Where to start?
When starting the radio nitro car hobby you will end up building an reliable kit of tools, spares, radio gear and various other parts to maintain your nitro car while out bashing or racing it to enable it to keep runing if an unforseen event happens, especially if you plan to get into the RC Nitro Car racing scene as having no spare parts etc may cost you that vital race to win the season!
The guide is aimed to give you some idea of what you may need tool or spare part wise as you progress through the three different experience stages of the nitro car hobby. This page will be updated when seen as best to do so to keep it up to date with the new products.
A humble beginning
If your new to the Radio Nitro car hobby (this includes buggies, truggies and moster trucks) you will need a basic starter kit to be able to run your car, tighten up screws and mainly to start your engine along with filling the fuel tank up. A starter kit (linked further down below) will be more than enough to get you going to start your car up and to do basic maintience on it.
One item I recommend very highly and it is a must (any model shop you go into should recommend this as this can save you from being sued by member of the public!), is the fail safe, this small device's job is to apply the breaks to your car when either the hump pack battery is low on charge, the batteries in the radio transmitter dies or if signal is lost between the transmitter and reciever in the car. This will stop the car from shooting off, and to prevent any serious accidents to you, members of the public or anyone with you as a car going 30mph can do a lot of damage
Important Notice
Get yourself insurance, go to BRCA which is the Bristish Radio Car Association who give out the radio car insurance, this covers you where ever you are incase of an accident occurs with your car and a member of the public. Download the form, print it, fill it out with the required amount via cheque or postal order(?) to the supplied address, it should take about a week for them to process it and this will cover you from January to December.
Starting Equipment
• 2700Mah Modelsport AA Batteries or 2000Mah Maplin AA Batteries ideal for your Transmitter
• Starter Kit which comes with 1 x Fuel bottle 350cc, 1 x Glowstarter 2100mAh,1 x Glowstart charger 230V, 1 x BOX wrench (8, 9, 10, 12 & 17mm), 1 x BOX wrench (4, 4.5, 5.5, & 7mm), 2 x Small screw driver (Flat & Phillips)
• Fuel Filter Essential to stoping dirt flowing into your engine from the fuel tank
• Tool Box
• Fail safe this may be expensive but it is a good one that is reliable. You can get cheaper ones just as good so its worth looking around on Modelsport and JEspares
• 4.8v Reciever Hump Pack Ideal for usuage of stock servos that come with your RC Car
Intermediate
Once you gain some experience with your car (maintaining it, tuning your engine, know how your car is put together etc) and start meeting up other radio nitro car owners you will be able to move onto this stage. You may want to improve your tool kit to help you maintain your car better and on the plus side make your life a hell a lot easier, not having a good tool to do the job can always be a pain!
• 6v Reciever Hump Pack ideal for when your using the more expensive higher torque servos such as Digital Futaba S3050 servo
• Ripmax 6pc set
• JP Rotating Car stand, ideal for when cleaning your car and taking it apart to do maintain it
• Hex Set
• Fuel Pump
• Glow Starter x 2 with power meter so you know when your glow start is low on power!
• Glow Starter Battery x 2 a good hard working battery will last you than the standard batteries you buy from a shop, you want batteries that are designed for long use and for the RC Car hobby. A charged up spare is always handy!
• 17mm Spanner to remove 17mm wheel knuts, you may not need this if you have a 5 way Glow Wrench that has a 17mm socket. The wheel knuts are sometimes prone to coming undone, either tighten them up with the spanner or use a bit of blue thread lock as well to keep the knuts on.
Professional
By this level of experience you may be racing your car so it would be essential to have a racing standard tool kit along with any spares to replace parts you possible may know will break at some point. Not having a replacement part or an essential race tool at the race pits may cost you the race or first place!
• Specktrum or Futaba FASST system
• High Torque servos such as Futaba S3050 Digital Servo At this level you will be racing competively against other RC car racers so you want reliable servos that will last, have metal gearings inside and are fast reacting to your commands from the transmitter
• Starter box, used mainly for the race entry and upward engines as they are harder to start which a pullstart is not suitable to do.