Stadium Trucks?

[KEV THE REV 2433]

On 8/9/2024 at 11:04 PM, Gruntfuggly said:

Stadium Thunder?

I recently fitted a Stadium Thunder shell to a Blitzer Beetle chassis using the G part mounts and added Street Rover etc wheels and tyres

[RustyHunter 80]

10 hours ago, guggles said:

Id love to see some Pictures of the chassis 

JimBear, let me know if this is distracting too much from the thread and I'll separate it out. Same basic layout as the SRT, but most of the parts are 3D printed or cut by SendCutSend. Very little Traxxas left at this point. 1/8" upper and lower chassis are from SendCutSend, as well as rear carbon fiber tower, 4.8mm aluminum camber link mount, and aluminum upper transmission brace. I made the bracket from the transmission brace to the shock tower out of an aluminum angle bracket. Front shock tower is the graphite tower for the SRT I lucked out finding at my LHS. Battery box is 3D printed out of PETG, along with miscellaneous spacers, wiring routing, and the rear bulkhead the shock tower mounts to. I made the mistake of putting RPM wide front arms on which then meant my 0" offset 2.2" wheels would foul on the steering, so I later got extended hexes 3D printed out of nylon for both front and rear to widen it just enough. In hindsight, I should have kept the front arms and put Slash rear arms on the rear together with 1/2" offset wheels all around. Knock on wood, none of the parts I have designed have broken, but I did have to retune the suspension due to the increased weight. I found some Integy springs that worked well for it.

 

Moving forward, I'll someday either swap the top plate to thinner aluminum or maybe even G10/carbon fiber. I'll probably keep the lower plate as is. I like getting so much weight down low as well as the durability. I run in a lot of rockier areas that would really mess up a carbon fiber or G10 chassis.

18 hours ago, Kowalski86 said:

Same here, right now I have two Slashes that need bodies and unless if I go cheap or used, I'm looking at $50 a piece before paint, or over $100.

Ouch, and the hard part with the Slash is you'd actually need quite a few parts to swap it over to a different 2wd car, so you're kind of stuck with them.

 

9 hours ago, Kowalski86 said:

It's a kit with zero parts support, I can't reccomend it unless if someone just wants an expensive shelf queen.

Oh, I had missed Associated wasn't really providing many spares. Is Fan RC an option? I get a bit confused on what all is compatible among the RC10 iterations!

[JimBear 1012]

10 hours ago, Kowalski86 said:

It's a kit with zero parts support, I can't reccomend it unless if someone just wants an expensive shelf queen.

That's my worry too, that it would end up not being run ... which was (and is) the whole idea for me.

[BuggyGuy 1140]

Another vote here for the Schumacher Storm ST or ST2

They are simply awesome and you can mount a wide variety of bodies.

There's also a lot of completely uneeded hopups available as well.

[Kowalski86 4270]

1 hour ago, JimBear said:

That's my worry too, that it would end up not being run ... which was (and is) the whole idea for me.

Ive learned that if you want an RC to run and keep for a while, don't buy anything from AE/Thunder Tiger.

2 hours ago, RustyHunter said:

Oh, I had missed Associated wasn't really providing many spares. Is Fan RC an option? I get a bit confused on what all is compatible among the RC10 iterations!

Fan RC is an option for suspension arms and shock towers (assuming that the AE lawyers don't get to them), maybe chassis, but you're out of luck if you ever need gears or metal parts.

[RustyHunter 80]

4 minutes ago, Kowalski86 said:

Ive learned that if you want an RC to run and keep for a while, don't buy anything from AE/Thunder Tiger.

It's sad to hear they're not really supporting the re-release. Really a shame they're going for the limited edition collector item rather than Tamiya/Kyosho style where they can be run since parts are available and fairly reasonably priced.

It does seem like AE has a bad habit of releasing something and axing it within a year or so. I guess the only bright side is so much of their RTR/basher stuff is based around the same SC10 2wd chassis.

[Kowalski86 4270]

2 hours ago, RustyHunter said:

 Really a shame they're going for the limited edition collector item rather than Tamiya/Kyosho style where they can be run since parts are available and fairly reasonably priced.

 While Tamiya and Kyosho have made some limited edition models, they seem less paranoid about diluting the value of older models with re-releases.

You could go the AE route if you're okay buying used examples. One to drive and one to use as spare parts. It's still expensive though, and if you chip a gear or loose a dogbone it'll cost a pretty penny for a replacement part.

[JimBear 1012]

@RustyHunter - no problem, I like the open-minded spirit of the forum and that threads are allowed to get into detours - most of the time I'll learn something new (or rediscover something old that I've forgotten). :)

@KEV THE REV - looks really good, your Thunder.

@Saito2 - I have to have a look at your "racing trucks" and see what that was about. And yes, I guess the RC10T is the template, hard to get past that one.

@guggles - a nitro truck would be cool, but space at home to work on such things, and the lack of places to run it puts a stop to that idea, at least for the time being. Who knows what the future brings? :)

 

[Saito2 7650]

1 hour ago, JimBear said:

@Saito2 - I have to have a look at your "racing trucks" and see what that was about. And yes, I guess the RC10T is the template, hard to get past that one.

Without getting too into the weeds, RC monster truck racing started with the first monster truck, the Marui Big Bear, as a relaxing break from more competitive classes. The Big Bear was quickly displaced by the better-performing Blackfoot which became the most common platform to race in the MT class.

Then JG Mfg. devised a way to mount Blackfoot wheels on the RC10 and the "conversion truck" craze was born. Conversion trucks (many manufacturers offered truck conversion kits from everything to RC10's and Ultimas to Optima Mids) basically pushed out the Blackfoots.

 

After a time, vehicle manufacturers began making racing trucks (the term was used to differentiate them from traditional monster trucks). The Tamiya King Cab was actually one of the first followed by the Losi JR-XT.

 

 

Many manufacturers got into the racing truck game also like Kyosho with their Outlaw Ultima, Schumacher's Shotgun and Traxxas's Blue Eagle, etc. Team Associated was notably absent from this trend, despite their RC10 being probably the first basis for a conversion truck. It wasn't until the '91 Florida Winter Champs that Associated unveiled their own take on a "racing truck", the RC10T (oddly first referred to as the RC10ST in print, then the RC10T and then ST again for the budget "sport" version of the kit, confused yet?), which we now refer to as stadium trucks. It looked totally different with its low slung body and narrow (soon to be outlawed) front tires. It set the "look" for what we call stadium trucks today.

[bavee 1140]

I vote Stadium Blitzer!

Blitzer Beetle kit, Stadium Blitzer G-parts tree, Rock Socker body, Stadium Blitzer decals, Stadium Blitzer wheels / front tyres and Schumacher Vee 4 rear tyres.

it has proven almost indestructible in the hands of our 7yo.

[El Gecko 1518]

That was a great synopsis @Saito2 and the "racing truck" period is also my favorite since the bodies were still a little boxier and a little more representative of a real truck.

 

18 hours ago, Saito2 said:

Many manufacturers got into the racing truck game also like Kyosho with their Outlaw Ultima, Schumacher's Shotgun and Traxxas's Blue Eagle, etc. Team Associated was notably absent from this trend, despite their RC10 being probably the first basis for a conversion truck. It wasn't until the '91 Florida Winter Champs that Associated unveiled their own take on a "racing truck", the RC10T (oddly first referred to as the RC10ST in print, then the RC10T and then ST again for the budget "sport" version of the kit, confused yet?), which we now refer to as stadium trucks. It looked totally different with its low slung body and narrow (soon to be outlawed) front tires. It set the "look" for what we call stadium trucks today.

It's funny you say that the RC10 was the one to set the look for stadium trucks to follow, in my view it's actually kind of the opposite. Sure, the RC10 body was narrow and low-slung, but those skinny front tires always made me think it was sort of an oddball, even after they were made illegal for racing. The Tamiya, Losi, and Traxxas trucks all had wide 2.2 wheels on every corner, same as the Blackfoot before them, so to me they seemed like the "real" racing trucks. And when "stadium" racing trucks like the Blue Eagle and various iterations of the Losi/AE trucks came later, they continued the wide fronts, so I consider the Losi and Traxxas trucks, and even the King Cab, to be the trendsetters. I'd also argue that Losi were the ones who started the "low-slung" body look from the beginning. The JRXT is absolutely iconic IMHO.

I also feel obligated to point out that Traxxas was actually one of the earliest in the racing truck game with the TRX-T, which was a mashup of stuff on a graphite plate chassis with a (very noisy) buggy gearbox and Pro-Line wheels and tires. It came out at the same time as the Losi and King Cab, went through a few revisions and was quickly renamed the Eagle, I assume because of the similarity to the JRX-T. The more affordable Hawk (and Radicator buggy) and especially the higher-spec Blue Eagle are its direct descendants.

[Rinskie 1015]

23 hours ago, Saito2 said:

Then JG Mfg. devised a way to mount Blackfoot wheels on the RC10 and the "conversion truck" craze was born. Conversion trucks (many manufacturers offered truck conversion kits from everything to RC10's and Ultimas to Optima Mids) basically pushed out the Blackfoots.

I loved this era of monster trucks. I lusted over the JG conversions but was out of my league at the time because first you needed an RC10 which was well out of my budget. Those conversions were all the rage and if you ask me, they look substantially better than anything that came after. Also, those Technacraft wheels just the cat's meow.