My 4-year-old son would love an R/C monster truck for Christmas. He has outgrown all of the little toddler R/C toys. He would like a monster truck, but I havent been impressed with anything from the toy stores. Can anyone recommend a relatively inexpensive truck which would be appropriate for a small child to bash around- must be tough, cheap or repairable, and SLOW by hobby standards.

Thanks!

Brian
Macon, GA

Well as a tough as nails beginer truck you can't go wrong with the Traxxas Stampede. You will have to slow it down. The easiest way would be to buy a 55 turn lathe motor from either integy (http://www.integy.com) or rc4less (http://www.rc4less.com) that is ment to run on 12 volts so runing on the 7.2 volts of a 6 cell pack would be pretty slow. Also I would put the largest spur gear and smallest pinion gear that you could. If it is too fast you could get a 4 cell spec battery pack and run those.

I agree on the Stampede. Gear it down as stated.

I was just over on ebay and there are a lot of good trucks there. I am partial to Losi and there are XXXTMF1's and XXXTMF2's and all can be "de-tuned" to match the learning scale of youngsters.

Might be worth a shot.

if you go that lathe motor hobbytalk's hobbyshopper has a 12v lathe motor for $10.00

Also, the stampede is a great "monster" truck. I've owned them and done some amazing things with them as far as bashing. they do roll over easy so it might be nice to lower the truck a little for your boy but in all honesty.. A four year old will be tickled just to have one whether it rolls over once in awhile or not..

Enjoy!