on road nitro a dying breed?
 

i remember 10 years ago onroad nitro was everywhere and sold like hotcakes. now that im getting back into the hobby it seems like onroad nitro is nowhere to be seen....is everyone going electric or off road?

i just picked up a hpi rs4 evo+. hopefully i can find some local racers. love modding my rc cars....but there doesnt seem to be much hop ups for the evo+?

My opinion and experience, the hassle of nitro, along with the noise (which has become an issue in lots of places), has made electric a better choice. Faster, cleaner, less bothersome to others.

well it isnt quite nitro onroad outdoor season yet for me, but it will be soon.

brushless offroad has taken off extremely well, and attracting a lot more imo

I can not say a HPI RS4 is a real racing car....

But among the hobby level drivers offroad is the way to go, the drop their car where they want it and drive while with onroad you have to travel to a suited place and that can be to far away (even if it is just 1 km from home).

Electric or gas is mostly choosen above nitro because nitro is difficult to tune. Well it is not that difficult but you have to learn it and today a lot of (young) people do not want to learn it and tell the whole world that it is difficult.

If I look arround here in Holland most hobby drivers do get a gas powered bigscale or are in the search of an electric offroad like a Traxxas 1/10 or an electric version of a 1/8 buggy/truggy

O/T: I am quite curious why the noise issue with nitro is a big deal today, instead of back when? Not singling anyone out, as it's definitely not the first couple times I've read this. Were people more tolerant in 2003? Houses have better isolation?



I think onroad nitro is dying, obviously because of how good electrics gotten, but also how good offroad cars have gotten all around. It's undoubted how much more popular offroad vs. onroad is today, then back say in 2001. Offroad vehicles not only are good in the dirt, but can more then manage onroad. And most of today's offroad tires don't instantly become slicks anymore as soon as you touch asphalt.

Nitro onroad's saving grace, if there is one, will be GT8/iGT. Even though these are basically offroad 1/8th buggies, I think if GT8 goes mainstream, which I really hope it does, it should attract offroaders back to the asphalt.

Not only people are getting less tolerant but also the laws about envirement (noise, toxic fluids etc) are getting stronger.

As long as it is a worlds class it will never die.

The best answer I can give to anyones questioning of nitro onroad is this.
Pull the trigger for the first time with group of 10 or so cars going down a long straight together and you'll have the answer your looking for. For those that have done it, need I say more? :nod:

:tire: Trigger Happy :tire:

The problem is not with those who have done it, but with those who should start doing it.

I lived in the US 20 years ago and nitro was nowhere... 10 years ago it was nitro, now it's nitro offroad... things change and some come back...

...except that the gt cars are junk......it seemed the class would take off and it did here in Toledo for awhile........now it's slowing down........the cars are goofy and handle terrible......you want to save onroad??........get the manufacturers to build pan cars....super simple......and tons of fun with cheap 3 port motors...

Onroad racing is dying off in a lot of places for various reasons. Some have touched on the noise and environmental issues, but there are other factors that are leading to the dying off of onroad racing.

One of the biggest reasons is lack of support from local hobby shops in many areas which includes club/parking lot racing. Remember back in the early 2000s, there were parking lot/club tracks everywhere!! There wasn't a city that you couldn't go to and on any given weekend, there wasn't a track set up out in front or in the vicinity of a hobby shop. Now, you can hardly find a club/parking lot track being run.

Second, the cost of running onroad has dramatically increased. Remember back in the day you could get going with a 200mm onroad car at a club track for $250 to $500? Say what you want about the HPI RS4, OFNA Z10, or AE NTC3, but it brought a lot of people into nitro onroad racing at the club level back in the day. Now, you can hardly find a 200mm nitro onroad kit for under $500. Now, it costs you almost $1000 just to get a 200mm car going. For some, the money is not an issue but for those struggling today, that is more of a budget buster that it used to be.

Onroad racing really needs to go back to its roots: club/parking lot racing. Offroad racing has surpassed onroad due to it being a tad more affordable (if you don't go the 8th scale buggy/truggy route), the wide availability of tracks to run, and the bigger support for "club" racing. Onroad has been morphing into "big, sanctioned" races only and with the cost of competing at those races, it is becoming out-of-reach for many. Onroad has been "pricing" itself out of the market for a few years now. Until it goes back to its roots, onroad will continue to die a slow death.

I dunno about that. They are a bit different to setup because of the off-road based chassis'. But at the last Vegas Grand Prix the GT cars were only 1.5-2 seconds off pace of the 1/10 nitro sedans.

I would love to see 2WD pan's take off, but I just don't really see it happening. The beauty of the 1/8 GT cars is that they don't need a perfect track or lot to be run on because of their size and the rubber tires.

But I think for sure the advancements of electronics and off road chassis design has really brought back off road in a strong way. It seems that any new comers in the hobby don't want to have to maintain anything, want to know how fast it'll go, and how high it can jump. On road is something you have to see and try to be made a believer.

+1

Onroad here in KC is virtually dead, the only track(carpet) is Fastlane. They consolidated the Real RC track at Phill with Fastlane in Blue Springs. The old asphalt track was torn up to build the new out door off road track. The cost of a new electric tourer every year and a new nitro every 3 years has simply priced onroad out of contention. My AE B4 is competive with the new B4.1, not so with my XXXS(without the Matt Francis spur gear adaptor). A new TC6.1 is around $400 and a new MTX5 is like $700. A B4.1 Worlds is at the shop were I work $250 and the electronics for either electric is the same.