Yesterday I got my hands on some Nitro fuel and managed to get my R/C Car running.

I must admit it was not without problems. It took me two hours to start due to a flooded engine and the fact that the engine was really stiff being so new. It took me a while to work out how to clear a flooded engine. The useless instructions told me to remove the glow plug and pull the cord 20 to 30 times. Well removing the glow plug was obvious and so was pulling the cord but what they didn't tell you is that you have to turn it upside down. Well at least that's what I ended up doing. After that it was a lot easier to get it going. In fact once I had started it a few times starting it again was easy. It's like you get a feel for starting the engine somehow.

Anyway this car is fun . It really has some decent power, I use it in a car park opposite my house. It's around a 150ft by 300ft space and it's covered in loose gravel so there were spins a plenty. I admit I found breaking it in rather hard to do when it was so tempting not too. Beings as the manual said that the engine didn't need breaking in I didn't spend too much time breaking it in.

I never managed to put the body on the car, I was having a problem with the idling speed so it would cut out if you left it still too long resulting in frequent restarts. I never managed to take a picture of it either but there's a good reason for that. I was using my rechargeable camera batteries (4xAA) in my car. I have brought some more batteries now however and so will take a picture of it today if I use it again today.

Just got to clean the air filter and the heat sink and tune the engine as the mixture is too rich at the moment. These Nitro R/C Cars are great fun and I recommend them to any big kid.

OK so not much happened yesterday, just a normal day at work except... my R/C car was delivered

It was quite a surprise to come home and see it as it had only been dispatched on the 29th. I ripped open the box to take a look at the car. It's some sort of Nissan car though don't ask me which. It's rather ugly but in my opinion all rally cars are. I prefer more style, something along the lines of a 1930's Caddilac Fleetwood.

After unboxing the car I took a good look at it's guts. I'm not into mechanics in the slightest though the way this car works I find very interesting, because of it's simplicity it's very easy to understand the entire working of the car with just a little examination.

The car is a Smart Tech "Winner", I have never heard of Smart Tech but then again the only two maufactures of R/C cars I had heard of are Traxxus and Kyosho.

I was considering putting a few pics up but in the end I decided to wait till there's better light (it was rather dark) and until I get it running. Plus loads of picture of the car (only with a Mercedes shell instead of my Nissan one) can be seen HERE

Something odd about this RTR car is the fact that it says the engine has already been run in. I'm a little skeptical about this and so will run it in anyway as it can't hurt.

At the moment all I have done with the car is tested the radio gear though I hope to get it up and running this weekend. Of course that all depends on the availablilty of Nitro Fuel. I haven't checked to see where I can get the from yet .

I was browsing through eBay as you do and happened to stumble across a Nitro R/C Car for only £135. Being the man that I am I couldn't resist the change to own a proper R/C Car. Sure I have an electric one left over from my childhood but this one has a real combustion engine, suspension, gears e.t.c. It apparently has a top speed of 50 MPH though I am a little sceptical of this as it seems too fast for a such a small car and I doubt you'd reach 50 MPH before it went out of range.

I can see this being a fun little toy err, project that no doubt my mates will be wanting to play err, experiment with

I'll keep you posted with a review and perhaps some shots and video if your lucky