Meatball Racing

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PandaHobby Tetra X3 V2

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It’s been a minute! Actually it’s been almost a year 😓 Remember how I said I saved $300 on a G500? I’ve reduced that savings by half by purchasing another 1/24 scale Tetra X3. Am I a glutton for punishment? Probably. I really wanted to love this rig, but there were some disappointments I couldn’t get past.

PandaHobby did listen to all of the feedback and shortly after the X3 was released they acknowledged the problems with the suspension and ESC and shipped a fix to anyone that requested it.

However, the suspension components they sent to me didn’t completely fix the issues of the shocks binding up. Then the stock servo broke and it sat on a shelf for the better part of a year 😥

Version 2

I hadn’t been paying much attention during that time and recently noticed there’s now a V2 of the same model. I thought that I already had all of the things that brought it to Version 2 spec, but there’s actually a lot more.

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SCX24 Subaru Brat

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One of the first things I did after getting an SCX24 Jeep was buy the Subaru Brat body made for the Carisma MSA-1E 1/24 scale platform.

I remember the Subaru Brat from my childhood with a fond weirdness, because it was definitely different than anything else on the road. The BRAT officially stood for Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter. The Japanese understood American’s desire for a vehicle to be fun. The Brat tapped into the American desire for a vehicle that is conventional in some ways, but very unconventional in others. As such, the vehicle was never sold in Japan, it was for the English speaking markets of the U.S., U.K., and Australia.

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1/24 Scale Christmas

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Every year, we put some sort of motorized conveyance under the tree. In the past it’s been an HO scale train or slot cars from my childhood. While I like the nostalgia of them, let’s face it – I’m old which means they’re old. So they’re a little finicky to get working well. Still fun, but this year I wanted to try something new.

I’ve always wanted to have an indoor model train layout, but since we don’t have room I turned my thoughts to doing an outdoor layout 🤔 But that always seemed extremely expensive. Then a couple ideas came together for me: 1) my #1 Christmas gift item is a 1/24 scale crawler – Axial’s SCX24 and 2) I found a G-scale train set for less than $50.

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