Posted by Draconious on 8/25/2001, 2:58 pm

Its ok for a first car, its got new user written all over it... the mods are not that great any way, out of the box stock is just as fun... There are a lot of nit picky things that will break, i am currently faced with all of them at once.. so it makes the mini-z feel cheap, but when it was running it was a blast... I am just waiting to find a servo gear replacement under 15$ localy... rediculous cost for a tiny pice of plastic... but the demand is high cuz almost every one strips it at least once. The chassis and the larger parts of the Mini Z are strong enough to ram the wall indefinatly at its stock speed... the body will eventualy scratch and some of their shapes might let them break in a few places as I have seen, the bodies are made of the same thing as amodel car, and not clear lexon that you have to paint like most larger racing rc cars.... and you DO NOT want a cheap toys r us type of RC car... the Mini-Z performs a bit better then most of those... although it does clitch a lot the servo - stearing will vibrate back and forth usualy its not enough to bother you but when you get near a refrigerator or other interferance causing device it might shoot off in a direction that you did not tell it to go in... this can be fixed by soldering a capacitor to the motor etc.. so I hear... The wireing is probly the weakest part of the Mini-Z - just about all my wires have broken, just bend them once at their solder points and you lose a wire, 2nd time another wire etc... eventualy 1 strand was holding my antenna on, and it soon fell off... I dont know if its realy worth the 150$ most places sell it for.. If I bought another I dont think I would pay more then 90$ for it new... Also there is a new Mini-Z lite that is comming out soon, probly already out in japan... its a Mini-Z that runs slower on 2 batteries, and only cost about 30$ US... however its believed that this mini-z wont have a true steering servo, and it comes with a stupid Imac looking ugly as sin radio controller. Its basicly more toys R us ish. Then you gotta buy batteries and a charger... dont bother with alkalines you will go broke playing with it so much even if the batteries do last almost an hour.. with Nickel Metal Hydride NIMH your run time will increase to well over 1 and a half hours full throttle then it starts to slow down in the last 10 or so minutes... and you will be able to keep reusing the batteries instead of buying more... 650-700mha NIMH can be obtained for about 1.55$ for each cell on Ebay from Proton1's dutch auctions. You will also need 8 batteries for the Controller wich might as well also be rechargeable 1600mah NIMH cells... The other fun aspect with the Mini-Z is you can goto the store buy a model of yer favorite car, and use it as the body. I have 3 other RC Cars but they have been on the shelf for the last 3 years, will probly sell them off on ebay one day... just a '88 CLODBuster and (2) '92 RC10Ts . I just never go places other then the driveway to race them... The mini-Z has fun in the living room, at least when i did not have a deep carpet. A flat carpet is the best, if you dont have a place to run Mini-Z you might not want one. Don't bother with slippery tile, you slide all over the place, shag carpet not enough ground clearance for it to move, and carpet will get wound up in the gears/wheels. My mini-z forum has a thread were i posted, usualy in angre, about what broke on my mini-z... but its got some good things too, like my 3D-MiniZ and Mini-Lightning project.

Link: Draconious Mini-Z Site