This is what i love about Tamiya - they sell a car kit cheap & hail it as a "racing" spec. but then the thing is before you go anywhere near a track you need to spend out on bearings & other basic hop-ups such as changing the tie-rods from solid plastic bars to adjustable tie-rods & changing the friction shock arrangement for oil filled or adjustable units etc etc.. so that cheap buggy suddenly becomes very expensive - i've been there with Grasshoppers & Hornet's in the 80's & the process is still the same today.
When i 1st got back into racing i considered getting a TT-01 as a low cost way in & going down that route, then looked at the hop-ups to get it race worthy.. tune up kit £40, 3-racing carbon chassis upgrade £50 etc etc then realised by the time i'd hop it up i'd spend as much money if i just went out & bought a TRF & the thing is if i bought the TRF, i'd have a world class TRF, not a posh looking TT-01 that is still not competitive - you won't see a TT-01 win a national unless it's the Tamiya cup! The upside though is doing the cheap car & hop it up route, you tend to learn about tuning & set-up very quickly, albeit an expensive learning curve.
For the money i'd be tempted to look at an Ansmann Mad-rat, which is basically a glorified cheap copy of an Associated B4 (a proven race winner) & shouldn't need loads of expensive hop-ups to make it competitive as it comes with proper bearings instead of plastic bushes. These days there are loads of £100 entry level cars around & unlike the £100 Tamiya's they don't need a fortune spending on them to get them to a sustainable race spec as the Ansmann, Maverick etc all come packaged with bearings, oil filled shocks, alloy parts & can be tuned up with the parts that come straight out of the box.
Don't get me wrong, i own a Tamiya buggy & have won a couple of club races with it, so it is possible to get them to a good enough standard although yu will have to drive it's nuts off & feel like you are wrestling with it to get the best out of it, but when someone comes along with the next model up to yours & beats you in their 1st race, it does make you think "i should of bought a more expensive car" then makes you realise how good/bad your car really is.
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