1/10 Short course truck xmas gift for nephew opinions
 

Howdy all. Here's a little background and reason for posting. My nephew is 11 and is interested in getting into learning how to race at his local hobby shop. Prior to him getting this for xmas he's had an RC18t clone and a reef racer 2 boat. I also have those and also bought a 1/10 DESC210 so he has someone else to practice with at the hobby shop. So this will really be his first pretty nice RC truck.

He's been doing his own research online and asked the guy at the hobby shop what he recommended. He recommended to him a 2wd brushed Slash with NiMh and charger that was around $250 as a starter so he's been searching reviews for traxxas and talking a lot about it.

His grandparents are buying him the truck and asked me to buy extra batteries so that's when I got involved. They don't know much about it so I wanted to help with their quest, but I didn't want them to buy brushed or NiMh at that price since I thought it's not worth paying for the included charger or battery and I thought I could find a brushless setup for about the same price so he wouldn't have to sink his own money in to upgrade the slash to brushless later but he'd still have something nice to start out that he could hop up if he wanted to get serious. Since he's been talking traxxas I wanted to start a thread so that if he was disappointed at first that he didn't get the one the hobby shop recommended that hopefully you guys would agree with my decision and he could come here and read what you guys had to say :D

Here were the requirements when I set out to find which truck I thought they should get him.
1) Around the same price as the 2wd brushed slash package
2) RTR electric Short course truck for racing at the hobby shop
3) Parts available at the hobby shop

I talked them into buying him the 2wd Lucas Oil Slick Mist brushless SC10 instead of the 2wd brushed Slash.
Did I make the right call?

I know that some people will go off about my sugestion. But...
Check out redcat racing. I have 2 redcats and they really are great rigs. They are a begginer/ entry level cars. But the cool thing about these hobby grade cars is that u can swap out the electronics SOOOOOO he will be able to have a great begginer truck while being able to swap out electronics if he wants.
Traxxis is great as well ive noticed traxxas seems to be a little pricier.
There my two cents. Hope it helps.
Good luck.!

P.s. As far as batteries. nimh and lipo batteries(2s) will work in mostt cars i found out.

Personally I'd take a SC10 over the slash so IMO yea good call

I'll 2nd the sc10. And I'd take either over the redcat.

Yea, seriously, SC10>Slash>Redcat. SC10 was the right call.

I agree,,, sc10 all the way... Especially for the track.

big difference is the main chassis hight, the SC10 has a considerable lower chassis making its centre of gravity lower.
so in comparison the slash has a tendency to roll over on high speed turns. But because of the higher chassis in the slash the performance on grass is very good compared to the SC10.

u can convert the slash into more of a racing truck but it starts to get a little toe expensive

very soon traxxas are releasing a new chassis for the slash 2wd that will make it more competitive but only time will show how good it is.

Thanks guys I appreciate the feedback. We've got a lot to learn about racing and different setups but it looks like there's a lot of good information to dig through around here.

This is a link to an awesome tuning guide. PDF file, so you'll need Adobe Reader.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...,d.cWc&cad=rja

Thanks for the info I never realized there was so much you could do to them.

Yes, RC cars are quite sophisticated little machines. Note that the Hudy setup guide I linked talks about all the different adjustments you can make.....providing the adjustments they talk about can be made on YOUR car. Not all cars/trucks have ALL the adjustments they talk about. Varies from model to model. 8^)