "learned" about the upgrades and the lipo and the brushless. This changes the Argument from cheap to expensive. What i mean is, Lets find a happy price point, prob a tamiya kit that is including silver can and an esc. If that number is 200 usd, then are we saying that its a cheap kit? A 201 was $200 a few years ago. Now its all about upgrades. So the Schumacher LD2 that im sitting on, literally in front of me now, is $325 or so USD, However i have $500 in alloy and brass parts in multiple online carts. One of those alloy parts is required in step one. So, I can build the kit as is or do an upgraded kit. Same with Tamiya. I have 3 DN-01s, One is almost a trf201 another is halfway and one is NIB. Are we trying to put a finacial number on cheap vs expesive? even if u buy an upgradable kit, lets say because its an easy argument, a TT02B. but with full aluminum and all the trimmings a $150 kit is now 600  USD. Is thst kit still a cheap kit? We all upgrade in one way or another! It could be wheels, tires, a sport or torque tuned moter, a shock upgrade..........ect. i think the question should be stck cheap kits vs expensive stock kits. so meaning an egress at 600 usd vs a $100 grasshopper argument., Ill just leave this all here because i could go on but dont think i need to because if you are enjoying the hobby thats all that matters

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1) Glass RC Syndrome:  I'm afraid of running expensive things. (We all want to protect what we perceive to be more valuable)

2) RWD: I found that my personal preference is RWD over 4WD.  (Some people prefer 4WD, but you might be in the 2WD camp?)  

* Like @TurnipJF, I like tinkering more than driving.  So even for expensive things, I have fun test driving and seeing the improvement.  Since it's only testing, they are less likely to get the battle damage.  

 

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1 hour ago, Finnsllc said:

i have always assumed that at some point i would run whatever i built. Now this to me is a touchy situation. I run my cars. And i enjoy it. However, I also have NIB kits stored to fix the runners assuming parts will not be avail. What i have found is that from 1988 till today i have "learned" about the upgrades and the lipo and the brushless. This changes the Argument from cheap to expensive. What i mean is, Lets find a happy price point, prob a tamiya kit that is including silver can and an esc. If that number is 200 usd, then are we saying that its a cheap kit? A 201 was $200 a few years ago. Now its all about upgrades. So the Schumacher LD2 that im sitting on, literally in front of me now, is $325 or so USD, However i have $500 in alloy and brass parts in multiple online carts. One of those alloy parts is required in step one. So, I can build the kit as is or do an upgraded kit. Same with Tamiya. I have 3 DN-01s, One is almost a trf201 another is halfway and one is NIB. Are we trying to put a finacial number on cheap vs expesive? even if u buy an upgradable kit, lets say because its an easy argument, a TT02B. but with full aluminum and all the trimmings a $150 kit is now 600  USD. Is thst kit still a cheap kit? We all upgrade in one way or another! It could be wheels, tires, a sport or torque tuned moter, a shock upgrade..........ect. i think the question should be stck cheap kits vs expensive stock kits. so meaning an egress at 600 usd vs a $100 grasshopper argument., Ill just leave this all here because i could go on but dont think i need to because if you are enjoying the hobby thats all that matters

I did mean stock kits.

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I also find myself mostly running the cheaper, more available kits, but that also corresponds to what I had available to me as a kid.  My favorite runner is a Blackfoot with MIP diff and a 17t brushed motor.  My first kit as a kid, and it's even better now that I get 30-40 mins out of a battery.  It's really fun and my son races me with his DT-03 racing fighter or my TT-02 plasma edge.  It's a blast.  I have a Super Hotshot and a Top Force that I don't run much because the SHS is super heavy and I feel like it will break and the Top Force parts are not all that readily available.  I also have now an Egress, Wild One, and Novafox NIB and frankly I'm terrified to run them if I build them.  They were cars I always wanted, and not until now that I have a little money for hobbies could I acquire them.  But now that I have them I am not entirely sure what to do with them.

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I run kits that I have or can find parts for. I had a re-re Egress that I simply couldn't bring myself to run. Spares were spotty and the kit was very expensive. I was also afraid of the old phrase "never meet your heroes". It was so expensive and meant so much to me that being underwhelmed or breaking it would ruin the experience for me. I loved building it and love looking at it but that's where it stops for me. 

There's the cheaper, total fun vehicles like the Lunch Box that is pure guilt free fun. Then there's the mid level kits like the Hot Shots. I used to enjoy 2wd buggies more, but have grown to prefer 4wds later in life. As long as I can repair them, I enjoy them. I wish Tamiya would keep a DF01 like the Manta Ray in stock at all times. It was a cheaper re-re and performed very well. You get much of the Top Force experience without all the bling and the higher price. Its competent but pretty care-free at reasonable power levels. Cheap and cheerful ABS/PC buggies are kinda Tamiya's mainstay and that's where fun can be had. I gave an Avante runner a thought for about 2 seconds and decided, beautiful as it was,  its dollar to fun ratio didn't work for me. 

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16 minutes ago, Finnsllc said:

with absolutly no up grades my tto2b is the cats pajamas

I’ve got no idea what ‘cats pajamas’ means 😂

I’m intrigued 👍

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I take a ‘cheap’ kit ( SW01 GF01 ORV) and make it expensive buying hop ups and mods, cost often doubles or more, then running them & inevitably breaking them. All the expensive up front kits I own are still in their boxes.

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1 hour ago, Saito2 said:

As long as I can repair them, I enjoy them.

That's something Tamiya needs to keep in mind.  

One of the reasons why we like Tamiya is because there are parts.  If you run them, breaking some part is inevitable.  If Tamiya keeps up with parts, we'll buy them.  

[It's a double-edged sword too. How many iteration of CC-01 was there? 30, 40? It gets boring, but because they are reissued all the time, we can drop CC01 from the roof and still be confident that we can find parts to repair. Repairing Porsche 959 isn't going to be easy. That makes the owners of this rare car very reluctant to run.]  

U9L4zG0.jpg

 

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2 hours ago, Grumpy pants said:

I’ve got no idea what ‘cats pajamas’ means 😂

I’m intrigued 👍

I think it means admired or desired even though bone stock cheap..  not that TT02 is a bad chassis.  I have a TT02B and it drives fine for street bashing.  

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40 minutes ago, Juggular said:

That's something Tamiya needs to keep in mind.  

I count myself as being soooo lucky I didn't break anything on my childhood Vanquish back in the day. I got it on closeout so it was already on its way out. To the best of my recollection, I don't ever remember seeing any MRC/Tamiya spares for it either in the hobby shops I frequented. Stocking all those spares for those many varied chassis' Tamiya had back then probably wasn't easy. The cheaper, more popular cars (Hornets/Lunchies/ORVs) always had spares though. 

Perhaps its not much different now. High volume re-res that hang around forever like the Hornet/Grasshopper/Lunch Box always get good parts support. Kit breakers fill in the rest. Whittling your main "new" buggies down to the DT03 and TT02B makes parts support easier. Traxxas wasn't dumb with their Bandit/Rustler/Stampede trio.

2 hours ago, Grumpy pants said:

I’ve got no idea what ‘cats pajamas’ means 😂

I usually use the variation "the cat's meow" or, if in more vulgar settings, the cat's, um, "rear end" shall we say.

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Mid-level on road chassis are the sweet spot Tamiyas for me. They're well behaved, durable, fun to drive, and have a million hop-ups and body choices. My TT02s aren't really satisfying to drive in comparison. While I have quite a few off road Tamiyas, the only ones that get run frequently are my Super Astute and G6-01. The rest are too fragile or don't have the parts availability for frequent off road running. 

So, to answer the question, expensive off road kits aren't really that great for runners, but expensive on road kits are totally worth the dough.

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On 7/13/2021 at 10:28 AM, ACCEL said:

you can make or fab the parts yourself

I think that's the most fun part of the hobby for me (besides driving), even though I don't have a 3D printer or cnc machine or any fancy tools really. I've fabricated things on nearly every one of my cars, and it definitely keeps things cheap, because I usually ask myself before ordering anything: Could I make that part myself? And the answer in a surprising number of cases has been: Yes, I can. As long as I can find suitable raw materials and have a good think about how it all goes together ;)

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For me it depends on type of vehicle:

on road - expensive/cheap, makes no difference. Unless racing I tend to not break anything and if I do usually nothing major or unattainable. I usually find the experience given by either cheap or expensive both equally satisfying.

offroad - if racing it’ll be an expensive one, even if it started cheap the upgrades will take care of that quickly. If bashing I prefer to run cheap ones, especially if spares are readily available. I find I have more fun if I can can push a car beyond its limits without worrying about rendering it useless. Also if spares aren’t available then I don’t feel bad about hacking up a cheap car to make other parts fit.

if it can fly - expensive, until I can land without using the word “crash” there is no other option

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