ORIGINAL: nitrosportsandrunner
ORIGINAL: t9dragon
You should take a look at the Savage XS.. HPI calls it a mini but it isn't much smaller than a 1/10 rc and it uses 1/10 scale batteries and electronics.
when I saw it for the 1st time up close, I was depressed. Its just to small and to tall. I havent owned/driven one so I cant say how it handles. But with that power plant there is no reason the wheel base and width couldnt have been just 1 inch longer/wider. It would have been twice the truck it is, if they had made it just a bit bigger.
Plus, isnt it still over $300 new???
I agree, I was highly dissapointed in the size of the Savage XS. Plus the high center of gravity of that mini-Savage will having him flipping this one over worse than ZD Racing truck the original poster had. Plus, HPI has a terrible track record on replacement parts availability along with their record of randomly and regularly discontinuing products.
ORIGINAL: SyCo_VeNoM
those lipos are pretty crummy only 30Amps max draw 1/10th scale 4wd RC's will destroy them in short order.
If you want to stay cheap could get a DF-02, do a few mods to it for durability (there's a simple cheap fork mod that strengthens it drastically) the kits like $125 throw in a cheap Hobby wing 35A Brushless combo (prolly $85), and a cheap 2.4ghz radio (unless the ZD has a 2.4ghz radio then you can probably use that) with a servo. Parts are not the most common, but can be ordered from Japan, China, or tamiyausa. Japan a few parts I needed were cheaper than tamiyausa even after shipping, and came way faster than from tamiya(hell I even got a free gundam model like 2 months later from the hobby shop as I guess I won a customer prize drawing
). That is literally one of the lowest cost 1/10th scale 4wd RC's you will find.
It can take $20 lipos (I know of one that fits good).
the traxxas 1/16ths take a weird sized battery
http://www.hobbypartz.com/98p-25c-1550-2s1p.html battery fits so you can use the measurements to compare yours to that.
Also note the merv needs some work out of the box to get it to handle even remotely decent with its stock setup it was one of the worst handling RC's I've drove
I totally disagree with the above poster.
Bought my grandson one of thos DF-02s, and it was just about the biggest piece of junk I'd ever seen. He'd broken it twice in one day. No wonder it only cost 150 bucks. You can add all the brushless and 2.4g radios to it you want, and it's still a DF-02. You can't find tamiya parts hardly anywhere without shopping exclusively oneline.
Meanwhile, while I despise all traxxas products, the Mini-Revo perfectly fits the original poster's bill.
It's roughly $300, it has waterproof electronics, it's durable as heck, has a low center of gravity so it won't be flipping over all the time, can be run on any surface (whether pavement or dirt), and he can use those small Lipos he currently has until he's able to buy some other ones (which anything 2000mah and smaller will fit, and they're only about $20 each), and every hobby shop on the planet has parts for it.
http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_...6-Cell-Battery
At the same time, it always concerns me when someone sets a relatively low budget for themselves to get into a hobby like this, because you're always going to have things you're going to have to spend extra money on whether it be replacement parts (because when you wreck, things break), or batteries or chargers, or even in hop-up parts. So when someone tells me they have a $300 budget, regardless what kind of car they're interested in, I tend to tell them to either double their budget or to plan on getting a $150 car/truck so they have enough left over so they can afford the extra goodies they'll inevitably need.