RC Cars
Buy and sell RC cars in Guatemala.
Rock crawlers that creep over a pile of bricks in the patio, brushless monster trucks for the dirt lot, short-course trucks and drift cars, new and pre-owned, along with the tyres, servos and spare suspension arms that keep them running. A crawler and a basher are bought for opposite reasons, one for patience and the other for speed, and almost every part of them differs to match. With a used one, the question worth asking is about mud: whether the electronics can take a puddle, and whether the last owner dried the car afterwards.
Crawlers, bashers and drift cars, and where each one runs:
the ground you have decides the car before the budget does. A mini crawler such as an Axial SCX24 picks its way over garden stones or a stack of books on the floor. A larger crawler like an Axial SCX10 wants a rocky hillside and rewards patience over speed: low gearing, locking differentials, soft tyres and suspension that lets each wheel drop on its own. Bashers go the other way. A monster truck such as a Traxxas Maxx or an Arrma Granite is made to be launched off a ramp on a dirt lot, and a short-course truck like a Traxxas Slash carries its bodywork over the wheels so it can bump other trucks without tangling. Drift and on-road cars need smooth concrete, an empty car park or a polished floor.
Brushless power, water-resistant electronics and parts you can get:
a brushed truck is slower, cheaper and easier for a child to drive; a brushless one on a large LiPo is fast enough to break parts on its first jump. Most Traxxas trucks and many Arrma models leave the box with a water-resistant receiver, servo and speed control, which counts in the rainy season from May to October, and for longer around Cobán, where the ground rarely dries. Water-resistant is not waterproof: a truck can splash through a puddle, but anything meant to run on water belongs with RC boats, and a car’s motor and bearings still wear fast in mud. Find out whether parts for that brand can be had without ordering from abroad: a snapped arm on an obscure model can park it for weeks. A car is driven with a pistol-grip transmitter, which will not fly RC airplanes or drones; those use stick radios.
Crawler prices and what upgrades are worth on resale:
a 1/10 crawler from Axial or Traxxas sits around Q7,000 new, and a 1/24 mini crawler costs roughly a third of that. On a used one, upgrades move the price less than the seller hopes. Aluminium links, brass weights and a stronger steering servo cost real money and almost none of it comes back: a heavily upgraded crawler fetches only a little more than a stock one, and a little more again if the original parts are in the box.
Skid plates, shocks and drive cups:
turn the car over before you look at anything else. Scraped skid plates, a chassis bent upward and cracked shock towers or arms are the toll of a basher that has been jumped hard. Press each shock and watch the shaft; one that is dry and bouncy has lost its oil. Rust on the drive cups, hinge pins and screws means it ran wet and nobody dried it, and on a brushed motor that usually means a tired motor too. A brushless motor whose can has turned blue or brown has been run too hot. Copies of Axial crawler chassis turn up too, and parts for the original do not always fit them, so ask for the box or the part numbers and pay for what it really is.
Photos from underneath and a kerb to climb:
a picture of the car upside down tells a buyer more than any shot of it standing on its wheels. Give the make and model, brushed or brushless, the largest LiPo it is set up for, and whether it came ready to run or is a kit you built. List every upgrade and say whether the stock parts go with it. Be straight about mud: a buyer who finds rust after hearing it was kept dry will not be back. For a crawler, meet where there is a kerb or a heap of stones so the buyer can watch each wheel drop and climb; for a basher, a stretch of dirt where it can run flat out for a minute says more than the photos did.