Pit Gear items are great ideas to give for the holidays, as they are often the most overlooked. The stuff that is amazingly handy, but never really calls to your budget like that new shiny carbon fiber or aluminum part for your car. Properly organized work equipment and accessories are often the ones you tend to wait to buy until you really need it, but when you do.. you kick yourself for waiting so long to have gotten it. This is a list of some of those essential things you might want to pick up for the r/c enthusiast on your list this holiday season. As with the rest of the Gift Guide, items are broken down by price bracket.

Economy Gifts

Plano StowAway Utility Boxes ($5) – Located in your department store’s fishing and sporting goods department, these boxes (usually used for hooks, sinkers, and lures) are perfect to keep all your spare parts in. I keep everything from spur gears, springs, a-arms, hinge pins to tubes of grease in them. I keep one per vehicle I own and put a decal from the kit on the outside so I can keep track of which box goes to which car at a glance. When it’s time to pack for a race, I only take the parts bins for the vehicles I’m racing that day. They are SUPER helpful for organizing small parts.

RCTrim Hardware Briefcase ($15-29) – These parts containers are much different from those above. They have a ton of COMPLETELY SEPARATE containers in them to help organize your screws and hardware. Unlike the normal fishing type dividers that can sometimes slide up, and have screws get underneath them and mix them up, each of these little compartments is individual. You can take out one little container at a time as well. It is rather convenient. A great buy this holiday season.

JConcepts Illuzion Car Stand ($10-12) – Every car needs a stand so why not make it a cheap one. The Illuzion stands by JConcepts are super budget friendly and they get the job done. Stands may not seem important, but they are if you store your vehicles for any period of time. Putting them on a stand prevents flat spots from forming on your tires/foam inserts. These stands are offered in matte black or clear (to customize just like you would your body).

Duratrax Pit Tech™ Deluxe Shock Stand ($12) – Every once in a while it’s a good idea to rebuild your shocks. A tool to help with that and minimize the mess is something everyone can use. With the new Pit Tech Shock Stand, Duratrax just made that solution affordable. It would be a great little stocking stuffer for any racer or r/c enthusiast.

Tekin Lipo Safe ($13.99) – Charging in a lipo sack is a smart idea. I don’t care how many times you have successfully charged without incident, the risk is still there for something potentially dangerous to happen. Using a lipo safe like Tekin’s help to minimize that risk as it would contain the threat (fire). This style of lipo sack is nice and compact compared to the big bags that take up so much of your valuable table space.

Middle-of-the-Road Gifts

OttLite Full Spectrum Desk Lamp ($30-70) – The OttLite brand has become one of the most popular types of pit lights in the industry. The bulbs last forever, and they provide natural white light. We didn’t link this one to a specific model because there are several out there in different price points and feaure sets (some are flexible, rechargeable, have pen holders, magnifiers, etc). The best bet to get one of these is to use a 40% off coupon (in the Sunday paper or online) from Michaels, Jo-Ann Fabrics, or Hobby Lobby and get one on the cheap.

Big D’s RC’s Car Hauler Bag ($30-50) – Travel to the track often? Run on dirt or clay? Sick and tired of putting a dirt r/c in the trunk of your car or the back seat? Big D’s RC’s has you covered; well your truck anyways. They offer a number of different sized bags to accommodate short course trucks, buggies, even nitro starter boxes. They offer embroidery on them as well. Made of tough material, they are a great way to get your r/c to and from the track without ruining your real car’s interior.

CowRC Standard sized Work Mat ($49.99) – The standard sized Work Mat from CowRC is awesome. It’s smaller and more conveniently sized than the Jumbo, but still plenty big for the average race vehicle to fit on. It’s more manageable to take to the track, and still has all that MOOtastic magnetism to catch them dropped screws. If you’re holding out for a good pit mat, get this one.

Metro Datavac Electric Duster ($59.99) – If you are outdoor racing on dirt, one of these style a/c powered dusters is super convenient for cleaning your car. While not as powerful as a real air compressor it is certainly more compact. For light cleaning they work great. This could even be used for the avid carpet racer to blow off carpet/tire fuzz.

Pro-Line Track Bag with Tool Holder ($59.99) – The Pro-Line Track Bag is perfect if you only have a few items to take to the track. Its roomy enough for a parts bin, most hand tools, and a few bigger items like charger, lipo sack, soldering iron, etc. It would also make a great tire bag if you have a ton of tires to take to the track. Read our full review of this item.

Bottomless Budget Gifts

Atomik Transporter Race Case Hauler Bag ($149) – Until this summer I never had a good hauler bag. I can tell you now that I don’t know how I lived without it. Granted you can get by with a generic tote or duffel bag, I LOVE my hauler bag. This one from Atomik is a best buy since they offer free shipping and it is reasonably priced compared to some others.

Coleman Pop Up Canopy ($150-165) – When it comes to popups for outdoor racing, I’ve not run into a nicer one than those from Coleman. Unlike those $50-80 bargain ones, the frames seem much sturdier, the locking mechanisms more rugged built, and the canopy itself is usually a much nicer color. The ones in this price point are also slightly bigger at 12×12′. Thats a TRUE 12×12 as well since the legs go straight down. The bargain ones usually angle out and claim the width of the footprint of their size rather than the canopy width (i.e. a 10×10 with flared out legs is usually more like 8×8).

Netbook ($199-399) – While most of the world has given up on the netbook genre in favor for tablets and jumbo sized smart phones, they still can hold a great place in R/C. They are super portable and powerful enough to get the basics done. Common uses in r/c are for running ESC programmers, storing setup sheets, watching LiveRC in the pits, and general internet goofing off between races. The link is for the Acer Aspire One. While not powerful, and certainly not budget, it does have some cool features.

Click here to go back to the Gift Guide Category Index