Tamiya Grasshopper 1:10 Scale Off-Road Racer Kit

First released in 1984, The Grasshopper was a popular kit for young modelers and first-time RC owners before ready-to-run became the norm. The re-release is still a great entry-level kit for new modelers and RC enthusiasts of all ages. With only a few hitches along the way I (a first time RC kit builder) built the car in one day, painted it the next. It looks good, runs perfectly.

In the box you'll find bags of screws, nuts, washers, coils, tires, 3-part rims, chassis, unpainted body, decals, antenna tube, and the plastic parts for the gearbox, bumpers, and suspension ready for assembly. The kit comes with an ESC (electronic speed controller) with forward and reverse and a 380 type motor. You'll have to supply your own tools although a small cross-wrench and grease are included.

Parts are clearly labeled. You'll find a few pieces that aren't needed for this model. See the diagrams at the back of the instruction booklet to know what parts aren't used.

Here are the specs for the Grasshopper:

• Length: 389mm
• Width: 223mm
• Height: 135mm
• Weight: 830g
• 380 type motor (can upgrade to 540 type motor, sold separately)
• Transmission Type: Rear 2 Wheel Drive
• Independent swing axle front suspension, rolling rigid axle rear suspension, friction dampers
• Sealed rear gearbox
• 3-piece assembly wheels/rims
• Straight ribbed racing front tires
• Paddle rear tires
• Front and rear axle are compatible with ball bearings (sold separately)

Suggested tools include needle nose pliers, side cutters, large and small Phillips-head screwdrivers, and tweezers. Those tweezers come in handy for some of the super tiny screws and nuts used on the rims.

A hobby knife and small emery board or sandpaper is useful for trimming nubs off the plastic parts. A ruler with millimeter measurements also comes in handy. Use it to get your steering rods the right length and to measure those almost-but-not-quite-identical screws if you get them mixed up. A magnifying glass helped me out as well. I'm not used to dealing with such tiny parts and detailed instruction diagrams.

Although the kit has a motor and ESC, you'll need to supply a transmitter, receiver, crystal set, steering servo, and 7.2V battery pack. In the spirit of recycling, for this build we used Traxxas components already on hand.

You'll also need some paint and brushes if you want to detail your body and paint the driver figure that goes in car.

This is the first RC kit I've ever assembled. As a kid the only modeling I did was pretend fashion shows with Barbie dolls. I'm not particularly mechanically or electronically-minded either so building this kit was definitely a new experience.

My only significant gripe is that the instruction book is a bit vague in places. Composed primarily of diagrams, a few more close-ups and a little bit more written instructions would have saved me some grief when screwing together the gearbox and mounting the motor.

Experienced modelers and RC owners might laugh at some of the problems I encountered. But as a newbie I was briefly stumped when I found that the ESC and receiver wouldn't fit the way the pictures showed. Little things like how to route the antenna through the hole in the chassis for the antenna tube and whether the motor's yellow or green wire is positive would have been helpful (yellow +).

The most difficult part of the entire kit was putting together those rear tires with their three-part rims. I confess that I gave up and asked for help. Then I spent another 30 minutes trying to get them screwed together properly.

The most fun was painting the body. To me, the original color scheme was boring. So instead of a white car with red and green stripes, I tried my hand at another first: airbrushing. I used a kit with a compressed air can and went with a purple and teal color scheme, black and red detailing, and most of the included decals -- just not the stripes.

View a detailed image gallery with notes on the building of this RC.

After some adjustments to the toe angle and then reinstalling the motor we were up and running. I had failed to properly seat one of the screws holding in the motor so it vibrated loose and I had to go fishing for a missing screw inside the gearbox.

Most of my driving experience with RCs is with toy-grade models. So on my first outing on my own with my newly-built Grasshopper I managed to stall it the grass and in the mud, get its pretty paint job covered in wet grass, and bump (sometimes quite hard) into every tree, planter, and other obstacle in the yard. But despite my lack of skill, it still performed beautifully and ran great (and yes, it still runs and still looks pretty).