I have run 2 cars on my local beach (Bournemouth area...)
The first was a Team Associated B3 Buggy, which was awesome fun, really good to make little sand jumps and impress the kids. I bought it off ebay for £40 (just the car) and stuck some cheap electrics in it and ran it maybe 10 times at the beach.
The second car was a Tamiya TT-01 Touring Car. This needed the tide to be out and the sand to be dead flat (although with enough momentum you could bulldoze through rough stuff
).
The Tamiya was pretty maintainence free, with very few metal parts to rust..........
gotta eat dinner, will post more details soon.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Associated-RC...oryZ2565QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
BID BID BID!! Up to around £80ish and I rekon thats a good deal? Thats the buggy I used.
Right, where was I.
Yeah, the Tamiya didnt rust which was great, so long as you kept the sand out of the moving parts it doesnt wear all that much hehe. At worst I needed to do a full re-build which is a 3 hour job once you know how to do it (you get to the WRC type professionalism, gearbox is out and replaced in 94 seconds sort of thing)...
Uhhh. The Associated Buggy had some steel or iron or something which rusted, unfortunately these parts were sorta the axles so kinda important. That was a shame because it was a smashing car on the beach. Im sure aluminium axles are available.
As for the rest of the car, the motor gets fried after about 5 runs especially if it gets wet. Needs re-building. The speed controller I had was waterproof but I still managed to blow one up (smoke and flames and everything) by errr... jumping the buggy over some sand which was a bit random.
The recievers are the worst part because not many are waterproof and one wave strike and your car's dead until that part dries out (I never managed to do permanant damage). Once I had to turn sharply into the sea(!!) to avoid an inquisitive dog when I was going quite fast.... :grinning:
Im told sticking a condom over the reciever works well as waterproofing but It seems such a waste of a condom to me!
And when you're really annoyed with shopping around and it seems like you can't find the right car, just check out this one and that'll cheer you up
http://www.tse_adam.youaremighty.com/
Sensible RC racers will tell you to avoid sand etc etc but having done it (it cost me £40 for the whole year basically, after that the car was shot) I'd say its well worth it for a change. Especially if you're the attention seeking type because you get quite a crowd watching you jump off the promenade etc, kids chasing it, its great fun :unclesam:
I dont think a buggy will go over rocks, theyre pretty small fast light things. You want a nitro monster truck (£300+) if you want to play on rocks.
The cars im talking about are electric, which in my opinion is less expensive, although I havent ventured into the world of nitro so who am I to say... I do know that I would
not take a nitro engine anywhere near sand, but a £10 electric motor I would.
so how long does 4 AA batteries last in the remote?
how long does it take to fully charge up the buggy?
more importantly does it only last for 10 minutes?
Get rechargable AA batteries (you need 8, but its worth the investment).
To fully charge a 7.2 volt battery it takes me abour 40 minutes. It depends on the charger and battery!
When racing with a really fast motor (30mphish) you'll get about 6-7 minutes, but ive always found that when im messing about in the road or on the beach the battery tends to last more like 20-30 minutes, because youre stopping lots, not really pushing it and generally messing around.
Also on the sand you spend most of your time doing dohnuts and escaping dogs which doesnt exactly strain the battery in the same way a head to head indoor race will. :grinning:
So.
If you want to race, buy a touring car, Tamiya TT-01, TC3 or similar, everyone has different favourites... you can have a
lot of fun with a TT-01 but you wont win any championships.
If you want to mess around and have some fun, get a nitro or electric buggy then take it on the beach when you're happy to spend time cleaning and money replacing worn parts.
If you wanna chat im on msn most days:
[email protected]
The key thing is not to let sensible people scare you away from having fun :grinning:
