Alvarez

Awesome! must have one of these to go next to my Buggy champ and Sand scorcher, any price details yet? I reckon about

Well it was about time...

True, it looks like it uses the standard chassis that their 1/10 rally cars have. Pretty basic really and it wont have the articulation or ground clearance something like this needs.

I actually quite like the colour scheme this has been painted in, kind of reminds me of the 80's Tamiya Bigwig buggy. Looking at the shape of the shell im sure if painted in your typical loud Monster theme or PG tips then it'll look just as agressive as the rest of them.

Looking forward to some more info and pictures on this. I have been looking at getting a suitable rally based RC car and this may just be it going by the spec sheet.

This is just a rehash of the Trophy truck HPI did a year or two ago. I owned one of those and I strongly disliked it, not due to its performance as that was quite good but its construction! That roll cage is a complete nightmare to work around and is integrated into most of the shock mounting sections. Even a simple battery swap is a major hassle as the room to get your fingers is there is minute. It is brushless ready out of the box but be careful on what brushless combo you try to fit into it as there really isnt much room inside IIRC the motor sat about 5mm away from a telescopic driveshaft. Honestly i'd stay away from this and just fork out some extra cash on the Axial or the Apache. Shame on HPI for churning this out, the development costs could have been used on something alot better than this.

Now this I like! Any idea as to what the front and rear diffs are gear or ball? I hope they are geared as they are much easier to set-up and IMO are tougher. Also the shocks do not bother me at all, they look like the plastic oil filled ones the DB01 came with and if built correctly they were excellent! way above the cap popping oil leaking Ansmann rtr things.

Titan looks interesting, can't wait to see some pictures and details of the kit. Also VERY interested in the Celica, hopefully Tamiya will re-re that chassis too and not just lazily offer that body shell on a TT01 chassis like they tend to do.

Hmm I am still unsure if I want this or not. Is it future proof allowing me to upgrade the ink chamber if it runs out? Also is that the only colour casing it comes in? As I dont want to look a fool if I turn up at the track with the same one that another person will be using. Is it 2.4ghz out of the packet as I don't se any external ariels? Please reply ASAP I have my 3 months wages totalling £1.98 and I really don't want to make a mistake and buy the wrong one!

I like the look of this, any idea what diffs it has gear or ball?

Nice! though not much use if you intend to use your Buggy champ as even with the stock fake lights fitted, one roll later would see them snapped off along with the mounting holes. Still, look very nice for shelfers and the like.

Pity its not 1/10th size as I would certainly have one then.

Want that FAV.

I have a Radshape chassis for my Tamiya Buggy champ and I cant fault it, so well made and finished. This is a definate buy for me.

I run one of these on my Hpi Blitz and yes initially I was annoyed at the cost of the item and the hugely offending customs charge for such a tiny item. However reservations aside and lack of any correct fitting instructions it turns out to be a good cover if you plan out how and where to fit the thing. The benefits of using a material cover is the simple fact of air flow, a lexan cover will obstruct any air flow unless you cut holes into it but then that will defeat the purpose of why you wanted to cover the thing in the first place. The material covers namely the Outerwears is a very high quality microfibre which allows air to pass through it but grit/water/etc not too. Want to find this out? just place the cover over one of your hands and blow onto it you can feel the air passing through, now shape it into a bowl and pour water into it and it will hold the water without leaking through. Would I recommend one of these, absoloutely, would I buy one again from the USA, not a chance! unless you intend to buy a handful of items at the same time its just not worth it and ends up being an expensive luxury.

FINALLY! Tamiya are doing the Celica GT4 shell again, I will most definately buy a couple of those. Glad Tamiya are going through there back cataloge and rerealeasing some older shells as there are some real stunners, Id also like to see them come out with the Alfa Romeo 155 in martini design again. Heres hoping.

Honestly mate dont buy the J-kart, the shop I work in sells them and throughout christmas we were told to demo them. The first demo one we tried took off "ok" but it started to occilate very badly and then crashed into an item of stock and shattered one of the main blades. The second one flew slightly better but it ended up being broken in less than 2 days as the blades again smashed. Many things let this down and the stand out one is the controller itself, it features no sticks or anything all you have is some silly dial which is more like a milk bottle cap which you use for vaguely steering it through the air and the other button is just another disc which has up/down buttons on it. The throttle control is horrendous as it's not analog control, you press the "up" button once to start spinning the blades press again to allow it to slightly hover and "drive" press a few more times and it'll lumber intself into the air and then attempt to throw itself into the nearest solid object. This will usually always involve breakages as to stop the main blades spinning you have to franticly jab at the "down" button before it destroys itself. Another big problem is the blades as they are solid and do not fold in on themselves if they chip against objects, these ones will hack away at the object until either it destroys the object or destroys itself. The main body is made out of polystyrene which is fine for the job intended the only problem is the wheels are also polystyrene and are coated in a glossy black paint so it has no grip at all and the "driving" is more liken to slightly hovering above the ground and sliding its undercarrige along it. Avoid! just buy a proper indoor heli preferably a 3 channel one with a gyro, look for a brand called Syma they do a good range of helis for less than the J-kart, one i'd recomend looking at is the S107 from Syma, fantastic little heli.

The kit screws are not bad and people really need to stop saying their pants as they do the job fine IF you use decent tools and do not over tighten them. When I built my DB01 I found a little dab of grease on the ends of the screws before screwing in really helped it along, also when screwing parts into the main chassis place the chassis onto a flat solid table and screw them into it from that, dont try and do it on your lap. Yes there are a handful of hex screw sets out there but be careful of which ones you go with, ideally you should look at stainless steel ones, do not be fooled into the titanium ones as pretty as they are they are very soft and easy to strip. Leave them to the racers who fret over having 0.1g less weight on their car. Also pay attention to the diff building and installing section in the manual it's all to easy to get the front and rear diffs the wrong way round! Double check and check again before putting the final diff cases ontop. Also one thing I would recomend is buying some new shocks either dig deep and go for a set of Tamiyas own airation dampers or go with the more affordable but also pretty good 3racing ones.

You are quite right about them being BSD, Seems its a company that allow other brands to put their logo on their products for a price. I have seen these under many guises such as R/C systems. To another comment made on the page about them only accepting saddlepacks, if you looks around for the R/C system branded ones they come equipped with a 3800mah nimh stick pack and the chassis is laid out in stick pack formation. Modelzone stock this type of one: http://www.modelzone.co.uk/bsd-1-10-brushless-buggy.html There is also a monster truck version which is the exact same chassis just with larger wheels and different shell: http://www.modelzone.co.uk/bsd-racing-radio-control-monster-truck.html

I recommend the Blitz, I own one and run it on brushless with 2s lipo. Absolutely no problems with it. I have run mine on anything I could find and one of the best places was my local skatepark, in my experience every car I have taken there has always come back broken but the Blitz just took everything I could throw at it, 10 foot jumps off a quarter pipe to flat it soaked them up. 12ft quarter pipe to wall ride to drop back in did it no problems at all. Had many crashes but nothing broke! and some of them were very very hard crashes that would have destroyed lesser models. Dont discount the Blitz as being a racer because its a basher at heart as with all HPI models. Look at it as more of an allrounder which it excels at in every area.

Dosnt matter how much money I had the wife would still say no.

Ironic, probably should have put this in the gallery thread to be honest.

I personnaly think the Rally based cars will make a big come back. Example being the large craze behind all this Ken Block/Monster/DCshoes stuff and now Traxxas releasing an RC rally car in a varity of flavours. Of course they are limited to what you can run them on and such forth but I doubt that will stop them. I feel there is still alot of scope with the short course platform be it 4WD ones or ones designed for realism (HPI Mini trophy is a fine example of this) I say this as currently all the popular SC trucks are essentially converted buggy/truggy/monster platforms and not true SC scale platforms. I doubt 1/5th scale will ever go beyond being a niche market as they are just too big, expensive and just a lack of places to run them (Eg. tracks,clubs) Anyway as I see it RC seems to be taking a turn towards realism and scale and I can see the Rally scene fitting in quite nicely with that regardless of if they can handle their terrain or not.

Any ideas on price? Really need one of these to replace the shoddy stock one.

I use one myself and its a brilliant piece of kit. I also use some of the telementry parts too and they are very helpful, namely the temp monitor which I have attached to the motor on my Blitz. The RPM monitor I havent fitted as it would require me to cut some holes in the spur gear cover in order to fit it but I cant be bothered with that. In my opinion most of the telementry bits would benefit a Nitro more so than an Electric. Even if you dont use the telementry parts its still an awesome set and very easy to work with with all the settings and more that you would ever need. Bonus is the handset only runs off 4x AA batteries meaning its smaller than most handsets and lighter. Also the box comes with 2 receivers, one standard and one telementry. The standard receivers are also very good value for money at about