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I purchased this off a friend along with a couple of other cars and was wondering if anybody can tell me what it is..age etc:..it is in very good condition I think it was only run a few times..

It is a datsun step side and I beleive it came out in the late 70's early 80's nice truck there is one on ebay right now for 300.00 Item number: 300291699742

Very nice score, looking at those tyres, I doubt it has done more than the static run in period

Wow,nice score man!
There seems to be more and more old RC cars from the early '80's finding their way out of storage and into collector's hands in NZ!

There are this one came to me via a Tamiya club member who bought it off ebay...it's alot smaller than it looks..

Those came out in 1985 or so IIRC. I have some Tower Hobbies catalogs from that time period that list it.

I have a Kyosho Nimitz-.06 Buggy that's what I'd consider the 'father' of your Datsun Stepside (got it new as a Christmas present many years ago!). The Nimitz came out around 1982 or 1983. These two 1/12th scale cars share the same chassis, engine, and transmission. They are powered by a .06 Nitro engine with a single needle rotary carb. The Nimitz had a ralley car type body. The tires were the basic knobby rears and ribbed fronts (Your Datsun of course came with those cool realistic truck tires). The Datsun has some major improvements over my earlier Nimitz however.

The Datsun has coil over oil shocks, where the Nimitz has only mousetrap springs and no dampers. Same arms though. The Datsun was started by toothed yellow plastic 'zip strips' that you would thread under the gear at the front of the engine and pull out to start it (similar to other Kyosho nitro cars of the era). The Nimitz had a one way bearing in the transmission that allowed you to start the engine by holding the car in one hand and spinning a rear wheel with the other. When the engine was cranky this got TIRING!!!

The 'father' of the Nimitz was the Cactus Sand Buggy as profiled by Darryn Johnson in RC Car Magazine. He's on this board (Retro R/C) so I'm sure he could shed some more light on these early Kyoshos. The Cactus had the same chassis and suspension as the Nimitz. The gearbox was different, and mounted an electric motor verticaly! It came out around 1979 IIRC.

I always wanted one of those Datsun Stepsides. By the time they came out I was spending money on MRC/Tamiya, Associated, and RPS/Yokomo electrics though. The Nimitz and a Circuit-10 Wildcat buggy cured me of Kyosho nitro cars for many years!!!

One of these days I'll get that Nimitz running again. The engine was pretty tired IIRC, but I oughta get some more life out of it by having rayracing resize the sleave. Same goes for my Wildcat. The Wildcat is mostly complete (although a few parts have been scatered to other parts boxes in the garage...). Doubt I'll ever find another body for the Nimitz. That body ended up getting butchered up and fitted to the Big Bear (making it a 'Mad Max' looking monster buggy)!