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The Rock Pile
This month I find myself conflicted with what I should focus on because despite our crazy economic times, the crawler market has continued to bound forward with more products, events, manufacturer evolvement. There is just too much to run through within my bi-monthly word count limit, so bear with this month’s potpourri of information provided all in short attention span format – crawl on.
What New? 1.9 Scale
When I at where we’re going in crawling, scale crawlers are definitely here to stay. Pro-Line has been busy with a ton of new scale 1.9” sized wheels and tires along with crawler products including our previously reviewed Ambush CGR with scale accessory packs. Tekin’s G1R are the perfect ESC for scale builds and the range of 35T-55T motors are so flexible enough they'll appear below and again in future builds to come.
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Axial SCX10 Micro Review & Upgrade
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One of the hottest crawler segments are Scalers; those scale looking crawlers that resemble the real 1:1 crawlers so this month is a quick micro review of Axial’s SCX10 and then have a little fun swapping bodies, just to show you the versatility of the kit.
Everyone is familiar with Axial’s AX10 crawler platform, but now they have taken that excellent drivetrain and transmission and slipped it into a new scale chassis with new scale dual rate shocks, new suspension geometry all rolling on Pro-Line 1.9” Flatiron tires. Sure the latest brushless whatever that does 50+MPH is cool, but scale brings scale looking reality back to RC all with a bunch of fun and far less broken parts.
I finished the stock build with a Tekin 35T motor, G1R ESC, a pair that is perfect for 1.9 Scale builds, and added a 6635HB Hitec servo for steering duties. Power was supplied by a standard MaxAmps 2S 6000Mh Lipo pack that netted a wonderful 1.5 hour runtime and Hitec Synthesized Spetra PCX TX and a Synth DX receiver provided positive glitch free control. The included old school truck body was painted up the with a simple blaze orange paint job for something different than the typical green and silver look. The net was a hassle free build.
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Technically the suspension geometry of the SCX10 is superior to the old AX10… if you believe all the forum rhetoric. Overall I was very impressed with better than scale crawling performance of the SCX10 with looks that demand a double take. The SCX10 is more than just an assemble and run chassis, it is an outstanding platform to create your own high detail scaler and is just begging for loads of scale options, which I hope time will permit for in a future article.
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Gripes were that I would have liked to see Axial stock motor/ESC/servo included, but I understand everything has it’s price. The SCX10 will surprise you when you think there is no way it will clear that obstacle, but it does – this rig is a capable crawler no doubt and competitive with 2.2 wheels. I attribute that performance to a fairly low CG, great tires, and the much discussed suspension geometry. The SCX10 is a great little all-ages kit that delivers scale realism and superior scaler performance that I just couldn’t put down during 6hrs of testing.
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Since the N1H1 virus was running amuck and Pro-Line had just sent me some of the new 1.9” Titus beadlocks, Chisel tires, and their new Recon Body, I couldn’t resist doing a MajorPandemic.com (yes it’s a real website) themed recon crawler. It also gave me a chance to use the high-rise body posts included in the SCX10 kit The paint job was a simple mask job with creative paint mixing and shading for a eerie camo look, then I scratched down the painted areas and back with blood red. The MajorPandemic.com Logo was just hand painted and then backed with black. Mounting was super simple; install the included extended SCX10 body posts and mount the body as normal. I have run into many instances where high-rise posts are needed on various RC build, so the extended posts were appreciated.
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Mounting up the new 1.9” Chisels to Pro-line’s completely new Titus beadlocks were simpler than any beadlock mounting I have ever experienced and the included tuner weights up the performance factor while crawling. I added a few Pro-Line scale accessories to the body to up the realism and the result was one bad looking Recon vehicle that is here to save the day when deadliest of diarrhea hits.
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COMPETITION COVERAGE
2009 AXIAL 2.2 MIDWEST CRAWLER CHALLENGE COVERAGE
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That Kevin Costner movie was right... build it and they WILL come, except this time it was one state over from Iowa in Nebraska and it had nothing to do with baseball, it was all about 10th scale 2.2 class rock crawling. This year's 2009 Axial 2.2
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EVENT SETUP
The event venue was planned at for the HobbyTown Hobby Plex with a massive retail showroom and even larger pitted indoor track arena as the stage for this year's Axial sponsored event. The $50 tickets sold out in less than 30 days. Sharp readers will notice the title included "indoor" which means we didn't simply stumble into a state park and throw down gate markers. Every course had to be hand made, set up, and torn down after the event. Of course there is the expense... over $4000 in course construction costs for wood, foam, and nearly 20 tons of rock and T-shirts, venue costs, prizes, and other misc event costs tipped the budget to over $6000. Through gracious cash sponsorship from our title sponsor Axial, and Platinum sponsors MaxAmps, DNA, Hitec, and Tekin, all the costs were covered. The result was the most sadistically designed set of man made and natural crawler courses ever conceived that pushed every competitor and rig to the very limit.
USRCCA COMP BASICS
USRCCA.com rules gave competitors one shot at clearing each of five courses with penalty points touch/reposition, roll-over, reverse, hitting gatemarkers or boundary markers all within the four minute time limit per course. All competitors had to do was assure their rigs were USRCCA rules compliant during a very brief tech check and then start lining up and working through the courses in any order of their choosing, but the courses were so hard not one competitor finished all five courses.
COURSES THAT PUT THE HURT ON CRAWLERS
You would think that the pictured courses were simple, however with pitfalls in all the wrong places composed of man-made obstacles including hollow landscaping stones, contoured foam boards sprayed with slick black truck bed liner, and natural river & limestone rock and logs, it was so hard most national competitors only cleared 1-2 gates per course.
The Axial oval track "double V" course was the toughest with no one finishing it and most only clearing the first gate. Axial's title course was composed of loose and fixed natural rough limestone with two 60+ degree ascents, two equally steep descents with table top with fixed logs with and rock overhangs as obstacles.
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The next hardest was the Tekin course featuring a concrete covered 60+ degree incline embedded with river stones followed by a foam/bedliner slide with rough limestone between each section and only let about a half dozen competitors pass. Nearly 95% only made it a foot up the incline before tumbling back down.
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DNA's 100% man made materials course started with a slick steep foam/bedliner incline that only a few ascended. Once at the top of the incline the man made sculpted concrete and foam-based boulders with extremely tight turns, high clearance breakovers, deep passes, and a near vertical 2’ drop off that needed to cleared to finish the course.
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Hitec's incredible tight course focused on traversing very tall Moab UT style deep valleys and crevices that required competitors to clear the first gates by wiggling through sideways. The next segments required near 90 degree turns and transitioning wide and deep chasms which only a handful passed.
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The only course that didn’t complete chew up and spit out competitors was the rock and forest Rubicon style MaxAmps course. Competitors either completed it quickly or struggled through every gate with log branches and rocks snagging on almost everyone's chassis.
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To put the difficultly of the five courses in perspective imagine if you had an 1/8th buggy course that no competitor, even the best in the world, could lap once... that's how hard and technical these courses were and as far as us crawlers are concerned it was almost perfect.
A WHOLE DAY OF FUN
The event started in the early 6AM dawn and the finals course run extended competition well until after 10:30PM, but there were no regrets and only smiling faces even on those that didn't place well.
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Axial's own Brad Dumont was a top ten competitor with his Bender Customs Axial Chassis with Axial Sponsored Austin Dunn not far behind.
A COMPETITION ENVIRONMENT UNLIKE ANY OTHER
With very few competitors running near stock rigs, I heard over and over that everyone enjoyed the limitless variations on Axial and other crawlers. Some featured more typical bodied stock designs, other were bodiless designs featuring custom and hand made tube style chassis and other variations.
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No elbowing off the drivers stands, no drivers yelling at other drivers for nudging them... it was just a bunch of people who loved crawling, wanted to hang out and help each other. I saw parts being given from one competitor to another, competitors who did clear a gates were telling other competitors what to watch out for. As we watched the top drivers in the
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Custom ruled the Pro Class, but the Amateur top placements were dominated by near stock ARTR Axial rigs that with only a little tuning put their drivers in top placement. A cornfield in
YOUR TURN
Get involved and take a look at the local competitions in your area on RCCrawler.com > Competitions. I can guarantee with nearly every state now with local crawler groups, you and your favorite crawler kit will be in a comp in no time. See you on the rocks…
{NOTE TO ARTIST – LET THESE RIP IN A DOUBLE “MICRO” FILMSTRIP FORMAT ALL ARE IMPORTANT TO PAINT THE PICTURE OF WHAT HAPPENED – IMG1.JPG – IMG19.JPG}
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