Rising Fighter

[rookieracer]

Im new to this...is the above any good for racing?

[DCM]

have you bought one?

[rookieracer]

Originally Posted by DCM

have you bought one?

Nope...looking for my 1st car

[DCM]

I would suggest you look at a Team Associated B4RTR, or if your budget wont stretch, a Thunder Tiger.

[rookieracer]

Is this no good?.....Ive spotted a cheap one somewhere in kit form and Im tempted

[Robbiejuk]

Hmm looks like a modern day grasshopper 2 to me. If you are looking into getting racing then I would definatly do as DCM suggested and look elsewhere. Basically that chassis was designed in the 80's and every so often tamiya release a newer version of it with a few little changes and give it a different name.

One of these looks like an ideal starter though..

http://www.oople.com/forums/showthread.php?p=323219#post323219

[peetbee]

For racing no, no and no again.

It looks like a rehashed Tamiya Hornet from 20 years ago and they weren't any good for racing back then!

[Spoolio]

Controversy time but here goes. The Rising Fighter, along with the Fighter Buggy, Super Hornet, Hornet, Grasshopper, Grasshopper 2 and any Frog variant are actually very good race cars...with one important proviso. You have to be racing in a minority class called "Cars What Are Totally Shite And Should Never Have Been Advertised On The Box As High Performance Electric RC Models". This is a very rare class, in fact I don't think I've ever seen a heat being run. Come to think of it, it'd be a good idea - certainly make a change from scale caravan racing or some of the other daft things clubs do at Chrimbo time. By the way, I'm allowed to say this. See my avatar pic, I raced that but only after I gave up with the Hotshot (Hotshit more like). It was epically bad in a perversely amusing sort of way - in fact, I almost fell off the rostrum laughing at myself.

[peetbee]

I think you might be right, would be an awesome class to race, although you missed out the bit 'will it fall over when cornering on any surface that's not billiard table flat!'

[Robbiejuk]

Originally Posted by Spoolio

Controversy time but here goes. The Rising Fighter, along with the Fighter Buggy, Super Hornet, Hornet, Grasshopper, Grasshopper 2 and any Frog variant are actually very good race cars...with one important proviso. You have to be racing in a minority class called "Cars What Are Totally Shite And Should Never Have Been Advertised On The Box As High Performance Electric RC Models". This is a very rare class, in fact I don't think I've ever seen a heat being run. Come to think of it, it'd be a good idea - certainly make a change from scale caravan racing or some of the other daft things clubs do at Chrimbo time. By the way, I'm allowed to say this. See my avatar pic, I raced that but only after I gave up with the Hotshot (Hotshit more like). It was epically bad in a perversely amusing sort of way - in fact, I almost fell off the rostrum laughing at myself.

Spoolio if I put a heat on for these at west bridgford at the next indoor off-road round would you be interested?

[Mad-Wolfie]

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.

[5POINTSTAR]

He is gone

[Manix]

No doubt the Maverick Strada stuff is tough and yeh for under 100 quid you get full ball raced,a 13t esc and a transmitter with more features than the basic HPI ones and a reasonable platform for putting better parts on untill you need to get a new chassis.

[Pablo668]

There has been a bit of improvement in Tamiya kits since the eighties I think.
I got my kids a Desert Gator and Keen Hawk for christmas a year or so back.
They were both fully ball raced and had oil shocks all round and have fully independent suspension.
Something the Hornet never had. I still have a Hornet and I love that car.....even if it is a pig.

Of course they don't come with a slipper (can't fit one to the DT-02 I think), the shocks aren't much to write home about and yeah, no turnbuckles.

But they're still a step up from Tamiyas more basic kits.

[Carno]

Originally Posted by Pablo668

There has been a bit of improvement in Tamiya kits since the eighties I think.
I got my kids a Desert Gator and Keen Hawk for christmas a year or so back.
They were both fully ball raced and had oil shocks all round and have fully independent suspension.
Something the Hornet never had. I still have a Hornet and I love that car.....even if it is a pig.

Of course they don't come with a slipper (can't fit one to the DT-02 I think), the shocks aren't much to write home about and yeah, no turnbuckles.

But they're still a step up from Tamiyas more basic kits.

That's nice. Now let us introduce you to the Rising fighter

[Manix]

Only problem I have with that, apart from the motor messing up the suspension performance is the fact that if you break anything you need a whole new chassis rather than just replacing sock mounts or body posts.

[Pablo668]

Originally Posted by Carno

That's nice. Now let us introduce you to the Rising fighter

Yeah.....that's a Hornet/Grasshopper by any other name isn't it. Oh well.
My point was that for only a bit more cash you can get a Tamiya kit that is much better than say the Rising Fighter or the Old Hornet.
Still beginners stuff though.

Myself I went on Ebay and picked up a couple of old Ultimas and a B4.

[Mad-Wolfie]

The thing is.. it's Tamiya.. a lot of what they do caters for their own home market in Japan, where there are loads of race series for this spec of car - I'm told that basically the "Tamiya Eurocup" type rules are commonplace in Japanese club & tournament racing & Tamiya & Kyosho dominate the japanese RC market, then of course they ship the cars worldwide because they know kids & newbies will go bonkers for them in the states & in Europe & that helps keep costs down with mass production - problem is we are paying for the shipping costs as well.

In Japan though for racing remember they still use silvercans & run on stickpack cells... if you really wanted to you could buy a Japanese spec TRF (such as a 415 or 501x) & it will be engineered to run on 6-cell 7.2 stick packs, with the car's chassis & bulkheads cut to suit stickpacks... which is handy if you wanted to run LiPo i suppose as it's basically a block & should drop straight in, unlike the faffing you have to do to find a LiPo that will fit into the TRF415MSX chassis tray & slot under the rear bulkhead.

[Mad-Wolfie]

Originally Posted by Manix

Only problem I have with that, apart from the motor messing up the suspension performance is the fact that if you break anything you need a whole new chassis rather than just replacing sock mounts or body posts.

One problem i remember with the Hornet/Grasshopper family of cars (there are a few of them including the Lunchbox) is that stupid back axle.. not the actual drive itself, but the fact that when you hit the power - even if you are trying to be be gentle - the whole gearbox slams upwards on a pivot... there are some spring-pins (that look like opened out safety pins) to absorb the movement but the springs last about a day before the part that is against the pivot breaks off. Come on Tamiya, you've had over 25 years to sort this problem, get it fixed or just do away with the design & move on.

Also those gearboxes don't seem to handle much in the way of power.. so forget sticking a brushless in the car right now if that is your plan.. i remember i put a beefy (beefy in the 80's anyway) motor into a Grasshopper 2 (basically a hornet with a different shell & a 380 motor for the same price as a Hornet - man i got conned) & it wasn't anything powerful by todays standards, i think it was a "pink power" motor which if you bought one today was basically the same spec as a rebuildable 27t motor such as a Venom Fireball & don't get me wrong.. the car did go like stink, (although it did understeer a fair bit & wheelied quite nicely) it went well for a little while at least until it stopped because it completely smashed the gears to pieces & they just disintegrated, so on that basis i wouldn't trust anything more than a Tamiya sport tuned motor or one of those HPI Saturn or Ansmann Clash type uprated silvercan motors in those gearboxes to this day.

[Pablo668]

I don't know what you were doing to your old hornets/grasshoppers.
I ran the standard 540 silver can in mine for years.
The Hornet was technically a terrible car but it was tough as nails and great for beginners.....at least to bash with.
I did some horrible things to my old Hornet and it kept on keeping on. Sure after a while things broke but it took some doing and the replacement parts were relatively cheap and plentiful.
I've seen a few vids on youtube of people putting brushless systems through grasshopper/Hornet/Lunchbox gearboxes and those gearboxes being able to handle the power. For a while at least.
Not a racer though. I would race one for giggles in stock-ish form in a vintage race. That could be fun.