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OK, not sure what to call this project yet as I'm still jamming some ideas down, but I've already started the build so I thought I'd throw out my thoughts so far.

The story begins back at the end of the summer, when my wife decided to continue in a temp job that was supposed to have finished a while back.  At the time she had a bit more spare money than usual, so I raised the idea of more expensive Christmas presents (we normally don't spend a lot).  My plan had been to give her a list of new kits, and have her choose one to buy, so I wouldn't know what I was getting until I got it.  Well, she didn't really go with that plan, so I decided to go ahead and buy myself the MTX-1 and put it away until Christmas time.

The chassis seems to have been well-received, and then just as quickly forgotten.  I'm not sure UK / Europe have officially got an MST importer, since I couldn't find it anywhere locally and had to source from abroad.  That might explain why there aren't so many of them around.

Also the choice of colours and bodies seemed odd to me.  I've raised this before, but:

  1. Who makes a monster truck out of a Toyota stadium truck?  It just seems odd
  2. Lots of yellow parts in the Toyota body model, which is restrictive when considering a custom livery
  3. Chevy body model comes with more forgiving white parts, but the body is pre-painted, also restrictive when considering a custom livery

In the end I went with the Toyota model (officially the TH-1 model), and a '93 Ford body from JConcepts, with the Toyota body planned to be consigned to the parts bin for some other project, whenever I get around to it.

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By Boxing Day, I had all the bits I needed to start the build.  JConcepts body, 4000KV brushless combo from Turnigy, 20Kg servo and a FlySky receiver.

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I wanted to do an unboxing back when the kit first arrived, but it was all so tightly packed I figured I'd never get it in again, so I left it until Boxing Day.  It's very tight, with the tyres pre-mounted on the wheels (but not glued) and some other parts inside the body, the rest packaged in around it.  The box is attractive and sturdy but MST seem to have gone the Tamiya route with generic box and stick-on label.

MST's instructions are generally very clear and easy to follow, perhaps as close to Tamiya as it's possible to get, although MST builders must come to terms with some alternate names for some components, which can be a little, er, confusing:

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First step in the instructions is the transmission.  This is mostly straightforward and I'm guessing is similar to the CMX (the CFX-W, which I built last year, has a front-mounted transmission with a central transfer case so it's a bit different, although it probably shares some metal gear parts).  Internal gears are all metal and fit well without any filing.  There's no slipper clutch, but there is a cush drive just like a chain-driven motorcycle has - these blue rubber blocks fit between spur and drive plate, and absorb some drivetrain shock from hard landings.  I don't know if the CMX has this, and I'm not sure how well it will work with high power systems or big wheel conversions.  This might just be a gimmick, and if so, might make it hard to adjust the gearing later.

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The drive plate uses a standard drive pin to engage on the shaft, so in theory, any spur that has a drive pin fitting would work, but it would need to fit the shaft and might need some spacers or bushes for the screw to fit against.

Talking of screws - the spur gear installation screw isn't very long and doesn't feel like it bites hard when tightened (it goes from loose to rock-solid in a fraction of a turn), so some threadlock might be necessary to stop the spur gear (and its many small, easily-flung parts) from escaping.

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Talking again of screws - the spur gear completely covers the motor screw, so it's not possible to tighten the motor into place with the spur installed.  With a regular spur this might be OK, as they tend to have holes in them, but the cush drive spur is solid.

This means installing the motor with a loose top screw, setting the pinion mesh, tightening the bottom screw, removing the spur (and its drive plate and cush rubbers, since they always want to come off with it, and the drive pin, because that refuses to stay on the shaft if nothing else is there to keep it company), tightening the top screw, reinstalling the spur (and associated parts) and checking the mesh, then repeating as necessary.  This is something of a faff, especially given the complexity of the cush drive, although a slipper installation would be much, much worse.  It seems utterly bizarre, as this could easily be fixed by having the offset screw slots positioned the other way around.

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The finished transmission is very compact, however, and it even comes with a spur gear cover, which is useful if running in rough stones or underwater, and the whole assembly fits on the attractively-moulded centre plate at a jaunty angle, like a fashionista's beret

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25 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

 

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Did it come with a change of underwear?

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4 minutes ago, Frog Jumper said:

Did it come with a change of underwear?

I've been trying to come up with a name for the project, right now I'm wondering if "Prairie Dog" might be appropriate

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13 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

I've been trying to come up with a name for the project, right now I'm wondering if "Prairie Dog" might be appropriate

Absolutely!

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20 minutes ago, Frog Jumper said:

Did it come with a change of underwear?

 

15 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

I've been trying to come up with a name for the project, right now I'm wondering if "Prairie Dog" might be appropriate

Not 'Skid Mark' then ;)

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1 hour ago, Mad Ax said:

OK, not sure what to call this project yet as I'm still jamming some ideas down, but I've already started the build so I thought I'd throw out my thoughts so far.

The story begins back at the end of the summer, when my wife decided to continue in a temp job that was supposed to have finished a while back.  At the time she had a bit more spare money than usual, so I raised the idea of more expensive Christmas presents (we normally don't spend a lot).  My plan had been to give her a list of new kits, and have her choose one to buy, so I wouldn't know what I was getting until I got it.  Well, she didn't really go with that plan, so I decided to go ahead and buy myself the MTX-1 and put it away until Christmas time.

The chassis seems to have been well-received, and then just as quickly forgotten.  I'm not sure UK / Europe have officially got an MST importer, since I couldn't find it anywhere locally and had to source from abroad.  That might explain why there aren't so many of them around.

Also the choice of colours and bodies seemed odd to me.  I've raised this before, but:

  1. Who makes a monster truck out of a Toyota stadium truck?  It just seems odd
  2. Lots of yellow parts in the Toyota body model, which is restrictive when considering a custom livery
  3. Chevy body model comes with more forgiving white parts, but the body is pre-painted, also restrictive when considering a custom livery

In the end I went with the Toyota model (officially the TH-1 model), and a '93 Ford body from JConcepts, with the Toyota body planned to be consigned to the parts bin for some other project, whenever I get around to it.

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Cool kit !!

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The next step after the transmission assembly is the suspension links, which I didn't photograph because it was basically boring.  The links are made from long rod-ends with plastic balls and hollow plastic shafts with attractive moulding, fitted together with 25mm threaded shafts.  They feel fairly sturdy when assembled.  The MTX-1 is a mostly plastic truck with 2.2 wheels and tyres and is only designed for 2S power, so it's not supposed to be that heavy or that fast.

While we're at it, let's talk about those tyres.  I'll have some pics later, but basically they're a good-looking 2.2 affair, slightly bigger than Tamiya's ubiquitous chevron-and-spike tyre as seen on the Monster Beetle et al, and slightly smaller (at a guess) than HPI's high-walled Wheelie King tyres.  They have nice moulded details around the balloon walls and they're very soft.  They're not particularly sticky, which is probably a good thing as we don't want the truck tipping over on hard surfaces, but the sidewalls and treads deform easily under moderate thumb pressure.  I'll have to wait and see how this looks when the finished truck is sitting on a hard surface with a full compliment of electrics and battery.  They don't come with any foams, perhaps they'll need them if we're going to jump the truck later.

The body is another point worth highlighting here with a promise of more photos later.  As I mentioned earlier, it's a Toyota Prerunner trophy truck body, and before I took it out the box I had thought it was a re-pop of the Tamiya Prerunner as found on the TA02T (I think MST have used Tamiya bodies for other releases) - but as I pulled it out of the box I realised this one is much chunkier.  The arches are widely flared and it has a reassuring rigidity to it.  Suddenly I wasn't actually sure if I wanted to throw thing one in the parts bin, or use it for this project.

It might actually make a really nice stadium truck body for something, but it's so nice I don't want to throw it over a basic TA02T and call it done.  It's too small for a Slash or a 1:10 buggy conversion.  So just maybe it will get a custom paint job, something to pick out those yellow details on the chassis, meaning the '93 Ford body can be kept back for something else (I've already got an idea that needs an older Ford body).  I'll get some side-by-side photos of the unpainted TH-1 with the unpainted Desert Fielder (which is a Prerunner with different stickers) sometime this week.

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Having looked at some photos of the Tamiya Prerunner and Desert Fielder, I'm not 100% sure that they aren't in fact the same.  I'll try to compare them both later this week if I can find my unpainted Desert Fielder body.

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17 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

Having looked at some photos of the Tamiya Prerunner and Desert Fielder, I'm not 100% sure that they aren't in fact the same.  I'll try to compare them both later this week if I can find my unpainted Desert Fielder body.

I'm sure they are the same body

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Quick update - haven't taken a lot of pics but I'm really enjoying the build when I can, and so far I'm thoroughly in love with the truck.

First up - the chassis.  Apologies for the poor pics, it was soggy and dark and I didn't want to brave the weather to go up to the studio, so I took these on the kitchen worktop.  In the words of Rhod Gilbert, my kitchen bulb has the power of a millyun canduls but also sides square in the middle of the ceiling so no matter where I go, I'm always casting a shadow over the worktops.  The automatic white balance doesn't seem to know what to make of it.  Kettle is on if anyone fancies a mince pie flavour coffee.

The chassis is front-to-rear symmetrical and as far as I can tell, the left and right chassis halves are identical.  Standard configuration is with wheelie bar and battery at the back, and electronics up front.  There's no reason you couldn't build it with the battery at the front to reduce wheelying, although you'd have to make some crossbars or cut up the front subframe, because the battery door uses one of the front subframe mounts.

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It's a lot narrower and more compact than the SMT-10, which is probably the closest kit-built monster truck in class right now.  It may lack some of the SMT's superb realism but makes up for it with a sense of rugged rigidity that the Axial can't seem to match out of the box.

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There are 23 long-threaded screws to secure each chassis half.  I don't usually use powered screwdrivers for kit assembly (especially machine threads into plastic) but my dad's old friend Arthur Wrighthouse has put me on his Christmas Card list this year, and it probably won't be long before I invest in a better powered driver and some decent hex bits to save the pain in my fingers and wrists.

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On the subject of machine screws - while assembling one particular step, I found the 10mm round-head screws had a slightly smaller hex than all the other round-head screws in the kit (despite looking otherwise identical).  My HPI 2.0mm driver wouldn't fit, so I had to use my slightly more worn Tamiya hex driver from the blue tool set.

I opted not to dye any of the yellow parts before building because I'm going to use yellow details in my livery.  That said, the sway bar brackets come from the shock parts tree so they're yellow, but they fit under the chassis, away from the other yellow bits, where they might look a bit toy-ish.

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The sway-bar links are also from the shock parts tree, so they too are yellow, and the ball joint comes out of the vacuum screw pack with some cutting fluid or possibly an anti-corrosion coating still on it, so if you don't watch the ball joint first you'll smoosh grime into the intentionally rough surface on the link.  IMO it doesn't make sense to wash the ball joint before fitting because the only thing I've got that would get through that sort of sticky grease and not leave the part sticky with some other kind of residue afterwards is washing up liquid, which is not really good for steel, and likely to encourage corrosion on the ball joint and in the thread.  In other words, it's a lot of cleaning for a part that ideally should have been better cleaning before it's packaged.

This is really not a big deal, and would have gone entirely unnoticed if the links were grey or black.

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The good news is that you get one link and one sway bar bracket per shock tree, and you need 4 in total for the entire truck, but the kit version of the truck has 8 shocks, so there are 4 spare links and brackets that I can dye and fit later, if it really bothers me.

On the down side, the material is a bit harder than the lovely soft, smooth blue parts from a Super Clod Bluster kit, so they may possibly not take the Rit dye as well as the Tamiya parts, or survive the dying process so well.  I'll feed back if I ever bother with this.

Next chapter - axles, where I discuss the quality of supplied parts, smoothness of the gears, ease of assembly, and provide a comparison to the CFX-W portal axles.  But that will happen another day, because my daughter is getting board and wants her fingernails painted with the fingernail paint stuff that her grandparents got her for Christmas.

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Here is mine!!

15t reedy 3pole 540 /quicrun 1060

To me some screw holes confusing, its my 3rd kit after Blitz ESE and Associated T5.

Barış ☮️

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Been a bit of a while since the last updates - I got some RC time in last week but have only just had time to get the photos off the camera.

Apologies for the bad lighting in this one - had limited space and time, child was watching TV with the lights down and the flash wasn't quite up to the job :p 

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Axles fitted and moving nicely.  I made an error earlier in that I screwed my upper links to the outside of the frame, not the inside, took me about 15 seconds to wonder why my axle wouldn't line up properly :faceplam: 

I mentioned the axles in the last update.  I had assumed the MTX-1 would get CFX-W axles without portals, but in fact they're a completely different axle altogether.  The CFX-W has a screw-on diff cover, these are a moulded diff cover and are a good deal narrower.  Also worth noting, the CFX-W has steering hubs at both ends (so you can adjust rear toe angle) and adjustable caster, so you can rotate the axle for a nicer propshaft angle without messing up the caster angle.  But these axles don't have that - the rear axle comes with a steering lockout and 0 degree toe and there's no adjustable caster.  That's not really a problem since you wouldn't usually play with rear toe angle on a solid axle monster truck, unless you were specifically aiming for stability off the starting block at the cost of control over bumps. (I think.  I'm guessing rear toe would cause bump steer as soon as the axle starts articulating). 

I'm guessing these axles are the same as those from the CMX or CFX, except with a wider C-hub attachment similar to that on the CFX-W (for portal compatibility) but without the crazy CFX-W camber.  The whole thing is really quite surprising, since I'd have expected more of a parts-bin special, but what we get is something specific to this truck.  At a guess I'd even say you could put CFX-W portals on here if you wanted to, although you'd need another non-portal steering hub parts tree for the rear.

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I put the shocks together on Monday afternoon.  There are 8 of them, so it took a while.  They're an interesting design - like a lot of modern crawler shocks, they have no reservoir and rely on being build with the right amount of air in the oil to allow them to compress.  That means filling them with the piston fully compressed, to a depth of 36mm.  Right.  Exactly how you're supposed to measure the depth with the piston installed is anyone's guess.  Conveniently there are some moulding details around the shock tops which (according to the instructions) look like they kinda line up with the depth, but the detail is on the outside.  I set up my high-power halogen lamps (which I use for warming the paint bench) to shine on the back of the shocks so I could see the shadow of the mouldings and tried to fill them that way, but even then my filling was a bit vague.  The included #10 mineral oil makes a very concave meniscus on the inside of the plastic shock, making it even harder to read exactly where the top of the oil is.

This was compounded by the fact that the kit includes a very stingy amount of oil.  In fact it includes the exact same tiny oil bottle as my CFX-W, which had 4 small-bore crawler shocks, not 8 standard-bore monster truck shocks.  I ran out of included oil around shock 6, managed to finish shock 6 and start shock 7, with leftover oil from the CFX-W, and then had to resort to an unlabelled bottle that probably came from the Gmade BOM and kinda looked more or less like the same stuff, so in it went for shocks 7 and 8.  So possibly I have 8 mismatched shocks, 2 of them because they have different oil in and the other 6 because I can't be totally sure how much oil is in them anyway.  Probably the best way to do this is to a) start again with a larger quantity of known oil, and 2) take the old oil out with a syringe first so I can measure a common amount to refill each shock.

On a more positive note, the shocks come with a pair of nice blue o-rings for sealing up the bottom, and also a plastic rod guide to, well, guide the rod.  I assembled them with Associated green slime.  I took no photos of this stage because, well, shock oil.

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The included springs are long and springy, the collars fit well and the finished product looks and feels like a shock.  Everything is as smooth as expected from a plastic shock.

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Later that evening I was supposed to be in my studio being creative, but I was tired and couldn't be bothered, so I screwed the shocks on and finished the job.  I was supposed to take pictures but I couldn't be bothered to do that either, I'll take some proper outdoors pics if all the stars align and I get daylight, clear skies, a dry garden and free time at the same precise moment.

The sway bars are fairly stiff - there's not a lot of static articulation.  I'll have to wait and see how well it goes over bumpy terrain, but at least the torque twist should be well-tamed.  Otherwise the springs move nicely.  I've seen a vid of the MTX-1 with 1 spring on each corner (the other shock is just acting as a damper) which might be better depending on the running surface.  As I mentioned earlier the tyres are very soft - as in, they are flexible - but they don't collapse under the weight of an assembled truck, which is nice.  Some foams might be useful for handling.

The MTX-1 comes with a waterproof receiver box.  I was a bit annoyed by this, since the CFX-W didn't come with a waterproof receiver box.  Then I tried to put my FlySky receiver in it, and realised that, actually the CFX-w probably did come with a waterproof receiver box, it probably came with the same one the MTX-1 comes with, and is about the size of something that is too small to fit a FlySky receiver in.  Since this truck isn't going to be run underwater (unlike my CFX-W which gets driven in all weather conditions from Mild to Biblical) I just taped the receiver to the front deck.

Power is provided by a Turnigy TrackStar 4000Kv combo which can run up to 3S, just in case I wake up one morning and realise I've turned into Kevin Talbot.  It fits well enough between the chassis frames (as you'll find out once I've stopped being lazy and started taking pictures) but seems to have been pre-configured from the factory in Anti-Kevin Talbot mode, since its punch curve is even lazier than my photo hand.  I took it out in the garden for a quick test-run but it was too lazy even for some wheelies (to be fair the 2S LiPo was just out of storage so it may have gone into dont-explode-the-lipo mode).  I'll set it up properly with the Turnigy programmer box at some point before the next ice age and give it a proper run.

I did had some fun and games with the body posts but then chose to abort because I wasn't sure what body I was going to use.  I have now decided, so I get to have more fun and games with the body posts later.  I'll take photos when I do, so you can see what the fuss is about.

In the subject of the body - the TH-1 Toyota Prerunner replica is a thing of beauty, and it is quite wide.  I still haven't found the Tamiya Toyota body for comparison, but I'm sure it's wider.  The MTX-1 has a fairly narrow stance - it's nice, it's like it's very comfortable with its size, and doesn't need to pretend that it's any bigger than it is - and the Toyota nicely covers the wheels.  On the other hand, the body is a good deal wider than my other monster trucks, which are all JConcepts Fords, so it would look a bit out of place on the shelf.  I already had a spare JConcepts Ford body especially for this project, so that's going to go on the MTX-1, and I've had an utterly brilliant idea of what to do with the TH-1 body, also using some other parts I have, forcing a direction change on something that's been bothering me for a long time and getting some other projects out of some unpleasant ruts.

So - there you have it.  Or, if you're just here for the pictures, there you don't have it.  Pics to follow when the sun comes out (which according to all available data will be sometime in 2023).

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Hope it all comes together to perform as you would like after the shock issues.

I must admit to looking forward to seeing some photos of the truck up against your existing monsters to get a feel for that body / wheel relationship. Just out of curiosity - I can’t see me getting one (though I have the wheels and tyres for my CR-01).

We had sun today :D.

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@Badcrumble is right, we did get a bit of sun yesterday, although I didn't have time for any outdoor pics (down my way the sun was out in the morning while I was failing to make progress with the F150 tow truck, by the time I'd turned my attention to the MTX-1 it was afternoon and cloudy again).

I did get the Ford body mounted (TH-1 body is still untrimmed and I still haven't found my Tamiya Prerunnerbody) - plus I made an interesting discovery about the wheels and tyres.  Pics and more description to follow later.

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Righto, finally getting around to posting these pics :) 

Here's the finished chassis, in all its washed-out, overexposed glory.

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My receiver wouldn't fit in the waterproof box, in fact with the plugs in it barely fits across the chassis.  It seemed like there was a lot of space on the radio tray, but it's quite compact in there.  I had to pull the receiver out to plug out the ESC so I could plug it into the program box.

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Rear-mounted battery tray is neat.  I need to add some foam to stop the battery rattling around (some foam is included).  The simple twist-to-release battery door is a really nice touch, potentially nicer than the current trend for hook-and-loop straps and way better than anything with a body pin.

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The body posts are neat, but the implementation is flawed.  I will explain.

I like the current trend for adjusting the posts down into the body, instead of having a fixed-length body post that you have to snip off.  If you want to run a taller body after snipping the posts, you have to buy new posts.  With this modern trend, you have some adjustment on the post into the chassis.  The supplied posts are very long (so long that on the setting for a pickup body they do need to be snipped because they foul on the battery tray), you also get a set of post extensions and cross-braces so running something like a Gravedigger body (because apparently what the world wants right now is more gravediggers - I'll respectfully refrain from making a social comment about that) would be possible.

But here's where they're flawed.  To set the post height, you have to screw a little screw into this little central hole.

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The whole is blind, i.e. it's closed on the back.  So you can't look through the hole to see that you've got your post lined up properly.  You have to sort of guess.  My first guess was wrong.

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I did eventually figure out how to do it - use a small hex driver (I used the smallest one from my Tamiya driver set) and push it through until it touches the post, then push the post until you feel the hole with the driver.  But you have to push quite hard because even the smallest driver is a tight fit.

I went with this JConcepts '93 Ford body.  It's one of their earlier renditions (I think they have 3 other variations on the '93 Ford) because it's got a 10.5" wheelbase and comes with a visor and racerback, for if I fancy that kind of thing when I come to paint.

https://www.jconcepts.net/shop/1993-ford-f250-monster-truck-body

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I went with the Ford firstly because all my other monster trucks have JConcepts Ford bodies, so I could keep this one in the family, but also because the TH-1 body is a lot wider than the JConcepts bodies, which would make the scale look off when this one is on the shelf next to my other monsters.  I still haven't decided on a livery yet, but it will incorporate some yellow to set off the yellow shocks and wheels.

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The body fits really well, although the rear bumper detail interferes with the wheelie bar so I can't get it any lower unless I chop into it.  I'll probably paint it like this for now and see how it looks, and maybe cut the bumper off later, or cut some slots into it, as I like my monster bodies mounted low and sleek.

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I turned up the punch and the timing on the TrackStar ESC, but I'm a little disappointed with it.  I've had a few other TrackStars and found them easy to drive and fast enough, but this one feels sluggish and clumsy.  Getting reverse is awkward, it doesn't want to reverse until the truck has come to a full stop and then sat there for a few seconds.  Since I have to do several 3-point turns when bashing in my garden, this makes for a slow and disjointed bash.  Same going forwards again - I can't just slam it forwards and expect it to go.  This is all good for the drivetrain but not so good for getting on with the bash, I found it frustrating.

I couldn't get the truck to wheelie much, either.  Not don't get me wrong - wheelying on a timed lap would slow me down, and it's nice to know the truck won't flip on the merest breath of throttle like my KBF does, but it feels like the motor lacks some punch.  I have to try it with a fully-charged pack to see if that improves it.  I think the tyres need gluing also, which won't be helping the launch.  They come fitted to the wheels (better for tight packaging) but not glued.  I don't want to glue them until I've decided on foams.

No foams are included and (as you'll see in another thread that I'll start later), the wheels aren't actually 2.2 - they're smaller.  So I don't know if there's any off the shelf foam that would fit.  I don't know if there's a material I can buy to make foams from.  I've never thought about it before.  I can hear the air whistling out of the wheels every time the truck hits a bump.  They'd possibly work well if the hole was sealed.  In the vid below, kindly shared to me by @hayabusa95, you can hear the wheels whistling when the truck hits a ramp.  It's quite funny in slow-mo.  The deformation in the tyres on landing is really obvious in the vid, but I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing (after all, it's absorbing shock away from the chassis).

 

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The suspension feels pretty stiff (indeed, in the vid above, the TH-1 is being run with only 4 springs installed, which seems like a good idea) and it runs very flat.  There's no torque-twist with the installed sway bars.  On a hard launch on the pavement, the truck will wander off to one side slightly - probably a combination of low traction, slipping tyres, and torque twist.

I was also having trouble with the steering trim.  The links are made from multiple plastic pieces screwed together with long grubs.  These look cool and feel sturdy and strong.  When I first ran the truck it was trimmed badly to the left, so I set it to neutral and went for a drive.  After clipping the fence, it was trimmed left again, so I re-trimmed it at the Tx.  A while later it was trimmed badly to the right.  I doubt the links are stretching, so unless there's a critical problem in the steering hubs, it's got to be servo or servo saver.

The servo saver is a neat build-it-yourself affair with a heavy spring and a cam on the base.  It looks good and feels fairly strong.  The problem is, the cam ends with a solid stop.  In a heavy impact, the servo saver will slip all the way along its travel, then come to a hard stop, transmitting any remaining force directly into the servo.  Sure, the rest of the suspension will have had a chance to absorb the impact first, but by the time the saver cams out they'll have already done their job.  It might not be a lot of force by that point, but it will be transmitted all in one go, which isn't ideal.

So, it's possible the servo saver is stripping its splines already.  I might see if I've got a Kimbro that will fit under there instead.

In summary - this feels like a great little truck for running in smaller spaces, it's well designed (if a little quirky in places), a joy to build, feels tough and looks good.  The included body is an oddball choice but there's plenty of aftermarket options.  It doesn't go quite as far as the SMT-10 in terms of realism, but it's aimed at a slightly smaller scale.  There's a lot of built-in scope for tuning and those axles, being narrow, should be fairly tough.  8 shocks out the box is a nice touch, even if they don't come with enough oil to fill them.  I'm not a fan of coloured chassis parts but black options are available from the Chevy body kit (assuming you can actually get spares - I keep hearing rumours this truck is discontinued and there's no MST distributor in the UK).

Out of curiosity, I tried fitting some 2.2 wheels, but nothing would fit.  The MST wheels are a very deep offset, the hex is practically on the back of the wheel.  So if you run one of these trucks and break a wheel or destroy a tyre, you might be in trouble.  I'm going to see if WW2 wheels and/or tyres will fit later.

More to follow when I've made progress on paint - the weather has dried out here at last typical for January in the south west, that means the temps have gone down to just above freezing (I'll have to scrape the car screen for the school run this morning) so still not really ideal for painting.

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2 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

you can hear the wheels whistling when the truck hits a ramp.  It's quite funny in slow-mo. 

Sounds like little kids making shooting noises while playing with toy laser guns (pew-pew... pew-pew-pew)

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