i used to be into RC about 15 years ago, but haven't touched it since. now i have children, and my oldest (he's 4) is asking for a formula 1 RC car for christmas. we currently have HO and 1/32 scale slot car sets, and he is surprisingly good and driving them. he has had some store bought RC cars, and was able to maneuver those through the house pretty well also. i think he is ready for a hobby grade RC car.

so i am looking for suggestions. here is what i think i am looking for. please feel free to correct me if anything i have listed is wrong:

1) relatively inexpensive, but hobby grade - he's only 4, so i don't want to start with too much of a bang. but i don't want a $50 car from toys r us either. his grandparents have bought him cars from there before and they are junk. i'd rather spend $300 for a car that i can buy spare parts for than $50 for a car that has to be repaired with duct tape or thrown away when something small breaks.

2) 1/10 scale. i am open to others, but 1/10 is what i used to run back in the day.

3) emphasis on longer run times rather than top speed. once again, he's only 4 years old. from what i remember, even the slowest "real" 1/10 scale RC car was extremely fast.

4) kit. i'd probably prefer a kit vs. ready to run, so that we can build it together. i already have most of the tools and even an airbrush and lexan paint (we have slot cars)

not sure what else i may be missing. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hey, welcome to URC, and back to the hobby! I myself was looking for a 1/10 scale F1 not too long ago, and was thinking about the HPI formula ten kit:

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXXRZ6&P=ML

I have since decided not to go 1/10 F1, but to rather fix up my Kyosho Mini F1. However, if you are looking for a bit more realism in 1/10 than the HPI F10, and are willing to pay for it (unlike me), then here are some options from Tamiya:

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXXPU8&P=ML
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXWCP2&P=7

All three of the above listed are kits, 1/10 scale, and can be suited to runtime vs. speed. If you are looking for relatively inexpensive, I'd go with the HPI F10 or the Tamiya F103RM. Just make sure you check the battery requirements (the HPI requires a 4 cell, the Tamiya's require 6 cell NiMh/NiCd or a 2 cell LiPo on the F103RM) and all other requirements you need to get running, listed under "requires" on the TowerHobbies pages.

It's great that you want to get your son into hobby grade R/C's, and that you'll be going into the R/C world with him. Good luck! I hope what I have suggested has helped.

Yeah man welcome to URC and back to RC.

Loco pointed a really good F1 car and I would have to agree 100% with him. Parts support is phenomenal with that car and HPI is known to make great kits all around. Tamiya as you well know, are really good cars as well. But for your son, the cheapest bet would be the HPI one. You can even get a Tamiya one for you and the HPI for your son have some backyard races .

3Racing makes an F1 car too that you might wanna check out. I'm not too sure how parts support is but the car looks great. 3Racing F1-09. You can buy them at ToyEast.com but they are outa stock right now as I type this. This car's price rivals that of the HPI and comes with lots of really good parts too. $100.00 Deal for that kit, you can get parts from these people as well for the 3Racing F1-09.

Ray

Yeah, the 3Racing F1 seems really good, too. You probably don't have to worry about finding parts for that one! 3Racing makes a lot of hop-up parts and replacement parts for a lot of tamiya cars and whatnot. To agree with Ray, the F1-09 should be a good choice, as well.

thanks for the advice. i had seen the HPI before, but not the 3Racing.

with the HPI set, i take it that the only stuff i would need to purchase to be up and running are:

-battery and charger
-motor
-radio (includes ESC and servo)
-tools, glue, paint

really dumb question but i couldn't find the answer doing a search on the forums - what would be the difference between a 4 cell and a 6 cell battery? do the extra 2 cells provide more top speed? more accelleration? more battery life? all of the above?

finally, what would be a good battery/motor combination to give me long run times without breaking the bank? since the car will be driven by a 4 year old, i am more than willing to sacrifice speed and accelleration in favor of longer run times. i seem to recall that my friend back in the day had some $10 mabuchi motor that gave him incredible run times while still being relatively fast. we all ended up buying them. good times.

Hey, sure thing. If you want to go with the HPI car, you will need all that you listed above (the four points). The difference between a four cell and six cell is the voltage. The four cell will have 4.8V whereas the six cell will have 7.2V. The extra cells will provide more tope speed, perhaps better acc, and battery life should be the same. Motor life should increase though, because you aren't running as much voltage through the motor and therefore not wearing down the brushes as fast as if you were running on six cells (assuming you are running on brushed motors).

As far as batt/motor combinations, I would get a 6 cell pack for ease of finding one. This one should give you plenty of runtime: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXSNE1&P=SM. The mabuchi motor will work fine, and if you want to get that one, you will have quite a bit of runtime with the batteries mentioned above. If you want more specific examples of what I would get if I was doing this for less than 300, just let me know . Keep the questions coming, I'm glad (and I hope) this helps.

more specific examples would be great. if there is a "budget" set up that you'd recommend, i'd be interested in that as well. because in addition to my 4 year old, i have a 2 yr old and a 3 month old. so three sons plus me means we might eventually have 4 cars...which would be a lot of fun, but expensive as well.

Right. Okay, here is what I would do, starting from scratch:

ESC: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXTLM6&P=7
Car: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXXRZ6&P=ML
Battery: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXSNE1&P=7
Charger: http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_...-Charger-6S-5A
Radio: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...=LXASX2**&P=SM
Motor: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXDDA0&P=7

And here is the budget setup:
Car: same as listed above
Radio: same as listed above
Motor: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXPML4&P=7
Charger: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXL345&P=7
or
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXWTD9&P=7
Battery: http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_...nector-4200mAh
ESC: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXAMN7&P=7
or same as listed above

Hope this helps! I didn't add all the products up, but they should be around 300 for everything in list 1, and perhaps less than 300 in #2. Let me know your opinion and anything else you would change as far as money goes or whatnot. I tried to aim my choices toward long run time, too, so that's why the high turn motors and high mAh batteries.

EDIT: alright, added up the sums. Approx $351 for first setup, approx $253 for second. If you wanted to get even less expensive than #2, you can substitute the speed control for this (note: forward only): http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXAXT7&P=7, and the radio for this http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...=LXDEL3**&P=SM. Again, hope it helps. I hope I can answer more of your questions if you have 'em, so just post them up!

very informative. thanks for all the help. i need to digest all this information and then figure out what i want to do. $253 doesn't sound bad at all...

thank again!

Sure thing! Glad I could help. When you figure out what you're going to do, please let us know. It's always good to have someone else interested in F1. I just need to get that Mini Z F1 going again....