Si Coe

Well for a start they are the biggest name in 1/10th racing with a massive record of World titles across multiple classes stretching all they way back to the early '80s so if anyone could make money it was going to be Associated. Secondly they didn't make money at one point and were bought out (by Thunder Tiger IIRC) though it never affected the supply. Thirdly whilst they never really marketed to the bashing market their own research concluded only 1 in 10 of the original gold chassis RC10's ever made it to a race track, and its been suggested B4 sales were similar. Finally they have made many 'casual' models over the years, some successful and some less so. The RC18 series was more fun basher than hardcore racer as were some of their cheaper SCT models. The MGT was all about bashing but wasn't a great sales success. Basically Associated found something they did well and stuck to it - wining races. Its helped to sell to racers and non-racers alike, but only when having a racing heritage might actually be useful, which is probably why they don't have a scaler for example.

Never seen interlocking tiles used for racing - do you mean running on the actual foam surface? Interesting prospect but no idea how well it will work or what tyres to use. Event carpet is normally the cheapest option, used and stained is ideal because it will get hammered anyway. I've also seen a club use the very thin sort of also carpet like Astroturf some places sell, without filler. For offroad type models you don't need the carpet to cover the whole area of the track - its actually better to leave a few slippery patches of polished floor. This won't go down so well with touring cars though! Finally although most places need carpet don't automatically discount the original flooring. Polished floors are a struggle but some newer school gyms have a sort of rubberised coating which makes for a decent surface. My club used to race at the school I now work at, using our indoor tennis courts which didn't need carpet. The venue will decide how much you need.

If it had the locking diffs and high/low box of the bigger Summit this would be awesome, but I guess thats too much to ask for at this scale.

Lane width Cars need a lot of space to pass safely

At a minimum it needs to be about 2 metres wide. More is better but any less and passing become impossible. 2.5m is a good idea for the main straight. Length depends on configuration really because lap time is more important than distance covered - therefore a flat out oval track needs to be quite long, whilst a tight twisty track can be quite short. The idea is to aim for a laptime of about 20 seconds for a good driver. Since you will be timing manually any less than 15 seconds will be a nightmare to manage once you've got a few cars on the track. For carpet you might want to hit up my old club Bury Metro. They have recently bought some new carpet which means their old stuff might need a new home. Its getting pretty worn down (hence the new purchase) but should do starting out at least.

Most clubs insist all drivers are BRCA members. Traditionally my club said that for complete noobs you could do 3 race meetings to decide if it was for you, and then you'd need BRCA membership. Its also a good idea for all club officials to be members even if they aren't driving. From that point on though you can pretty much do whatever you want - most of the rest of the rules are optional for club racing. So we let oddball cars that don't fit any class run if we want to, on long warm summer days we might make races 8 or 10 mins long instead of 5 etc. The one area thats a bit tricky is where it pertains to Health and Safety. Here you need to understand that the BRCA is not acting as an organising body but as an insurance provider, and like any provider they will be reluctant to pay out if you weren't acting appropriately. The best example of this is the lipo charging bag - the BRCA rules state batteries should be charged in a fire resistant container. Well I can say I don't own such a lipo sack, have never used one, don't insist my members use one etc - and we've held BRCA National events at our track. But I do accept that if we had a serious fire caused by someone charging a lipo not in a sack our liability insurance would be invalid and therefore I could be personally liable for any injuries. The problem is thats not down to the BRCA - I know other clubs have arranged their own 3rd party public liability insurance and they still insist on similar rules to the BRCA. Its just considered good practice. And not having insurance just leaves you liable for everything - not an option IMHO. Thats the way of the world these days, not RC. BTW - I've not been involved in racing for a year or so now, but I'm still a BRCA member. That insurance is well worth it even off the track - its actually MORE useful off the track in fact. Finally I should add that yes, some of the senior members are the most dour, elitist, rule obsessed etc you could possibly imagine. Our club treasurer had to take me off to Maccys to stop me from giving a mouthful to one official when we last held a major BRCA event when he started moaning about the tiniest of details. Come to think of it I quit shortly after that! But that was the one time in 5 years of race directing I actually had to deal with them face to face - and only then because we invited them to hold an event at our track.

Normally race meetings consist of 3 (or more) rounds of 5 minute qualifying followed by single 5 min final. Drivers marshal the heat after them. This means you need a minimum of 3 heats to work smoothly (race, marshal, prep, race, marshal, prep etc). Whilst a race lasts 5 mins there is a bit of extra time needed to swap over to the next heat, getting cars off and the next ones on and people out to marshal. With well trained drivers, race control on automatic and me nagging on the tannoy I can get the interval down to 8 mins (5 mins to race and 3 to swap over) but its tight. Don't expect less than 10 mins at first. That means that 3 rounds of 3 heats and a final will take you 2 hours to do - 30 mins a round if everything goes to plan. Adding a 4th heat adds an extra 40 mins to the runtime. How you arrange the heats is up to you really. We race almost solely 1/10th buggys so we'd split them into 2wd and 4wd but if you have mix of car types you might want a heat of buggys, a heat of touring cars and a heat of micros etc. Its not a good idea to mix car types in the same heat because it can cause big problems when they inevitably crash. Given that each heat adds significantly to the running time you really need at least 3 people to each heat to make it worthwhile. That means if you say only get 2 SCT's you'd be better off putting them in with the buggys than on their own. £5 a meeting is actually pretty cheap - its been a while since I last paid for a club race (the perk of running the meeting is you race for free!) but £6 or 7 for non-member is pretty common. That said most organised clubs have some sort of automatic timing system which cost ££££ to buy. There are ways to time manually which I can advise on in due course so to start with a simple laptop and some free software will suffice, but you'll be needing to squirrel away some funds for a timing system.

Probably the best advice I could give you is to go and see the folks at Ribble Valley. They race on Fridays over in Leyland in a school hall. Their setup is a lot like you are aiming for, and has a good mix of ages with an excellent Junior series. Look for Janice who will be at Race Control, tell her Simon the former race controller from Bury recommended them for advice. Speaking of which - I'm the former race controller of the mostly outdoors club at Bury. I can help with advice regards running meetings, race timing, health and safety regs etc.

I'm not sure a stock Carnage on 3S will be quicker than a stock Rustler on 3S but thats more to do with the exact spec. Your LHS is essentially correct that they could end up at the same speed - but then again the very same can also apply to pretty much any 1/10th scale platform. In fact I've done exactly that, in that the 'Rustler equivalent' in my RC garage is an 25 year old Associated RC10T with an LRP 5.5t brushless system in it. Its worth noting BTW that despite its age its actually tougher than most modern cars. The Carnage is a very different RC from the Rustler, being 4wd. Its more complicated, needs more looking after but is easier to control at speed and will grip better when the tyres start to wear. The subject of strength is rather controversial, but I would always expect a simpler 2wd platform to be more robust. Shaft drive 4wds normally wear out bevel gears fairly often for example - its a high stress part. In contrast I'd be surprised if you ever need to open the simple 2wd gearbox on a Rustler as there is virtually nothing to go wrong. In the case of FTX some of the reputation for being fragile is misplaced but not entirely inaccurate. The cars aren't weak, but they are badly assembled which is one of the reasons they are so cheap. Loose grub screws, poorly aligned geometrys and leaky shocks lead to failures, but they are not inherent to the parts themselves. An FTX taken apart and rebuilt properly is far more reliable than an out of the box RTR - they are nicknamed Ready To Rebuild for a reason. Traxxas meanwhile seem to do a pretty good job bolting their cars together so this is not the case for them. The real question here is what do you actually want to do with it? Why does it need to go at 60mph at all? If you are just bashing about in the park do you need 3S? Its going to take a toll on your gears in a Carnage and back tyres on a Rustler for what? My 1/10ths almost never run on 3S - I have 3S lipos for my boats I could use but literally the only reason I can see to do so is bragging rights. They drive better on 2S and are plenty fast enough. If it was my money I'd get the Carnage, but stick to 2S. Just as much fun, less breakages and much less cost.

The shell looks great but it needs some custom super skinny wheels. A 2CV on fat tyres is so wrong......

Now I like the Manta Ray (I've got one), I know they've recently re-re'd the Top Force so this is logical, but REALLY?!? Its already be re-re's a couple of times before. They've already made more reproductions than original productions!

There is really only one answer and that is to visit potential clubs. and see what they do. Brushed motor classes vary from club to club with some using silver can Mabuchi 540's and others specifying a cheap readily available 3rd party motor like the HPI Saturn. Blinky racing comes from the fact that a few years back ESC companies discovered a way of 'boosting' brushless motors on the straights which offered a significant speed gain. In slower classes this feature is normally banned. To prove your ESC isn't running boost they have a special mode where the LED blinks all the time hence its called Blinky class. The most important thing is to look at the competition. No point going for 17.5t class if it turns out only 2 other people do it.

Race tyres are rarely at their best for more than a couple of meetings regardless of surface. They won't be useless, but they'll have lost their 'edge' and be a bit slower. The same deal goes for using alternatives to the most popular brand (its normally popular because it works) - you might save money but it will cost a little in lap times. In the end the question is how much does it matter to you? Its normal to use a fresh set for big meetings and slightly worns for regular club meets. Depending on how seriously you take your club racing you can get as long as you want out of the tyres, just with a drop in performance.

Parts designed to wear and be replaced with normal use shouldn't be considered part of originality. Even restored 'original' classic cars won't be on the same tyres they first had, at least not if you plan on driving them (the rubber will have perished) and if it had been run you would expect the brake pads, clutch etc to have been changed. Using the human example you don't need cybernetics or transplants - your red blood cells get worn and replaced every few months. Now in RC cars the parts that are 'expendable' are rather higher than real cars. Replacing a wishbone on a real car means you've had a major crash and probably damaged the car badly - for RC's its just the sign its time for the bash session to end. Buying a used and run classic RC I'd totally expect things like wishbones, spurgears etc might not be identical to those originally in the box. It just means someone used the car.....

It can be done, and I have done it. You will need to turn the time limit off on the charger. As standard most auto switch off if the battery isn't charged after typically 2 hours. Racers frequently use car battery's to recharge their packs trackside and many use the same chargers at home on main connection to refill them

There is a difference, but unless you need that difference its not worth it! I've had many LRP products over the years. I've still got an original early '90's Blue SE. Jurgen signed the top deck of my LRP powered Yokomo at the '93 Worlds and gave me a team spec motor. Obviously I'm sad to see LRP go, but it truth it was inevitable. Take those X20 motors - my eldest son has a 13.5t version in his car with a Nosram Pearl. A superb motor, and a great ESC too, designed to squeeze the most performance out of that wind and a 2S lipo. But if you aren't racing and therefore don't have to follow the rulebook you can do far more just with a cheap 3S lipo. These days high end race gear is genuinely only any good for racing, which is a tiny market. LRP in particular never really got that with their ESC's which are superbly built, incredibly reliable but sensored only and 2S only so not suited for bashing at all.

My solution was to use the stock tray but a shorty lipo. I took the plough off both of mine - I find it gets in the way on anything but the flattest terrain. I don't have the blower, but worse I now want their entire rc kit. It looks awesome!

I tried several different fluids in mine and found that the thicker the better. With a decent servo you can lock the brakes even with very thick oil and a brushless motor. Actually with a brushless motor the thick oil is a requirement. I've retired my EV and replaced with an FR because the EV kept throwing tracks. The chassis twists too much under power.

You definitely want a sensored system - personally I'd suggest 8.5t rather than 7.5t. Its a little slower but more controllable as a result so for a newer racer will actually give better lap times. For a 2wd you don't really need 120A although many people will say you do - I've been using 90A GM esc's for years without issue and that includes in a 4wd with a 6.5t. This basic Turnigy system will get you started - you'll want better later but thats normal! Basic esc, basic motor.

It can cause a few issues though. My RC10 is the Team version, circa 1991 - except it isn't. It started life back in 1988 as a gold pan original RC10 which was upgraded to Team spec when it came out. The chassis is the original gold one, stripped and re-anodised black. I can't really claim its an original RC10 as its totally team car spec but its also not a team car either.....

I've still got an old Attack I use occasionally when I need a spare radio and its always been fine. Actually its better than fine, its better than its ever been! The thing is 27mhz gets virtually no use these days, so interference is very limited and ranges are pretty good now. Don't get me wrong - modern radios are a LOT better, but 27mhz isn't dead yet.

The problem is that the term 'bashing' has so many different types of use that its meaningless. Even things like saying 'skate park bashing' can vary a lot depending on the user. For example I skate park bash with pretty flimsy 1/10th buggys, because I try to make sure I land on my wheels and hence don't get the biggest air - I guess its just my racing background. Others I bash with are more interested in going big despite the risk of a messy landing and hence need tougher gear than me. Neither approach is 'wrong' per se - mine I think takes more skill, theirs is probably more fun though! If you are anyway inclined towards the 'go big or go home' camp I'd say the Slash is clearly the right choice. Otherwise I'd personally rather have the Score, but then I prefer Trophy Trucks over Shortcourse anyway.....

Its a lot of money considering that the Yokomo SD Sport and Schumacher MI1V2 chassis sets are both £130 and could easily be fitted with electrics to match the VXL's performance for a lot less than the £260 price difference. Fine if you are a Traxxas fan and having a 4TEC matters to you but if it doesn't you can do better for less.

Normal cut staggers at the front

My preference for carpet/polished floor is to use mini spikes rather than mini pins. They aren't as good on the carpet but the transition between their behaviour on the slippy and grippy stuff makes them easier to control.