Little Monster Truck Drives in Prospect Park

On a sunny day, a green truck whizzed and whirred around a pathway in Prospect Park—whipping at about 35 miles per hour.

However, this truck is not even a foot tall and was being controlled by a man with a radio remote control.

The tiny green Jeep Wrangler, a scaled model of the real thing, is a nitro gas-powered Radio Controlled truck.

“It's like owning a small car, you have to replace the carburetor, change the oil,” Eddy Dominguez said while his family sat on a bench, watching the truck whip up and down the stone path. “But I'm good at this. I know how to fix cars, so this came easy to me.”

Dominguez, who is a 39-year-old chef from Mexico and lives in Flatbush, said driving RC trucks has become a hobby. After visiting a friend in California, where he was first introduced to racing the small, fast cars, he bought his first RC truck two years ago.

“People in California love the RC cars, they spend crazy money for them and race them like real cars,” he said, explaining that he bought his first car after that trip in a Flatbush hobby shop.

But after crashing his first car, he bought the green one off eBay from a guy in California for $350.

“You have to be careful because of how fast it goes,” he said, explaining that his goes around 40 mph, but others can go up to 70. “You have to learn how to drive it, if it crashes it’s over. It’s like a real car crash if you hit a curb, wall or flip it over.”

During his free time, he works on his truck, changes the oil, gives it a new paintjob, replaces the rims to match the body.

“My family thinks I'm crazy to spend all this time with it,” he said. “Last night I spent five hours fixing it. My wife has to tell me to talk about something else during dinner.”

Dominguez said that his RC truck has a small internal combustion engine and uses a mixture of nitromethane, methanol, and oil. He also said that his RC truck operates like a real car with a two-stroke engine.

“This isn't for kids,” Dominguez said. “It's intense and complicated to work. And if it breaks, you have to know what you're doing.”

After the gas ran out of his truck, he decided it was time to sit with his wife, daughter and son on the bench.

"He spends a lot of time putting together and enjoys it, but I think he's crazy to spend all his free time on it," said Brian, Dominguez’s 13-year-old son. "He lets me drive it and its fun, but....”

"He's more into girls," Dominguez finishes his son’s sentence.

Watch the video above!