Beginner Racing - Is a Mini a good option?

[SigmaF]

Howdy all,

Decided to get myself an RC car again after about 20 yrs and quite fancy having a go at some winter Indoor racing....

I've had a bit of a look around and it seems like a good, fun, competitive and relatively cheap option could be the Tamiya M03 chassis.....

I am on the right lines with this do you think?

It seems that a basic kit (Swift 1600 or BMW Mini)....combined with some better dampers, ballracing, a different motor, some tyres and perhaps some diff work is that is really required.....

Would this be a good start?


It doesn't look like the radio gear has changed much.......

How about the battery technology.......is there anything specific that I should be looking at?

Thanks guys....

[RogerM]

M03 racing is really good fun.

Most clubs (as far as I can tell) try to encourage the use of the box stock chassis so just pop along with a car straight out of the box and go from there!!!

HAted mine at first, changed to 3-racing tires and now it's great!!!

[rcluke]

minis are great !! :D :D :D

[SigmaF]

...thanks guys....

any recommendations on what I should be looking at battery and radio gear wise?

[RogerM]

Batt, anything cheap will do ... try to get a NiMh pack as the Nicad packs won't perform as well. At most I only take 1000mAh out of a pack on a run.

Once did a whole meeting on one charge on my 3700s as I forgot my charger and nobody else had a charger with deans on!

Radio wise, anything will do. Worth going for a slightly better than stock servo though, a mid range Futaba would be my choice (only due to the fact that there is no option to use my prefered HiTec servos).
Talking of servos put a stiff cable tie around the servo-saver-ring .... it's not strong enough and gives vague steering and can even overload and snap if you don't!!

[Agt26]

Hi,
I used to race the m03 at my local club up until recently. There great fun and would be pretty good to start with. Electrics wise if your using the kit silver can motor any half decent esc should be fine. I used both a lrp v7.1 and the kit tamiya teu-101bk speed controllers and found no noticeable difference. And with cells like Rogerm said NiMh packs are worth getting. Radio gear wise pretty much anything works but its worth getting something you find comfortable to drive with obviously,

Good luck :D

[big air]

I thought nicd packs gave more zap when using a silver can :p