For a beginner, I think a build is a good idea. Everyone should start with building a 2wd electric vehicle, imo... I have to say, though, I've enjoyed getting race rollers lately and taking them out of the box and hitting the track asap. Then I go home and make changes. Obviously the build is not as vital for me from the beginning as I've been doing this since 1987 and have built my share of kits...

I don't think getting a RTR hinders your ability to fix the RC at all. You just figure it out when something goes wrong. Plain and simple. All I have is RTR and when something breaks I fix it. I usually have to figure it out but it gets fixed. I don't have time or desire to build one myself.

Anyways in the current market it looks like there are less and less kits being offered. It is all RTR and the offerings are pretty good.

That's just my 2 pennies.

he said "DIY"(do it yourself) not build/assemble it your self

myself went with a 1/8th rtr buggy probly the best choice besause of durability (xtm xt2/gv xt2) only boke 1 part ever
now im into top of the line race kits as most people are on forums but rtr was the right way for me as i knew zero people with rc cars
but at the end of the day their just toys so have fun

I've been fond of RC cars since my first supermarket car wheen I was 6, so I guess that qualifies as a RTR, that is probably what gave me the virus, that and building lego all day long. At around the same age , if not earlier, my grandma offered me this :

http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/8815-1.jpg

Yep, of course I was way too young to be able to build it. So my mom dit it for me. I broke it. She rebuild it. I re-broke it. She told me to rebuild it myself. So, well, I was just forced to. Ha, memories !

Long story short, when at 13 I had saved enough money to buy myself a tamiya macap, my dad, horrified by the price, decided to build it himself overnight, and I found it more or less finished one sunday morning. To this day ( 30 RC cars later, and all of them having been rebuilt several times) I still really feel I have been deprived of something really special that night. He could'nt understand, of course I would have liked to have him around for help, but seriously, I guess that first build would have felt like a ceremony, ha ha !

So , I like kits of course, but I feel traxxas and others don't hurt the hobby. Those who like it will stay, the others won't have spent too much time or missed an occasion to try RC.

One thing I hate about RTR, much more than their equipment which in 2010 is not that bad at all, is the fact that you can't find them as kits. For instance I would find quite fun to race at my club with a HPI sprint ( Local superstar Jean-Marc Betticher kicked everyone's ass last month with it) but I don't want pozi wood screws, I want hex M3 srcews everywhere and it is very unpleasant to crossthread holes. Other than that this car has bearing everywhere, steel gear diffs, steel dogbones, adjustable camber links... I think if the sprint could be found as a kit I could well have bought one, just for fun.

Build it on your own.nthe kits are of better quality and u get to learn how to fix it if you break it. Plus you will know what is in it and how everyhig is set

First off I will take a kit everytime over a rtr. My younger brother got into racing this year and he bought a rtr. As with any rtr the electronics you get aren't worth running so that has been the first problem. Also he does know how to work on it and is afraid of ruining something. With that said with my dad and I would of rather seen him get a kit to learn how to wrench.

RTR's saved the hobby, so don't bash 'em. There is something to be said for being able to buy a car and have it running in the time it takes to charge the battery. Plus some people can't justify spending all that money and also having to spend an evening or two of their free time assembling it(After they catch the bug they can, but not before). Plus some little bits of many kits can be frustrating as hell if you don't have the experience to know how to deal with it, like e-clips, assembling shocks, etc.

RTR for starters but after that building. Don't over complicate end users. Anything other then RTR for first timers will complicate matters and make them sell it before they run it. There's my take.

EDIT: As for me, i always go bare bones if ican. Saves cost on electronics i throw in the drawer and forget about. I slap in castle as soon as i can. I can fine tune my car and having a lot of the same electronics mean more compatibility and less items to worry about. I know how each car will handle generally.

As an almost complete newbie, I thought I'd give my .02.

I picked up a brushless B4.1 RTR a couple of weeks ago. This is the first R/C car I've owned (outside of toys as a kid). There are definitely pros and cons to the RTR vs the FT Kit

I didn't build it, so out of the box I didn't know exactly how it all went together. However, I've had to fix a couple things since, and I spent a ton of time looking over the diagrams to figure out how it all works. So I don't really feel like I lost out on the building part that much. Being pretty mechanically inclined, the vehicle itself wasn't much of a mystery,

I also tend to read a ton about any new thing I try, so I've spent hours online reading about assembly, tips and tricks, setups, etc. I may not have done that ahead of having the vehicle in hand, but it's hard to say. I did enough reading to know which RTR I was going to get.

Looking back at some of the upgrades I've made already, I probably would have gone with the Factory kit and built it up. But I really did like the fact that I left the LHS with the car, charger, and battery and I was running it around in no time.

The biggest drawback for me personally is that I've already upgraded, or ordered upgrades, to the big ticket items - ESC/Motor, Radio, etc. SO ultimately it would have been a little cheaper to have purchased the FT kit outright and bought all the things to go with it. However, having the RTR in hand, having fixed some things, and sorted out what I wanted to upgrade was all easy since I didn't know anyone with some cars I could try out. For the average person I'd see the RTR as a great way to see if they were going to stick with the hobby...

Mike