Category: R/C

I personally wish I could participate in today’s giveaway since it involves a Tamiya radio controlled car and you know how much I love these cars. My Toy who are the local Tamiya dealers are giving away a ready to race Nissan GT-R TT-01E with battery, controller and charger. It’s ready to race meaning it’s already been built, painted and put together by the factory but its the TT-01E chassis which mean’s you have a ton of parts you can replace and upgrade yourself.

I have the older TT-01 chassis which is what my Lancia car is built on and I love it, its very fun to drive right out of the box and once you upgrade it you can have a pretty serious machine.

The My Toy shop is located in Tilal Complex in Shuwaikh on the first floor right above Roche Bobois and Living Colors. It’s the nicest RC shop I’ve ever seen, its really big and they’re building a huge race track on the roof right next to it. They even have a section in the back where you can build your cars in and even an airbrush room.

This package is worth KD147.500 and all you need to do to win it is to leave a comment below and later on in the evening I will use random.org to select a winner. Please take the time to pass by the shop (don’t take the wife) and check out what they have. If you love cars its hard to leave without picking something up.

My Toy’s phone number is 22256707

Rules: You need to put your proper email in the email field while commenting since the winner will be contacted by email. You also need to respond to my “You Won” email within 24 hours or I will have to make another draw and choose another winner. You can only comment once, anyone caught commenting more than once will get disqualified.

Update: The post was closed for commenting at around 9:30PM.
The winner is…

[YouTube]

Comment #368, you’ve got mail!
Everyone else check back tomorrow for another giveaway.

It took me around 16 hours to build which is the longest its ever taken me to build a radio controlled car but it was a lot of fun and I’m finally done. I had actually completed the build last night but today I passed by the Tamiya dealer to pick up a better quality damper system which is the blue and silver object in the pictures. I still need to change the motor, add an electronic speed controller and most importantly paint the actual FJ Cruiser body to put on it but I wanted to share these pictures I took of the car frame to show you how beautiful the details in the model are. Check out the pictures below.

Here is a link to the FJ Cruiser page on the Tamiya website. [Link]

I had a choice between going to Dubai and getting a Tamiya CR01 crawler, wasn’t that difficult a choice. Going to spend Eid at home putting it together and hopefully spend the winter down south crawling with the other FJ Cruisers pictured below. So what are you doing this Eid?

I passed by Tilal Complex tonight to check out the new Tamiya store. They opened up in Tilal back in December 2008 but recently they moved to a larger store on the first floor. I was expecting the new store to be bigger than the previous but it turned out to be like 10 times bigger and looked amazing! Seriously I was in shock. It was very nicely organized, they have stations in the back where you could go and build your car, they even rent tools. They also have a painting room with exhausts for the fumes, a small photography studio where you can take pictures of your car and my favorite section, the spare parts! They have hundreds and hundreds of parts occupying the whole right side of the shop. What I used to hate about their old store was the fact that you had to know what part you wanted and then ask the salesman to get it for you from behind the counter but now I can just browse and find parts and accessories myself.

I really really love their new store and I highly recommend anyone that is interested in radio controlled cars or plastic models to visit it. They’re located on the first floor of Tilal Complex, opposite their older store. Oh and they have this HUGE space right by the shop where they are currently building a race track.

Here is a link to their website [Link]
Their phone number is 22256707

Last time I took out my radio controlled cars out was back in February when the weather was good and my brother took the picture above. Since then my cars have been hibernating due to the bad weather. But, I just took my Tamiya Lancia out with the upgraded Super Stock RZ motor and was having a good time until the stock electronic control unit (ECU) overheated. And thats when I remembered what I liked about these cars. I like upgrading the different parts and I like the fact that when something breaks I can fix it.

This season I think I want to get the Tamiya Unimog although I am still dreaming of the Mammoth truck but its just too expensive. The Tamiya dealer My Toy has also opened a larger store in Tilal Complex which I still need to pass by and check out. They’ve also set up a large race track in the basement for people to race their cars on. This RC season should turn out to be a lot of fun.

Today I went off-roading with some friends. First in our real cars and then in our radio controlled ones. We had three Tamiya FJ Cruisers, my Tamiya Lunchbox and my Tamiya Frog. It was extremely fun, I bashed the hell out of my Lunchbox and it now needs a major paint job but I don’t care. I took a ton of pictures and so did my brother but I couldn’t put all of them here. There are a few more pictures below though if you hit continue.

Update: My brother just uploaded some photos to his flickr account [Here]

Oh my God why didn’t anyone tell me about these!! It seems there is a whole line of Tamiya radio controlled construction trucks! I am soooo going to get these. [YouTube]

I took my Tamiya Lunchbox out for the first time today. After all the hard work with the paint job I ironically managed to scratch it while it was still in the trunk of my Wrangler. If that wasn’t bad enough, 10 minutes into my run the Lunchbox lost died on me. It was performing really well, taking some great jumps while my dog was busy trying to catch it when suddenly it just stopped moving. When I got closer I realized the motor was working but the wheels weren’t spinning which meant something was wrong with the gears.

I got home, took apart the car again and turned out it was a problem with one of the gears, the pinion gear which is the one thats connected to the motor was loose. I tightened it back again and used some blue thread locker and its now working perfectly again. I think I am going to spend most of my time breaking my cars and then try and fix them… I love that.

If anyone is wondering where the place is in the pictures above its the huge park off the first ring road.

Although I got my Tamiya Lunch Box truck early in the month I had a faster motor and metal ball bearings I still hadn’t received from eBay so I couldn’t start the build until today. Aramex dropped off my parts in the morning and once I got home I started work on the Lunch Box right away. Five hours later it was done. I only managed to drive the truck for a few minutes under my building in the dark but it was great. Tomorrow I need to pick up a white spray can so I could stencil in some type on the side. Will post more pictures once I am done, I love how its turned out so far.

I picked up my Tamiya Lunch Box kit today. The Lunch Box is based on an old dodge van and was originally released I think in 1988. Recently though Tamiya has been re-releasing some of their “greater hits” and the Lunch Box is one of them.

Sadly I won’t be building this truck yet since I’ve ordered some parts off eBay (metal bearings / a faster motor) and they still haven’t arrived. For now I’ve started with the painting. Originally the Lunch Box is supposed to be painted yellow but I saw a guy online who had his painted military green and I decided to basically copy him. Its my first time painting and I think I’m doing good for a beginner.

I was a bit heavy handed with the spray paint at first and I am not too patient waiting for the different coats to dry but I’m still learning so I should be better the next time. I think I need to pass by the dealer later in the evening and pick up another can of paint just to be safe.

Beautiful weather today so I took my Tamiya car to a parking lot across the street from my house to play around with. I even tried shooting a video (below) which didn’t come out as I planned! Its a really cool car but I keep wishing I had the real version instead. I am going to get soooo much more Tamiya cars though, its like I finally found myself a hobby! [YouTube]

Aramex dropped off my first Tamiya radio control kit this morning. The Frog which I purchased early in the month was a ready built model but now since I really want to get into this hobby I ordered two more car kits so I could enjoy building them.

I originally wanted to purchased the Tamiya’s from the local dealer since his prices are cheaper than the Internet but both of the cars I wanted were out of stock here, actually one of them (pictured above), the Lancia Delta HF Integrale was a discontinued model so I only managed to find it on eBay. The other car, an old Dodge van nicknamed the Lunch Box was coming in the next shipment due to arrive in February but I couldn’t wait that long so I also ordered it from eBay.

First thing I did once I got my kit today was pass by the Tamiya workshop in Muthana and pick up a metal ball bearing set and some spray paint which I am going to use once the Lunch Box arrives next week. Now I am going to spend all day and put this kit together. Will post pictures once I am done. The fact that my car was delivered to me on Christmas morning makes me feel like a kid all over again.

Update: Ok it took me around 5 hours but I finally was able to put the whole thing together and take it out for a spin in my parking lot. The car is great but I definitely need to do some upgrades, first thing will probably be a more powerful engine motor followed by better grip tires and probably a suspension upgrade.

While out playing with my Tamiya Frog today I hit this big rock and ended up dislocating the drive shaft from the rear axle and ripping up the joint boot. Its not a problem though since I already took apart the rear of the Frog and will fix it and put it back together again tonight. Just need to pass by the My Toy workshop in Muthana and pick up some grease and a new joint boot. This is what I love about these RC cars, you can take them apart and put them back together or swap out parts when something goes wrong just like real cars.

Took the Frog out for some bashing in the sun. It was a lot of fun, check out some more pictures below.

I passed by My Toy a few hours ago and picked up a Tamiya Frog radio controlled buggy. Originally released in 1983 the Frog was re-released in 2006 and I think its one of the coolest looking buggies. Interesting fact, the largest off-road track in the world is currently being built in Kuwait. Check out this link for some pictures. [Link]

update: In case anyone is interested here is the phone number of My Toy 22256707