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What this? - FTX Outback 2.0 with a Tamiya Land Cruiser Body Why for? - bought it for parts, had enough spares to make another rig Here it is on the night I bought it, at the BMR Revival 2023: It was the Land Rover body that attracted me to the pit table with the For Sale sign on it. Firstly because you can't really miss the metallic lime green paint, and secondly because it was a scale Land Rover, and I thought for a brief moment that I might get a bargain on a CC02. Alas, it was a used-and-abused FTX Outback 2.0 instead. While the body is less detailed than the Tamiya one, the FTX chassis is probably better on the trails, although in standard trim it has a 380 motor and lacks the grunt needed for proper crawling. But these FTX rigs are not to be sniffed at, for the price - they're a good introduction to the crawling world, they don't look half bad, and this one (which I believe was originally sold as a rolling chassis with a clear body) introduces newbies to the joys of making an idea a reality. Although this lime green effort should probably have remained an idea... OK, let's delve into just what I got for my money... It came with 2 sets of soft-ish scale-ish crawler tyres of the Class-1 friendly 104mm variety. The other set are unmounted and have a slightly less aggressive tread. Probably not really worth that much but it's always handy having Class 1 tyres around, plus I've got lots of cheap plastic crawler wheels that have come included in various crawler kits over the years. It came with the ubiquitous 25Kg servo, a genuine 1080 ESC and a 540 transmission mounted on a 3D-printed centre plate, a 2200mAh 3S LiPo, and a battery tray and electronicals tray made from FR4 sheet, the 3D printed roof box you see on the lid, plus a 3D printed interior (bench seat and dashboard) that hasn't been fitted. TBH it was almost worth the price I paid for the electrical stuff, the rest of it was a bonus. I mostly wrote off the value of the chassis, as it looks like it's had some hard use. The seller says he didn't use it much, but if that's true he must have bought it used, because it had two bent axle shafts, and I noticed after I started tearing into it that the lower link mount on one of the shocks has been glued back on with epoxy (to be fair, it seems to be holding up just fine). Here's how it looked once I had thrown a spare receiver in it ready for a blast around the pits after the racing was over during Revival. Even with the bent axles, it drove just fine. There was a judder in the transmission somewhere, maybe a bent or poorly-made spur, but that would be a problem for another day. I spent the evening embarrassing some bigger and more expensive rigs up and over the mound behind the backed curve, before the call of the bevie persuaded me to put the transmitter down for the night and pick up the plastic pint glass instead.

I got one of these for my daughter almost two years ago, but she hasn't really driven it that much. With the winter looming and less opportunity to do stuff outdoors, I figured now is the time to get back to some indoor RC training, and what better way to show her how it's done than getting my own 1:18 crawler to lead the way? I considered one of the bigger brands - the new TRX-M came out a few days after I bought this and it looks seriously good - but at more than double the price, it was a bit out of budget for an impulse purchase. Plus, I figured it would be better to show her what can be done with the same truck, so there can't be any "but my truck can't do it" type arguments. I didn't entirely like the black wheels on the LC90 variant that I got for my daughter, so instead I bought the Cub version, which comes with a sort of IH Scout body sort of thing, if you squint, with built-in lights and plastic parts and grey wheels. And then I bought another LC90 bodyset, because I really, really like that Toyota body. It might not be a perfect replica, but the Cub body is cute, too. It's a really nice colour and the light buckets are a neat touch. It's just a shame about the stick-on windows. More on that in a later update.