Best Nitro Car for Beginners
One of the most important aspects of choosing a great nitro car for beginners is the difficult of tuning the glow-powered engine. You want something that will run all day with little tuning, and an engine that will start easily. There is nothing more frustrating than pulling a pull-start all day and never getting the car to start up. I believe that's where a lot of beginners give up on nitro. You have to remember that it's not as simple as a plug and play electric, but it's a real engine that requires tuning on the low and high end needles.
With all of that said, two of the best brands that are targeted more towards beginners are Traxxas and HPI. They have quite a few vehicles that would be excellent for a beginners. One of the best off-road nitro vehicles HPI makes is the Firestorm. It has the 3.0 Nitro Star engine, and although it's pull start, it is easy to start and will run all-day consistently. There's also the HPI Nitro RS4 MT2, which is a four-wheel drive truck with the G3.0 Nitro star engine. Both of these trucks come with a pull-start, but can easily be switched over to a roto-start, which is very well worth the price of the upgrade.
If you want a larger truck, there's the HPI Savage. There are several different versions of this truck. It's a very durable machine with a good bit of power. It's your classis huge 4WD nitro monster truck, and handles jumps and bashing very well. It's a bit more on the expensive side, but the capability makes it more than worth it. It's a big powerful, durable truck, what's not to love about it?
Some of the best Traxxas nitro rc cars for beginners are the Nitro Rustler, T-maxx, S-Maxx, and the Revo. The Traxxas Nitro Rustler is a standard nitro stadium truck. It has the classis Traxxas 2.5 nitro engine on it, and tops out around 38 miles per hour, which is plenty fast for a beginner. The T-maxx is an older design 4WD monster truck. Modern ones use the Traxxas 3.3 engine, which has plenty of power, especially when coupled with the T-maxx's 2-speed transmission. The S-maxx is very similar to the T-maxx, but uses a 2WD system and single-speed transmission. It also uses different tires and a slightly different paint scheme. The Nitro-powered Revo is the newer style monster truck with a revolutionary suspension with laydown shocks. The new design is amazingly durable, and handles the track extremely well. When Nitro monster-truck racing was still popular, the Revo used to dominate the top spots at the national level.
The first thing you want to do when you get a new nitro car is read over the owners manual for recommended fuel and break-in instructions. Without the proper break-in technique, the engine won't last long and you'll be replacing it shortly. During break-in, you will use quite a bit of fuel, but you will be rewarding with a good-running nitro car that will last you a long time with minimum problems.