The rat has to be the newbie car of choice.
 

I started racing this year as a friend of mine had got another rat and needed the money back for it, so I took it off him to relive my childhood or something. It was the RTR brushless set and cost me 80 pounds so off to torch rc and my I was rubbish but the car seemed ok. Anyway 4 month I had the car turning in a fast nine laps and in the last summer all dayer I qualified 14 out of about 28 drivers so middle of the pack. I have changed the motor and the esc and moved to stick but let's be honest I beat cars worth 4 to 5 times as much and they all change the internals. I don't care what anyone says if you want to learn and see if your interested in the sport you can't go wrong yes you can spend all you want on the motor servo etc but these can go on the next car as you out grow it. Love the rat and going to miss the little underdog as I'm moving to the cougar next week.

The 50 pound mad rat can be competative at any club

as with any "racing" sport, the car itself can only do so much; the driver is what makes the difference; not saying that rubbish car driven by the best driver will rank 1st, but does mean that any decent car with a top notch driver will be able to run respectable laps around any circuit, be it RC or real :)

i love my little rat, i've learn't so much already and still love it when i can't get the set up right :blush:

Get an x2c, mid motor madrat and they're cheaper than a cougar...;)

i know there is still a lot of brand snobbery when the Ansmann name is mentioned some of the people who favour the Schumacher's & Losi's etc tend to snigger or say they are only good enough for bashing & not proper race cars etc but i do believe the current line up of Ansmann cars are good enough to compete at the top level & the best is, i'm actually paying less for my 10th off-road cars these days than i was paying back in the latter half of the 80's when i was running Grasshoppers & Hornets which at the time were the budget 2WD car to own.

Of course, the other bonus is it's cheaper these days to buy & race/run a mad-rat than it is to use a Mardave which for donkeys years has been the class you can race for pennies rather than £'s & you have the advantage of taking it anywhere. RC for me has always been seen as one of these hobbies the more you put in, the more you get out of it, but some of the prices are just stupid & make RC expensive so only the top racers can get anywhere - even at a club level, thankfully Ansmann have come along & are bucking the trend to make it affordable for everyone & so for around £200 you buy the car & a few basic hop-ups & can grid up at a national or regional & be just as competitive as anyone with a car 10x the price.

Really I agree with that the madrat if you spend 200 on it, it will be better the the 200 ppounds you spend on say a B4 as you will be abe to get more bang for the bucks yes my rat is carrying and extra 200 grams to make it stable but it is out doing cars that cost a lot more. I'm moving to the cougar as I got a good deabut who's to say in a month I won't be back as it might not fit my driving style.

Love the rat and will keep her racing in the long term.

i started racing a xpro (madrat upgraded) just to get back into rc cheap for something to do and after a few hop ups (that arent really needed as i broke bits) it seriously flies and now in 1st position in F2 league at my local club. ive spent about 350 in total with all spares, car, brushless setup, alloy + carbon bits,servo, battery's and charger.

and i aint got complete rubbish it really flies and plenty quick enough for me

gotta love your rat :wub

Had an x-pro, kids got Mad Monkeys, and to be honest, I wouldn't have one myself, they just aren't as well engineered as a Losi/AE/Tamiya etc. This isn't brand snobbery for me, just basic principles of racing. I need a car to be reliable and strong, which those two things the Ansmann are not.

It is a good base car, but they would make a killing if they made things like stiffer wishbones, and still the gearbox is it's Achilles heal!

yeah the geearbox is the achillies heal but with a bit of tuning on the slipper its great i love my mad rat and for all the hate i built up for it whilst i chewed through 2 idler gears (im running a 6.5t Brushless Fusion Exceed system) as soon as it was running properly you couldnt help but fall in love with it again it truly gets under your skin.

The only problem with mine now is that the Diff has a rounded diff screw and cant get it out (any ideas would help) but saying that i love my mad rat and at the moment i wouldnt swap it for anything at the moment

Broke my first wishbone last week, was completley my fault... Im suprised your disappointed by the quality/strength... The gearbox is a weakspot but only if its not looked after, new gears are on the way if not already available so that should resolve any of the issues :)

not sure you can say the gearbox is it's weak point.. i find it depends on the way you set the slipper which it seems is dictated by how tight/loose you set the diff as to how much you need to rely on the slipper i.e. the tighter the diff & even with the slipper fully wound out the car will just wheelie when you hit the power with a hot motor fitted. TBH i find i'm making more adjustments to the diff tightness than i am to the slipper & the old hold the back wheels & nail the throttle trick seems to be enough to set the slipper properly once you have played with diff. The only problem i had with the gearbox was the motor plate which stripped a thread when i 1st built the car & i had to buy a replacement plate & the plastic mounts for the motor guard on the t-plate can go egg shaped so the rear wishbones get play in them.

If you ask me the biggest problems with the rat are the kit shocks are awful (but easily rectified with some tweaks or a hop-up), the screws are pretty weak so can round off or bend (probably used to keep costs down as the screws on my ARE-1 & Master Smacker are a lot better) & the front hubs can develop a fair bit of slop after a bit of use so it's tricky to set the camber. the only other downside is the fact the kit comes with brass bushes instead of bearings, but then if you buy any "cheap" Tamiya kit, they come with plastic bushes & the kits cost a lot more money.

Sorry, with regards to the gearbox i meant on the X2C... :blush:

Ps.. wrong account sorry!

Right, to be critical....

The diff spring is to soft, so that means it compresses to easily, which means finding the right setting is more fiddly than it needs.
Slipper spring is to hard, so makes finite adjustments difficult.
If either slip, they overheat to quickly.
Slop in the gearbox which causes the idlers to go.

Thats just the gearbox.

It is a cheap car, BUT, by the time you 'buy' all the parts to rectify all the above issue's, your cheap car is no longer cheap.

On my X2C ive only stripped two gears, both my own fault... Im using a losi slipper spring but other than that its standard... ceramic balls and sanded plates yes, but id put them in any car...

Im favouring my X2C over my 22, CR2, XXX-CR and B4 at the moment... :wub

you could say that about any RC car, be it a kit that cost £50 or £500

No, not really, a B4.1 out of the box works, I can't think of one 'race spec' car that needs stuff to make it 'reliable' just tuning, there is a difference.

You get a lot of car for the money, but don't be fooled into thinking it is a 'race spec' kit.

a pro version mad-rat out of the box also works, the difference is the Mad rat is a car you can tune in your own time. the B4 i'm not disputing is a very good car, however even the best AE kits you can end up spending extra dosh on factory team parts & the like to tune them or upgrade them to the spec you want & the costs of doing this could be as expensive as hopping up a rat.

Think of it this way, Tamiya have for years been making a tidy sum from their entry level cars & many of the RCers from my generation started on Tamiya's to learn the craft & part of the craft is learning what performance or strength changes the hop-ups can make, so you gain skills. Ansmann are doing much the same with the rat.. the difference is an experienced RCer can pick a rat off the shelf & grid up with it, for a fraction of the cost

Your missing my point, a B4 will work, mechanically, out of the box, from the get go, a madrat/mad monkey/x2c/x-pro won't, I have own all of them, I even did a build review on here when the X-Pro came out.

Anyhows, the Ansmann are ok, if you got someone experienced to help you overcome stuff that is not mentioned in the manual and get you going.

Not really owned the Xpro/X2 but id have to say the X2C can compete out of the box...

I raced at the north west regional with mine a couple of weeks ago and qualified 13th... the past couple of years ive struggled to even make the top 20 with any of my other cars...

Okay so my cars got a few extra bits on it, ally rear hubs, big bore shocks but im 99% sure id of got the same result with a bog standard X2C as those 2 items are just personal choice...

i raced the xpro 'out of the box' and always in b final. never broke anything apart from a shock tower on a mad monkey but nothing at all on the xpro. the plastic is slightly different on the xpro though. i am more than happy with the xpro......so much that i ditched the mad monkey and went back to it. perfect car to get into racing in my opinion :woot: