If you were a newbie with a $500 budget

[Asuckaphish]

Thats a steal! I never honestly thought of this but really its not a bad way to go, especially if you can test the rig and have a look at it.

With a 500$ budget you could get a solid platform for around 200$, and then upgrade the crap out of it and have basically the same high quality performance. I wonder if you could even part out a crawler entirely to save money having avoided spending money on a stock rig you will take half the stuff off of anyway.

Totally agree that buying used can be a great way to get a good deal. If the new person has a friend in the hobby who can take a look at the rig and determine if it's a good deal then i'm all for it. I think the problem is a lot of times new people don't know what they don't know and can easily end up with someone elses abortion of a build.

 

[Bigsteezy]

Totally agree that buying used can be a great way to get a good deal. If the new person has a friend in the hobby who can take a look at the rig and determine if it's a good deal then i'm all for it. I think the problem is a lot of times new people don't know what they don't know and can easily end up with someone elses abortion of a build.

Yeah, I never buy anything used until I have a grasp of what is good or bad in any particular hobby. I wasted some money back in the beginning of other activities. Its a great suggestion once you've got your feet under you though.

 

[Inspector86]

Im looking also but i think im going to get a kit from RC4WD. I like scale and they seam to be a great co for scale . The scale look is what got me into this and ive been reading and watching 100s of videos . I can help with questions about electronics if you need help . Good luck

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Good luck with RC4WD! I purchased a TF2 LWB kit and it was the worst quality and poorest engineered kit I have ever seen. I was so disgusted with it that I never even bothered to finished it. It's for sale if you want one.

 

[JatoTheRipper]

Im looking also but i think im going to get a kit from RC4WD. I like scale and they seam to be a great co for scale . The scale look is what got me into this and ive been reading and watching 100s of videos . I can help with questions about electronics if you need help . Good luck

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Don't...stay far away from RC4WD unless you want to overpay for a less than high quality truck. Checkout CrossRC before you blow any money on RC4WD.

Good luck with RC4WD! I purchased a TF2 LWB kit and it was the worst quality and poorest engineered kit I have ever seen. I was so disgusted with it that I never even bothered to finished it. It's for sale if you want one.

Exactly my experience with the TF2. The quality flat out sucks and I gave up halfway through the build out of frustration. That's how much this truck turned me off. That has never happened before in all my years of RC. I resumed the build after a friend did a nice paint job, but it took a lot of effort to build it while looking past the glaring issues.

 

[imthatguy]

Don't...stay far away from RC4WD unless you want to overpay for a less than high quality truck. Checkout CrossRC before you blow any money on RC4WD.



Exactly my experience with the TF2. The quality flat out sucks and I gave up halfway through the build out of frustration. That's how much this truck turned me off. That has never happened before in all my years of RC. I resumed the build after a friend did a nice paint job, but it took a lot of effort to build it while looking past the glaring issues.

RC4WD has done a great job with their latest TF2 variant, the Marlin Crawler edition. Most people have had great experience with it, and if you're looking for scale, as you said you were, a nice leaf sprung truck is hard to beat. You can run it stock, go pretty wild, or make a few easy modifications, and in any form, it'll bring a smile to your face.

As an alternative, take a long look at the SCX10II kit, or the TRX4 Sport.

Really, you can't go wrong with any of them, and if you want the ultimate experience, nothing beats building it yourself. You learn so much as you go along.

 

[JatoTheRipper]

RC4WD has done a great job with their latest TF2 variant, the Marlin Crawler edition. Most people have had great experience with it, and if you're looking for scale, as you said you were, a nice leaf sprung truck is hard to beat. You can run it stock, go pretty wild, or make a few easy modifications, and in any form, it'll bring a smile to your face.

As an alternative, take a long look at the SCX10II kit, or the TRX4 Sport.

Really, you can't go wrong with any of them, and if you want the ultimate experience, nothing beats building it yourself. You learn so much as you go along.

RC4WD gave the Marlin version Yota II axles which is a step in the right direction. But all TF2s should have those updated axles by now, but they don't. That pretty much sums up RC4WD for me. From what I understand the rest of the chassis remains the same. If you buy the TF2 you're going to have the same quality issues since it remains unchanged. The Marlin is probably better with the new axles. Still, I'd checkout CrossRC before RC4WD. By all accounts CrossRC makes higher quality stuff than RC4WD.

 

[bigjack7440]

RC4WD gave the Marlin version Yota II axles which is a step in the right direction. But all TF2s should have those updated axles by now, but they don't. That pretty much sums up RC4WD for me. From what I understand the rest of the chassis remains the same. If you buy the TF2 you're going to have the same quality issues since it remains unchanged. The Marlin is probably better with the new axles. Still, I'd checkout CrossRC before RC4WD. By all accounts CrossRC makes higher quality stuff than RC4WD.

Really ?? Cross Rc over rc4wd? Ive only heard 1 good thing about cross rc and thats bc of there new Deamon but . Rc4wd i thought was 1 of the top 3 ? I do like the deamon $539 flagship

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[Bigsteezy]

Well, after searching every single shop in probably a 50 mile radius I couldn't find a TRX4 sport and I was going to order one. While I was waiting on an ebay coupon to drop, my fiance ended up going to one of the local hobby town locations and brought me home an SCX 10 kit.

Looks like tools are the next stop! I can't even start to think about electronics yet, there's so much to know.

 

[JatoTheRipper]

Really ?? Cross Rc over rc4wd? Ive only heard 1 good thing about cross rc and thats bc of there new Deamon but . Rc4wd i thought was 1 of the top 3 ? I do like the deamon $539 flagship

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Yes, I'd recommend Cross over RC4WD. I don't own a Cross vehicle, but I have a friend that does and he says that build quality of the Cross is much better despite the fact that he's somewhat of an RC4WD fanboy.

RC4WD has quality issues. Look around. The only people that don't seem to want to admit this are people that get free stuff from RC4WD, their team drivers, blind fanboys, and those that don't mind tinkering to fix a $400 kit. I mean the TF2 kit has some of the same issues it's had since it has been released years ago. That's inexcusable IMO. CrossRC has already done rolling updates to some of its vehicles. Look at CrossRC owners and see how happy they are.

Don't get me wrong, after building my TF2 and getting the bugs worked out, which was a really frustrating exercise, I love it. Sometimes I just stare at my TF2 because it's so cool looking and it's fun to drive in a really scale trail environment. But if you expect to build and go without issues and don't want to deal with the durability issues (like sloppy king pins in the front axles that require a bearing mod) then you are better off without RC4WD. It'll also never perform like an SCX10 II. YMMV

 

[CM9000]

if I was stuck on the 500 budget again, I would do the exact same thing I did when I started. short of selling the rig.

I bought a losi comp crawler race roller, put a 18.5 sensored combo in it. found a decent servo couple for steering and dig. bought a used rx/tx dx3r and a lipo with a charger. I think I had about $480 total in it.

I think I took the middle of the comp my first comp with it. with losi still continuing to provide us worm gear nuts with the axles we want, im happy to say I have 7 complete losi rigs, and a whole lot of spare parts.

I remember my first losi taking me 3 months to get everything together. I started my first job in a body shop doing bodywork before I even got out of highschool. intense times. shortly after that, I bought a nib xr10 for around 120$ and did some very basic mods with a little bit of ingenuity. I think I had less than 200 in that build.

crawling can be the cheapest in the hobby if you take care of your rigs and treat them right. they are not bashers...

 

[durok]

I'm still amazed at my Ascender's reliability.

The only mechanical failure I've ever had was a driveshaft setscrew loosened and I had FWD only until I figured it out.

A drop of LockTite fixed that...

It's now got the best of the cheap electronics in it - HH TrailMaster Sport 550 21t, HW 1080 ESC, DS3218 servo, FlySky GT3C.

Just to make it more challenging to drive I swapped 4.19" OD tires on 1.7" wheels to it and to make it really perform after that I went with SSD brass knuckles and rear lockouts.

To protect the front I added a WertyMade bumper, and to run non-Shorty batteries a BPC battery tray.

It has been stupendously fun, and I would pick it again if I was starting over from scratch.

I am not nice to it at all, it tumbles down rocky ledges over and over because of my slowly-improving driving skills and never complains.

Vaterra just released their own transverse-mounting full-size plastic LiPo tray and v2 driveshaft output cups, taking care of those minor issues...

(I had bought a Bomber well before the Vaterra, but never got around to building it until much later - and it breaks something nearly every time I run it even though it's massively upgraded)

 

[Shinchu]

agree wwiht the last 3 posts 100%.
in my garage there are 4 rigs (not counting the 2 on-road), the only one bought new was my sons first, the barrage.

there are classifieds here but you need 30 (quality) posts before you can see. my first rig was an ebay axial yeti that i got VERY lucky it was well maintained and had great upgrades for under $400. true a yeti is not a crawler but it got me started.

used is a great thing if its in decent condition.