Quick (For A) Change! Tamiya Holiday Buggy Trail Run

So the CC-01 Pajero I got a while back, despite all the madness of its chassis design, has had me in a big Tamiya mood. And when I discovered you could buy these Holiday Buggies new for £88, I couldn't resist!

Obviously a 2WD buggy is a bit of a change for this channel, but hey - it's all RC. And this one is really, really fun as well. I'm really impressed with the DT-02 chassis, though I did make a few changes right from the start.

Those changes were to leave the tiddly 380 motor in the box and fit a cheap eBay brushless system, and the leave the stock 'shock absorbers' in there with it. Instead I built a bag of CVA oil dampers Tamiya makes that go straight on this kit. They're really impressive and very well controlled, with an oil weight that really suits it.

If you want to know all about these cars, by the way, check out ‪@AddamsPlayground‬ as he's got some really excellent videos and is an all-round entertaining watch.

I was very lucky: my first RC car, back around 1980, was a Rough Rider. Much as I loved it in many ways, driving it was frankly disappointing... nicad hump packs and a 540 silver can don't make for fast cars, and the only thing it did very quickly was get slower, ever slower, as the charge sagged.

I still hanker for the re-re though, or maybe the Sand Scorcher version...

What I've realised driving this is that the DT-02 behaves the way I wished the Rough Rider did all those years ago, and watching that retro bodyshell is the icing on the cake – especially as it's super-bendy and survives crashes really well. Even the spotlights seem tough! They've already lasted longer than the lovely KC Daylighters on the RR did. Plastics, chassis designs and batteries have seriously advanced since then.

I've been running this on 3S and frankly I don't think I've got full throttle ever. It's wild and unnecessary. Perfect!