New UK member - Midlands based

[dinglem]

Hi all,

I have been meaning to sign up on here for a while, and have been browsing for a while.

My name is Martin Dingle, and I used to race during the late 80's and early 90's. Bit of fun initially when I was in my early teens, with a Tamiya Bigwig and a Mardave Meteor to thrash around in the street, but I then started going to my local indoor club (Perry Common Buggy Club) and started racing the Meteor indoors on carpet - I was hooked.

Over the next few years I went through a few other cars and also joined The Three Tuns club which was outdoors based on grass (with a bit of mud at times), and progressed to a CAT XL and eventually onto a pair of Optima Mid Turbo's. I developed pretty well with those before eventually buying a Yokomo 870c. Then things began to get a little more serious as I started to get tempted into the Radio Race Car National Series. I entered a few rounds in the late 80's and averaged around the B-Finals with the odd hit up into the top 10.

By early '91 I had a YZ10 Works car, heavily modified, as well as an awesome Graphite RC10 which was also very heavily modified, and I was a regular A-Finalist with those, gaining sponsorship from MG motors and getting my hands on selected batteries from Central Models (CML) who also provided us with some trick parts for the cars. My father built and modified the cars - I just raced.

We had a Shinwa Motor Dresser to set the motors up, and also a matching Shinwa Rolling Road to set the cars themselves up with.

I came 3rd overall in the RadioRaceCar national series that season, with a few overall race wins and FTD's.

I then went off to Uni, discovered beer and boobs and that was the end of my racing days.... until now. Last week I got chatting to a few friends and there was mention of the old cars, so over the past couple of days a bit of rummaging around in the loft has unearthed all of my old kit. I will try to post up some details of the Yokomo and the RC10 in the correct sections below, and hopefully i'll be able to work out how to upload pictures too.

I look forward to chatting and browsing, and hopefully you can remind me of what I have actually got as the details are very very hazy.

Cheers Mart

[jwscab]

great story, welcome aboard! Everyone loves pic, so get some posted of your racing machines!

[RBT84]

Welcome, I'm also Midlands based (Tamworth)

[Trackingz]

Hi Martin cool RC history i used to do the radio race cars not quite A finals but great meeting used to run a losi xx and yokomo 92/93
looking forward to seeing some pics of your old buggies
james
Gloucestershire

[dinglem]

Welcome, I'm also Midlands based (Tamworth)

Sorry - only just seen these replies!

Tamworth is only down the road from me. Where did you used to race??? Did you ever make it to the 3 Tuns?

I'll stick a few shots of my cars here although there are a few threads running on them by now....