Yes. I can build it myself, and I intend to significantly rework whatever I get.

There are plenty of guides for making entry level bots, and none of the stuff in there worries me much. I'm confident I can cut up a few cordless drills and wire in an off the shelf controller. In part I was curious if I could pick up a second hand bot for less than I could build one for. I'm not after top end, just the cast offs from someone else who has been here and gone through this process before.

But it's also I simply don't know what is involved - and therefore what I want from the robot - until I've done it.

So the plan is something along the lines of:

Get an 'out of the box' solution that I know works.
Enter a match, see what happens.
Then take it apart and rework it to my own design.
Enter some more matches, and test it thoroughly.
Then sit down and get stuck into building the heavy to compete in robot wars and get my ass handed to me.
...then sit down and get stuck into reworking that...etc, etc, etc.

But in the same way as it seems sensible not to skip straight to the 'build a heavy' stage, I think before I try and compete with my robot I want to start with something I know works and learn what is involved in the competition.

I hope that makes some sense...