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I had Durandal with me in the workshop, so I decided I'd get some shots of both trucks together.  These are my only 2.2-sized monsters (even though the MTX-1 isn't technically a 2.2 wheel), so it's good to see them together.

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I like the way the wheels, dampers and body colour are all tied together and your graphics always look cool alongside the sponsors (real and invented).

Nice trucks!

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This came out amazing, I love the body.  The colors match the truck perfectly.  I'll have to use that yellow at some point, I like it a lot.  Makes PS6 looks absolutely awful :)  

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6 hours ago, 87lc2 said:

The colors match the truck perfectly.  I'll have to use that yellow at some point, I like it a lot

This is true, the only drawback of using Camel Yellow is having to have a discussion with my wife about how it isn't orange.  As in, I bought the yellow paint to match the yellow wheels and the yellow shocks.

At which point she says, "Yeah, but I love how the orange paint matches the orange Ford stickers."

I can tell this one is going to run and run :lol:

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2 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

This is true, the only drawback of using Camel Yellow is having to have a discussion with my wife about how it isn't orange.  As in, I bought the yellow paint to match the yellow wheels and the yellow shocks.

At which point she says, "Yeah, but I love how the orange paint matches the orange Ford stickers."

I can tell this one is going to run and run :lol:

To be fair, I'd say its on the more orange side of yellow. If I saw an actual orange that colour I wouldn't send it back, but if a banana or lemon that was the colour of your truck - something has gone wrong.

So if it's the colour of an orange, does that mean it's orange? :D

Either was looks great, I love the mountains. A very cool feature and well sprayed

 

 

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1 minute ago, Nikko85 said:

To be fair, I'd say its on the more orange side of yellow

in fairness, I can see her point too.  It is a rather orangey yellow.  It's called Camel Yellow on the paint tin, and the cap definitely looks yellow, and we all know what colour Camel Yellow is.  In the sunlight, and with the camera in Vivid Mode (the later pics with Durandal were actually shot in HDR mode), it looks more orangey than the cap.  Mostly it's backed with silver (due to the way I masked, odd bits are backed with bright gunmetal).  Fifty-Fifty uses the same yellow, and that looks more yellowy, in my opinion, although it's been in the box for ages so I can't really remember.  The yellow (or orange) Ford decals came from MCI back when I built Fifty-Fifty, they're a custom colour that is a very close match for Camel Yellow.

The shocks are definitely yellow, and probably closer to Tamiya's regular yellow.  The wheels are also definitely yellow, and before I put the body on, they looked a close match to the shocks.  With the body added, the difference between shocks and wheels is more obvious, and the wheels are a closer match to the body.  And everything looks a bit more orange than it did before.

Call it what you like, I still think it looks good (and so does my wife, even if we call it different names).  A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.  Unless you called them stenchblossoms.

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27 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.  Unless you called them stenchblossoms.

Or crapweeds. :D

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Whatever color it is, I think it matches perfectly...maybe I'm color blind :)   I really like that body and truck, everything about it looks cool.  Has the perfect stance.  I keep forgetting about this truck, I definitley want to get one at some point.  Last I checked AMain was out of stock on the kit, I'll take another look.  

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@87lc2 I definitely recommend it, I'm no expert at monster trucks but for a smaller backyard basher this one seems to tick all the boxes.  I've not had a chance to drive the MTX-1 back-to-back with Durandal yet, which is a home-brew TLT-axle / Axial transmission truck, I'm sure it'll be an experience to see how different they feel, but when I ran the MTX-1 at the quarry the other week, it was great fun (apart from the tyres coming off).  Reminds me, I need to order some foam as soon as the month rolls over so I can fix the squidgy tyre issue and hopefully get the suspension to do more work.

Not sure how pricing is over your side of the pond, but there's no UK stockist for MST so I had to order from Asiatees.  Priced and shipped in dollars, I took advantage of a good exchange rate and got it for a steal.  Even with the tax and the handler's ransom, it was cheaper than a UK-stock SMT-10 builder's kit.  Admittedly the SMT-10 is a bigger truck with a more scale-looking chassis, but with the MTX-1 you get a detailed body and a good set of tyres included.  Just throw paint and electrics at it, and it'll run.  (It irks me that Axial don't include the tyres with the SMT-10 BK, when the list of tyres that work with the included wheels is very short.  Either charge me a bit more and include the tyres, or charge me less and take out the useless wheels - adding a wheel and tyre combo to the kit + body + electrics makes it an expensive truck).

I'm still debating whether to show off that unusual "transmission cage monster ball" thing in the middle of the chassis, or hide it behind a sponsor plate.  It's a weird looking thing and won't win any scale realism awards but I can't fault the chassis design for modularity or robustness.  I think you'd have a lot of fun with it in a smaller area.

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Thanks @Mad Ax it does look like a great little truck.  I even like the Chevy body that comes with the black chassis kit.  I wouldn't really modfiy it at all.  Would just use it in the yard and the local ballfield like I do the Blackfoot, I think it'd be perfect for that.  The Chevy kit is $190 at Amain which is cheap, but it's been out of stock for a while now.  I did click the "Remind me when its back" button on their site so hopefully sometime soon.  Don't think many other shops in the US carry MST.  I ordered my CFX from Atees years back, but it seems the shipping has gone a bit crazy lately and it didn't make sense for the last few things I looked at from them.  I'll look up the MTX on their site later and see.

I totally agree on the SMT10, just don't include the stupid wheels.  I have no less than 6-7 sets of them that I'll never use...Just opened up another kit last night for a new build and was annoyed to see another set of them.

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Tyre foams!

So, this was the one part of this truck that was letting it down, in fact making it impossible to enjoy.  Every time I tried to run it, the tyres fell off.  But I didn't want to glue them yet, because I wanted to add some foam.  The stock tyres are very soft - as in, the material is thin, and they confirm to surfaces or deform on landing.  The treads themselves aren't sticky like a crawler tyre, they're much more like a Tamiya tyre in that respect.

My plan was to buy some closed-cell foam off ebay and make my own inserts, but I was struggling to find anything that clearly stated how firm (or otherwise) it was, and it was way more expensive than I expected - expensive enough that I couldn't justify buying something that wouldn't do what I wanted.  So, I went off to the back of the workshop and rummaged around in the junk, and found a big piece of cushion floof.

Here it is next to an MST wheel and tyre.

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Channelling my inner 5-year-old, I drew around the tyre to get a rough size, then I asked an adult to cut them out for me.

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Channelling my inner horse vet, I got the foam inside the tyre.

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ta-da!

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I repeated this 3 more times, because that's how many wheels there are, then I put them back on the truck.  I didn't take any pictures of this because it looks exactly the same as it did before (also I was too lazy).

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Immediately the tyres felt much stiffer, their deformation under load was more progressive and predictable, and the tyres were a lot less hissy (literally, with the stock setup, it's like something from a steampunk convention when it's on uneven ground).

Anyway, I didn't have time to drive it straight away, but last weekend I had a solo Monster Truck Racing Championship Tournament Event in my back garden, featuring every one of my monster trucks, and the MTX-1 was definitely the most fun truck in the small space, and the one I returned to later that day after I'd put all the others away.

Quite simply - this truck is great.  OK, it's a lot smaller than a Clod, around the same size as a Blackfoot, but with foamed tyres and one spring per corner, it runs really well on my home garden.  It's been dry here, so the ground was very hard, and I haven't looked after my turf so it's full of rough, hard clumps, but it ran true, didn't get out of shape and was generally really good fun.  It can't beat the TXT for presence, it can't beat the SMT-10 for smoothness, it can't beat the LMT for shear overbearing impact, but it runs great on grass, it jumps straight and flat, it lands well, the 4000Kv system is perfect for the garden on 2S and it'll take 3S for running in bigger spaces.  The Mod Clod just about works in the garden because it has 4WS; the stock clod can get around the tight stuff but the floppy steering can't keep it straight enough to avoid the many obstacles.  The SMT-10 on Clod-size wheels just doesn't have the turning circle for my garden, at all, and the LMT can only get around because it can drift around the wider corners under power and back into the tighter ones on the brakes (I never thought I'd be backing a solid-axle monster into tight turns in my garden, but that's another thread).  The MTX-1 is small enough and has enough steering to get around the garden course without any of these problems.

It's so far proved robust, too.  At the quarry a few months ago I caught a ramp going way too fast and launched it skywards, but it landed without a single breakage.  This weekend I landed a jump real bad - nosedived it so hard it flipped right over and came down a second time on the back of the body.  That was enough to snap off both rear body posts, but I had some generic spares lying around so I got it fixed within 5 minutes.  The body posts are just long poles with holes in them, so easily replaced with just about anything.  There are probably some OE ones on the spurs that came with it, I just didn't have time to climb up to the storage area to find them.

In short - I really can't recommend this truck enough.  If you want a solid axle monster like an SMT-10, LMT or TXT, but you can't got the space to run it, this little thing has all the fun of a big-wheel rig without the awkward footprint, and without being so small that it's overwhelmed by the rough stuff.  MST seem to be making some really good stuff - going their own way, doing their own thing, but putting out kits that are good to build, great to look at and really actually work where it counts.

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On cutting DIY foams, I cut long strips and then wrap them around the wheel and cut to get the proper length.  The fact that there is an unjointed seam doesn’t seem to be an issue.

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It's been a while since I updated here - in fact it's been a while since I ran this truck.  A couple of months back I got it down from the shelf to have a quick blast in the garden, but something didn't feel quite right.  I've always had a problem with this truck refusing to drive straight - trim it one way, have a tiny little knock, and it goes out again.  I had put it down to a dodgy factory servo saver, but on this particular run, it started acting up even worse.  I pulled over and tugged on the front axle, but it felt secure, so I thought I was imagining it.

Then I noticed something hanging down.  I had, indeed, broken an upper link.

It's no secret that this truck got some serious air earlier this year, way more than planned, and I was amazed it survived, but it probably did more damage than I realise, and things finally fell apart on a quick blast around the garden.

I could have cut new links, but I figured it would be nice to keep it all MST, so I waited until I could afford to order the MST metal link kit from Asiatees.  It arrived on Saturday morning, so it was a nice break from the tow truck project to fit that today.  Also a new Gool RC 60A 3S brushless combo with a 3900KV motor arrived, too.  A subtle replacement for the 4000Kv system that went in the SMT10.

So, onto the repairs!  The front link broke at the ball end.  The metal link kit comes with all-new ball ends that are identical to the stock ones, except with metal balls, so potentially the same weakness is still there.  However these are assembled by screwing the threaded bar into the rod end, and screwing in too far can put the rod end under tension and weaken it, so I took care to not go too far on the new ball ends.

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Lower links are also bent, quite badly.  I'd not noticed this before, so no idea when it happened, but it's not the only one.  They're all a little bent.

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I also noticed some discolouration on one of the wheels, where it's obviously had a knock.  I'd not noticed this before either.  Still perfectly serviceable.

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Aluminium link set

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Gool RC Combo.

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Installed.

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I took the completed truck out for a quick blast.  Having been dry and mostly sunny all day, it decided to pour down just as I put a 3S pack in the MTX-1, so I only had a real quick run just to check it worked.

Steering is straight and true and the truck feels planted, so the links are doing their job for now.  The Gool RC ESC has a really weird power delivery - it takes a good few seconds to reach top speed, even on the bench, but it's got a fair enough turn of speed when it gets there.  Really it needs a bit more punch, the stock settings are overly soft, but I'm not sure how to change it without a program card.  I'll look into that another time.  On occasion I managed to get it to deliver full power and lift the front, but generally it was more of a soft flow in of power, too soft for my liking, and not as much top speed as I expected compared to the 4000Kv system that came out.

Still, I was only working with 3S packs in storage charge, so it's possible the ESC was going into don't-break-the-lipo mode.  I'll have to top off the packs and give it another run when it isn't raining.

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As I was short on time and sundries last weekend, I decided to spend 20 minutes on something I've been meaning to do for a long time: making some sponsor plates for the MTX-1.  Another TCer has already done something like this, but I wanted to have a go at my own design.

Here's another look at the bulbous cage design on the chassis plates.  It's certainly rather odd, and not something I've seen on a full-sized monster truck.

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Here I cut a sheet of plasticard with the angles to match those on the chassis, so it should all tie in nicely.  Actually that's not 100% true - as you can see I had drilled some holes on the top corners but my measurements were slightly off and I was worried about them pulling out.  So I cut them off and drilled new holes.

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The centre cage is such a bulbous thing, it's necessary to space the sponsor plates right out over it.  But there's a rough idea of how it will look.

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I cut some hollow tube to act as spacers.  These will be glued onto the final piece to add a little rigidity.

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I was forced to abort at this point, as my longest screws were slightly too short.  New screws are on order, but it's anyone's guess as to when they get here.

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I took the truck for a run at the weekend, in a nice open area with very short grass and hard mud.  I was hoping it would be a good fun blast, but unfortunately the Gool RC system doesn't seem to want to play ball.  Sometimes when pulling on the trigger it will accelerate slowly to a (somewhat impressive) top speed, sometimes it will just struggle along on minimum power, and sometimes it will then suddenly decide to go straight to full power.  I think it's a combination of a settings problem (maybe a very conservative punch mode, as I thought before) and a calibration problem.  I didn't want to waste time looking at it while I was out on a jolly, so I put it away and ran the LMT instead.

More to follow on the Gool RC system, once I figure out if I can change the settings without a programmer card.

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I like the sponsor plates, nice work.  I remember looking at that chassis and wondering how you would add them with that odd shape, you came up with a great solution.  I like that you made them out of metal, helps get some more weight down in the chassis. 

 

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Those are great trucks. I have the painted chevy  and the TH1 kit that I need to paint yet and decal. I'll have to get some pic's up.

 

Cory

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I'd spent most of Sunday in the workshop, bar a couple of hours when we decorated the lounge for Christmas, and by 5:30 it was getting really cold, and I had to call it a night to go start on the dinner.  There was time for just one last little job - cutting out a second sponsor plate for the MTX, cutting some spacers, and gluing everything ready for paint.

These are actually made of 1mm plasticard, so they're light and flexible, but I'm tempted to stick some weights on the back to being the mass down a little in the truck, as it's kinda bouncy and doesn't really want to sit into itself too well.

I'm stacking up a whole heap of things that need painting - I think I'll have to take out a second mortgage to run the halogen lamps for a few hours...

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Short update on this one - a bit belated, as this is from 4th December :o 

I glued the logs on.  Yep, that's it.  Glued on.  I might add some webbing to strengthen the lugs, and maybe some thicker strips to stiffen the plates a little.

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Just going through my unposted photos, and can't believe it's been over a month since I started this nonsense and I still haven't finished it.  Well, I sort of can, because it's either been bitterly cold or pouring with rain, so not ideal for the painting this will require, but even so I haven't even got it actually ready for paint yet.

But back on the 1st Jan I had some spare time in the workshop, so I added some webbing to the back of the location tubes to add some rigidity.  The plates themselves have a little flex, which I hope will prevent them cracking in event of an impact.  Technically they are protected by their location, but in the real world, sooner or later they'll come into contact with something...

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Next step - smooth off the sharp edges, sand and paint.

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