Originally Posted by
Coldwaters
My only experience was owning a mp7.5 kanai for a few years but I bought someone's entire hobby. Spare motors, tires, servos controllers, you name it. I ran it as a toy and lost interest. This was all almost 20.years ago.
Now I am looking to try it out again w my son, just bashing or rsacing friends, nothing competitive. I want a solid electric platform that will be upgradable over time in 1/8 or 1/10 scale. Possibly even upgrading a chassis from 2wd to 4wd later, if that's even possible.
A kit would be fun but RTR might be more economical?
Is it possible to even consider this and be ALL in at $400 or less?
Upgrading your platform is one thing. Keeping your platform current is another.
My experience is that buying upgraded parts is definitely doable - very expensive, but doable. However, upgrading a buggy from one version to another is almost certainly not worth the cost. Experience has been that it is far better to sell the platform you're using to buy the platform you want to get to. In the long run, it is far cheaper.
As an example, Tekno EB48 has a number of platforms:
48.3
48.4
48 2.0
48 2.1
If you own a 48.3, then it is generally not feasible to upgrade it to a 48.4 let alone a 48 2.1. Even if you have the 48 2.0, it is too expensive to upgrade it to 48 2.1. Tekno has a lot of parts that are interchangeable between the various versions of the buggys and even between buggys and truggys.
In general as the platforms age and becomes less and less current, it becomes more and more difficult to find replacement parts.