Tamiya Saint Dragon

I bought the Saint Dragon in September 1996 for $20 from someone who never used it before--in fact, he never even finished building it. Quite a good deal, if you ask me. Even in '96, this was an aging car. I'm not sure when it's lifespan was, but I'm guessing somewhere between 1990 and 1994.

To get this thing running, I took the radio system from the Thunder King. A Futaba MC210CB electronic speed control handles the throttle. This car was totally stock and ran ok.

Performance And Such

The steering and suspension has a few quirks: it doesn't steer very well at high speeds. I know, the laws of physics dictate that it won't. (The weight is, for the most part, positioned in the back half of the car.)

On the first day I took the Dragon outside to run it, one of the steering arms broke. I was really surprised to see this happen; none of the arms on my other Tamiya cars (or any other car, for that matter) ever broke. I'm not sure how or when exactly it happened, but I replaced it with the arms from the original Subaru Brat setup. These are metal ones and are still in one piece.

One day (summer '97), Brian was driving this. He was headed right for the ramp, and set himself up quite well for a good jump. Just as the car reached the bottom of the ramp, the car stopped. "Huh." I'm not sure how or what happened, but the rear of the chassis snapped, leaving everything to pretty much fall apart. I hadn't been able to find a replacement chassis for it, so have sold it on eBay. Oh well. It proved to be worth $20!