MadAnt

That seems like epic fun! I wish we had something like that in my part of the world.

Almost four weeks ago I have paid for a Tamiya club subscription and despite my multiple attempts to reach @netsmithUK or an admin nothing has happened other than one reply from acprc, and I'm still waiting. So far I still don't have access to the features I paid for and if it's not going to happen I don't have much time left to reverse the charge. So, is something serious going on with NetSmith? Netsmith has not been active for a good while, since May 15th, that might be a clue that something clould be going on. Is it sickness? Family matters? Aliens from space? I don't need the details, just anything to work with so I know if I need to be more patient. Tamiya Club is the only form of communication I have for this situation and I do not use those other social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, so I might be in the dark here.

Just upgrading your batteries will make a noticeable difference. Go LiPo and and the stock motors will not only be quicker, but the wires will run cooler. Yes that's true and I have never melted a Tamiya connector on 2s LiPo with semi-mild motors.

Had a little run with the more extreme Blackfoot Xtreme today, but I do have bad news. The top speed is definitely fast enough for me with the 17 turn Team Orion Method motor and higher gearing, but it does get hot. The grass is a bit much for it, so I might gear it down in the future or maybe try one of those fan cooled 550 size motors. The handling was fine and due to the understeer from most of the weight being in the rear, it was quite hard to traction roll. I did get it to tumble after hitting the grass at high speed and broke the steering knuckle. The problem I see is that the ball-stud for the tie rod only threads in halfway through the hole and due to its design, a good amount of leverage can break the plastic. This is something I addressed on the WR-01 Bigfoot Dagger by threading a screw completely through and putting a ball on top, I'll put a photo below. Anyway that's not really the bad news. When I went to take a photo of the truck, I dropped my phone and broke the screen. If getting that fixed costs too much I'll try to replace it myself. Anyway, again, I might try aluminum steering knuckles or do the thing I did for the Bigfoot Dagger, I don't know yet. I have spare parts, so I can get this fixed in a jiffy and be back up and running for now.

I'm interested in seeing the stuff people come up with. Also, is bolting my 302 Windsor V8 powered Bronco to the bottom of a Grasshopper legal for the open class?

Who remembers $120 Nimh race packs with only a 2000Mah capacity? 🤣 Times have changed, I buy LiPo batteries now because they last longer and the prices have gotten better.

Sorry to far for me, north jersey is my limit.

Oof! People get upset over Freestyle!? I have designed the Freestyle rules for the casuals. Almost any 10th scale monster truck is allowed because I just want people to have fun. For the judging three random people will be chosen and will be given sheets of numbers 1-10 to pick from when scoring. The maximum score a driver can get is 30, they have 90 seconds to impress the judges as much as possible. If someone gets upset over something that is has relaxed rules and that everyone else is enjoying, then they can pound sand and go do something else.😂

I know Tamiya just keeps milking their products by coming out with different color editions, but... It just looks so good.

The rough rider scheme just fits the BBX so well. Very nice!

Not today, but yesterday I took my modified WT-01 Blackfoot Xtreme out for a little bit. This is the first and only Blackfoot I own. I have a Monster Beetle, but that does not count unless I change some stuff. Also, yes, I have the yellow wheels for it, I just took some white wheels and painted them red.

Looks pretty good in copper. Good job!

If I add the Casual class which would give us a total of three race classes, that should give something for everybody to enjoy. To simplify things, I have modified the rules to combine sport and pro classes into one class called "Stage 3 and Modern" which should be easy to regulate as long as we make the track the equalizer for the trucks. Time is limited, so I will need to figure out how to squeeze three race classes plus a freestyle in. I might see if I can do "Casual" and "Freestyle" one day and "Stage 2 Retro" and "Stage 3 and Modern" on another day, or some sort of combination. This is really starting to look like some work, and I'm not even racing until I can get things rolling for a bit.

For two of the classes 3d printed parts are not allowed.😢 I have an idea for how to build a Hornet or Grasshopper for high speed on road use. In the past I've turned a grasshopper into an on-road car, that part is not hard. I have an idea of what I can do for gearing and mounting a different Tamiya body is not a big issue. I even have a set of belted tires. I just don't want buy another Hornet or Grasshopper and then track down some old fast brushed motors that are no longer in production, or purchase a brushless system for this one time use along with other things that need to be bought. Oh well.

Ok I want too, but yet I don't want too. I have enough Hornets and Grasshoppers right now and I don't want to modify them anymore.

GF-02, Monster Beetle/Blackfoot, that 6x6 thing everyone likes, Clodbuster or a low geared stadium truck platform or anything with big enough tires and low gearing are what I suggest. I know what everyones idea of what grass is, is different, I'm assuming the worst case for a normal cut lawn. Over here we mostly have thick grass and even with a low cut, it's too thick for buggies.

Standard Futaba servo is around 13 or so bucks now. For an ORV chassis buggy or truck you can get something good in the $20 usd range. I've bought a few of the Rage high torque metal gear servos, they work pretty good for the light trucks. Even the Hexfly metal gear servos from Redcat seem to be good value. If all you need is metal gears and maybe 110 oz-in of torque spending 45-50-60 dollars on a servo is a waste for the casual runner.

The Blackfoot Xtreme is fully operational and looking pretty good. I just had a chance to run it and so far so good, except for a loose wheel nut. Traction is not so great on asphalt, but that is expected due to the pin spikes on the tires. Anyway, I have some photos of the setup. This was the look I was going for and JConcepts had the perfect lexan body for the job. The longer wheelbase, larger wheel arches and that visor and racer back on this Ford F series body seem to be more well suited for the "Xtreme" name while wearing the Blackfoot Xtreme graphics from MCI. The benefits of having a lexan body over a hard plastic ABS or styrene body shell is less weight and flexibility and for the more extreme use case, that makes a difference. Now underneath the shell is a truck more capable than what Tamiya was calling "Xtreme". No tiny fiction shocks here. Instead there are larger shocks that actually do some good work. Up front are a pair of red shocks from a vintage Hotshot II/Super Sabre with 30wt oil mounted onto a repaired shock tower with new mounting positions to accommodate the longer shocks. In the rear are Traxxas long shocks with soft springs that provide long travel and seem to give a stable ride so far. In my mind, red wheels seem to fit the theme better than yellow, so I painted a set of GF-02 wheels in bright red. The GF-02 wheels are the same style, but in white and can be purchased as a set of four for cheap. To provide the traction is a set of Traxxas chevron style Sledgehammer tires, which look very similar to the chevron pin spike tires from Tamiya. So now the tuning and experiments can begin. There are maybe a few motors I would like to try out and find the sweet spot for this truck, so stay tuned.

Sweet! Anyway, I've been talking to some people that have been showing some interest, but the problem is that there are two kinds of racers, race snobs and casuals. If I add a "casual" class for off the shelf trucks that just need a few simple changes to compete, that would attract a friendlier crowd of people in theory. I think we might take the "mini golf" approach for track design, which would make the laps longer, but more fun with obstacles and whatnot. It will be kind of like that 2wd/tuff truck class, but with two lanes. I'm not a racer, but that sounds like fun to me. Also, I probably won't be racing myself until things get going good for a bit and making sure everything can ran smoothly.

I wonder if Retro-Brite works too on RC plastics? I have a set of new White clod wheels that have never seen the sun light. They were never a pure white but don't seem to be yellow also.

Been a little busy, but some things are slowly getting done. I still need to do some testing with the current shock setup, maybe I might try a few different motors as well. Anyway here is a little teaser photo.

I'm using 2.2 buggy wheels for the kyosho Scorpion.

@netsmithUK are you alright? You have not been on much.

80% off almost everything sale! Horizon is going out of business! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Oh look! A flying pig!

I would love to go, but that is way too far away for me and the few other people near my area who have shown some interest. That is why we are trying to get things going in northern NJ. I have the Rules for racing and freestyle all written, but I'm still making changes to simplify things to attract a good audience. The local hobby store owner(sorry I won't give out names right now, it's for privacy reasons) has been doing some testing on his track, and it seems more thought needs to go into the track layout, especially for freestyle due to the low ceiling, so that means smaller jumps. There are some people interested, but it seems the rules need to be different than the traditional rules due to people with non solid axle independent suspension trucks not wanting to be alienated. The good news is, those with independent suspension trucks can participate in Freestyle, we would regulate the batteries and tires for all trucks, so it should be fine for the casuals. The bad news is we can't mix them into racing and keep everything balanced. So possibly a separate class needs to be made, but that might be good thing if that can hook people in. Sorry for all the text, lol. But I think this whole thing might take months to get started. If your club has rule sets or advice on how to get these things going, I would appreciate it, because I think it would be huge fun.