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Saito2

The right tool for the job or...

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...is that a really good thing? One of the big changes in RC is the diversification of specific models used for specific task. Today, one has choices for nearly every niche in the hobby. On road or off road? Off road....dirt or carpet or turf? 2wd or 4wd? Truck...monster, stadium, truggy? Trail truck or crawler? Drag car? ...and so on. There's a thread currently about whether chassis design has really improved or not. The gist I have is that competition buggies of today are designed with the understanding idea that traction will be present. The old days of loamy dirt and changing track conditions are gone at the top. An RC10 B-whatever today is not a fun fun buggy anymore per se. It is a specific tool for a specific job (which it does well). The original RC10 could be either a basher or a competition car (for its era). 

I guess the point is which way would you rather have it, the old days of tinkering and developing existing products to work in the niche you wished them to be in (think the early days of crawling before Axial AX10s) or the present where we have access to kits and parts designed specifically for our interest? Access to these goodies is great but so is the creativity brought on by necessity. Thoughts?  

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For me the fun part of competition racing went away in the early 2000s. I have never really had a basher, apart from the ta01 I had when I was 15. In the early days when I had an rc10b3 it was just a bit of fun, racing on a sunday with other kids. When the rc10b4 came out, I found that I got further down towards the back of the grid as i hadn't changed the way i drove around the track. The grip was getting higher, even on real grass which we had at the track. 

I had a small break in the mid 2000s, then i came back to racing with an rc10b5m, which was for a high grip track. I then found that on the fully astroturf track, I had to basically drive the car at full speed and allow the car to generate it's own grip, which it does very well, but I was never good at over driving any car, I was used to slow in the corners and fast on the straight, I think i got left behind in the low grip era.

Chassis design has come a long way, but so has the way that they have to be driven.

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It always seems to happen in waves. People start expressing an interest in racing Blackfoots, and suddenly "monster truck conversions" for buggies start popping up, and then the manufacturers introduce dedicated "racing truck" kits. Lowering a 4WD buggy and putting a sedan body on it becomes popular, so Tamiya offers a low, narrow version of their 4WD buggy with a sedan body on it, and then everyone else joins in. Rock crawlers discover that you can turn a Traxxas gearbox sideways and use it to power a pair of TLT axles, and then Axial designs a chassis based around this idea, and a few years later everyone sells one. And now it's starting to happen with the drag cars.

The most interesting part of that cycle to me is that brief window when the craze is in full swing, and hobbyists have figured out how to make these things work, but before the dedicated kits come out. When everyone is "finding six hundred ways not to make a light bulb," and then suddenly someone says, "hey, if you use this part, and modify it in this way, then the whole thing works!" And then everyone copies them, or maybe improves on their idea. That's the exciting part.

But when the manufacturers catch on, and you can go buy a kit off the shelf that will trounce any of the home-brew versions, the fun starts to go away. At least for me.

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1 hour ago, markbt73 said:

The most interesting part of that cycle to me is that brief window when the craze is in full swing, and hobbyists have figured out how to make these things work, but before the dedicated kits come out. When everyone is "finding six hundred ways not to make a light bulb," and then suddenly someone says, "hey, if you use this part, and modify it in this way, then the whole thing works!" And then everyone copies them, or maybe improves on their idea. That's the exciting part.

But when the manufacturers catch on, and you can go buy a kit off the shelf that will trounce any of the home-brew versions, the fun starts to go away. At least for me.

Completely agree. Its great when all the pieces fall into place and the whole thing fires on all cylinders. The Alt. rock scene was like this in my younger days, but when it became pre-packaged by retailers, things started to slide. Getting a flannel shirt at the thrift shop for $2 = awesome deal. Seeing flannels shirt for $35 at Macy's or JCPenney's as part of a "grunge wardrobe" = lame. (I still wear flannels and rock t-shirts, so I guess I'm kinda lame too :wacko:). 

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I've never been much of a serious racer, so have never gone and bought 'a tool to do job' i.e. win races.

I am also the king of the light bulbs that don't work, or I'm in a niche so far removed from everyone else there's no chance a manufacturer building what I'm interested in.

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Still waiting for someone to start building 1:10 scale 4wd tractors.....

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2 hours ago, Saito2 said:

I guess the point is which way would you rather have it, the old days of tinkering and developing existing products to work in the niche you wished them to be in (think the early days of crawling before Axial AX10s) or the present where we have access to kits and parts designed specifically for our interest? Access to these goodies is great but so is the creativity brought on by necessity. Thoughts?  

I'm curious, how about you? What do you prefer? And do you find that these new directions stifle creativity? 

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4 minutes ago, MadInventor said:

I've never been much of a serious racer, so have never gone and bought 'a tool to do job' i.e. win races.

I am also the king of the light bulbs that don't work, or I'm in a niche so far removed from everyone else there's no chance a manufacturer building what I'm interested in.

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Still waiting for someone to start building 1:10 scale 4wd tractors.....

I like what you do. Very inspiring. The black truck reminds of Mad Max.

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Funnily enough @MadInventor the scratch build I really want to do is a tractor, a French Latil from the 70s. I’ve been struggling to get axles and tyres the right scale but I think I’m pretty close. 

I was hoping to get up close and personal with the 1:1 inspiration at a local steam fair it attends but the event was cancelled in 2020, hoping it goes ahead this year.

I recently made my first ever home brew parts - delrin rear damper mounts for my Jeep - so I’m a long way from your standard!

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Another good topic.  For me RC cars are still toys.  No matter how much time I put into the smallest detail in the end I stil recognize them as toys to be enjoyed.  So many people I know that race competitively don't truly enjoy it and are constantly "stressed" trying to get the latest and greatest products, finding every last second on the track, and frankly just being miserable with the "work" involved in actually being competitive.  The only type of racing I enjoy these days is monster truck racing.  No matter how seriously you take it, half the battle is just getting down the track without hitting a ramp wrong or landing on one wheel which could ruin your race.  This leaves a lot more up to the driver rather than the equipment and an "inferior" truck can easily beat a truck with way more money put into it just by running a clean race.

As far as RC vehicles themselves, I sit on both sides of the fence.  I've never been afriad to build what I like (see the 1:6 scale Hummer H1 in my showroom, or the Axial based monster I built before the SMT10 was even a thought), but I think it's great that companies are building niche vehicles and if one cathes my eye I will certainly go for it.  As much as I like modifying & building, if a company gets it right for me and the price is right, why not?  Good example would be the recent Associated DR10 drag car.  Sure, I could build a Slash conversion cheaper, but I'm not really into the drag scene and just want something to put my Grand National body on, so the DR10 kit is the way to go for me.  Conversely, I'd rather piece my own crawler together out of junk parts and see how good I can make it on the trail.  I guess it jsut depends what interests me more and how much time/energy I want to devote to the project.

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11 hours ago, markbt73 said:

It always seems to happen in waves. People start expressing an interest in racing Blackfoots, and suddenly "monster truck conversions" for buggies start popping up, and then the manufacturers introduce dedicated "racing truck" kits. Lowering a 4WD buggy and putting a sedan body on it becomes popular, so Tamiya offers a low, narrow version of their 4WD buggy with a sedan body on it, and then everyone else joins in. Rock crawlers discover that you can turn a Traxxas gearbox sideways and use it to power a pair of TLT axles, and then Axial designs a chassis based around this idea, and a few years later everyone sells one. And now it's starting to happen with the drag cars.

TBH this was what I was banging on about in the LMT thread.  Monster Truck racing has been a niche thing based around a select few off-the-shelf parts and a lot of custom fabrication and conversions from smaller independent companies like CPE.  Then along comes the LMT, which (in the original reviews at least) threatened to clean up at the track with just a few subtle mods.  Now whether that really happens remains to be seen, but whatever happens, it's going to shake things up.  I think it's a double-edged sword - if you didn't have the time/tools/skills to make your own race truck, or you didn't have the cash and the knowledge to convert one using ready-made parts, you couldn't race.  Now you can.  It could be a big boost for monster truck racing and might mean it steps out of the niche and into the mainstream.

On the other hand, we've seen how Blackfoot racing turned into the RC10T, how SBR racing turned into the cab-forward craze, and how scale crawling has turned into portals and underdriven axles, all with the aim of seeking better performance and beating the opposition.  It would be a crying shame if the monster truck racing scene was allowed to evolve away from its scale racing roots when manufacturers start an arms race to build the fastest truck regardless of appearance.

It happens even in formulas designed to replicate the scale racing experience.  Frontie racing was started as an antidote to the jellymould touring car scene, with motors out front, scale bodyshells and spoked wheels.  But the shells have got lower and motors have moved behind the axles again, and the regulators haven't stopped this, because to most of the racers it's just another way to win a trophy, those of us who feel it should remain a scale racing series are in a minority.

So what do I prefer?  Well, it's hard to say.  It's easy to get romantic about the Pede/TLT days but compare a TLT axle to a modern Axial or RC4WD and the difference is stark.  Scalers today look so much better, and although there are plenty of kits and RTRs on the market for those who don't want to build their own, lots of manufacturers still sell individual parts to help those who do want to home-brew.  I've just bought a set of RC4WD axles for my class 1 Toyota because they look better than the Scout axles it was sitting on.  There's no way I could have modified my Scout axles at home.

Also, I want to see monster truck racing take off over here.  Since we have to import most of our monster truck parts, it's an expensive scene - it might he hard to encourage new starters, unless there's a kit on the market that has 90% of what you need to race at a local club level.  The LMT could be that.  But, on the other hand, I don't want the formula to be diluted by steeply-angled shocks and wheels with uneven inner and outer diameters, or whatever new non-scale features appear on the LMT's 2022 update or a possible new rival from Associated or whoever.

9 hours ago, Saito2 said:

(I still wear flannels and rock t-shirts, so I guess I'm kinda lame too :wacko:). 

selling out to the man, man ;)

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3 hours ago, Mad Ax said:
13 hours ago, Saito2 said:

(I still wear flannels and rock t-shirts, so I guess I'm kinda lame too :wacko:). 

selling out to the man, man ;)

You know its funny how my personal "style" is unchanging (I am, by mental nature, highly resistant to change) but trends make it popular for a time before leaving me in the dust again, lol. I wore flannels before grunge and I wear them now after grunge. The Dickies pants I wore everywhere as a mechanic became fashionable when Jesse James was a thing. I've had horn rim glasses for 30 years because they were cheap, durable and offer some eye protection. Hipsters made them popular again. I tell my wife, if I wait long enough, maybe the gen pop will be into Tamiya RC cars at some point.;)

3 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

TBH this was what I was banging on about in the LMT thread.  Monster Truck racing has been a niche thing based around a select few off-the-shelf parts and a lot of custom fabrication and conversions from smaller independent companies like CPE.  Then along comes the LMT, which (in the original reviews at least) threatened to clean up at the track with just a few subtle mods.  Now whether that really happens remains to be seen, but whatever happens, it's going to shake things up.  I think it's a double-edged sword - if you didn't have the time/tools/skills to make your own race truck, or you didn't have the cash and the knowledge to convert one using ready-made parts, you couldn't race.  Now you can.  It could be a big boost for monster truck racing and might mean it steps out of the niche and into the mainstream.

On the other hand, we've seen how Blackfoot racing turned into the RC10T, how SBR racing turned into the cab-forward craze, and how scale crawling has turned into portals and underdriven axles, all with the aim of seeking better performance and beating the opposition.  It would be a crying shame if the monster truck racing scene was allowed to evolve away from its scale racing roots when manufacturers start an arms race to build the fastest truck regardless of appearance.

And this is always the problem. Its a balancing act that can't last. Its good to allow others without the fabrication skills a chance to join in, but to do that, manufacturers have to get involved. Once that happens, its an arms race, as you pointed out.  The one thing that may save monster trucking if it continues to grow is the retro classes populated by mostly stock Clod Busters. Stock-ish Clods are unpredictable by nature. The races are quick too. While practicing helps, with the combination of and unpredictable truck and a short race means its anybody's race to a degree. You can't show up and blow people away because you spend the most or are a highly skilled driver. Will it get ruined? We'll see. most other comp classes in RC have been, but retro Clod racing is tricky. All hail the mighty Clod Buster! It would be akin to freezing full size monster trucks in time, allowing them to never reach Bigfoot 8 levels of technology.

Currently an issue in stock buggy racing is people not wanting to leave it. They'd rather stay down where they can dominate rather than moving up to modified which doesn't help newcomers. The Clod's nature helps neutralize that I think.

14 hours ago, Mechanic AH said:

I'm curious, how about you? What do you prefer? And do you find that these new directions stifle creativity?

Tough question. I think what I want, I can't have. Here were some awesome early efforts with the Tamiya High Lift before the Bruiser came back. Some folks came up with ingenious ways of allowing the High Lift to shift between 2wd and 4wd. Creativity at its peak. On the other hand, trying to make leaf springs out of hack saw blades sucks. I guess, I'd like to some some of the basics offered as available parts like axles, springs, etc. Even kits geared toward, but not mastering a specific niche would be nice. The CR01 is an example. It was geared toward crawling but allowed a lot of mods to be made to make it better. Tamiya is great at this. The original RC10 was great for its time (still is) too and could be pushed in so many different ways based on the owner creativity or just enjoyed as is. That's perfect to me. Tamiya came up with one of the first race trucks with the King Cab. Great truck, but not perfect. Losi soon followed with the JR-XT. Game over. No more King Cab-style trucks and less and less conversion trucks. Its all downhill until we reach where we are today.

But all that's a dream. Life is often ever-changing. You can't freeze competition/technology in a certain time period (although the Amish near to me do). It forever marches forward. Its in its nature. 

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2 hours ago, Saito2 said:

And this is always the problem. Its a balancing act that can't last. Its good to allow others without the fabrication skills a chance to join in, but to do that, manufacturers have to get involved. Once that happens, its an arms race, as you pointed out.  The one thing that may save monster trucking if it continues to grow is the retro classes populated by mostly stock Clod Busters. Stock-ish Clods are unpredictable by nature. The races are quick too. While practicing helps, with the combination of and unpredictable truck and a short race means its anybody's race to a degree. You can't show up and blow people away because you spend the most or are a highly skilled driver. Will it get ruined? We'll see. most other comp classes in RC have been, but retro Clod racing is tricky. All hail the mighty Clod Buster! It would be akin to freezing full size monster trucks in time, allowing them to never reach Bigfoot 8 levels of technology.

Couldn't agree with this more, well put.

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I hadn't paid any attention to the Losi LMT, or the thread about it on here. Just had a look. And... it does absolutely nothing for me. I honestly don't care how well it performs, because it's not anything I would ever bother owning, let alone waste $600 on. It's too sterile, too corporate. Following the music analogy, it's No Doubt, as opposed to the Specials. (Or Metallica today, as opposed to Metallica in 1985.)

The money is one problem, but I've spent more than $600 on a mod Clod before. Way more, probably; I wasn't keeping track of hobby spending back then. But it wasn't for an all-in-one package like this; it was a Clod kit, then a steering kit, then shocks, then a new body, then a new chassis, then...

And it seems to me that if any class should be centered around the DIY mentality, it's monster trucks. The full-size ones have tons of corporate sponsors, but they are still one-off machines built by a few people who do it because they love it. The barrier to entry is skill and talent, but also enthusiasm and determination. Now imagine if Ford decided to start mass-producing monster trucks for competition, throwing all their resources behind it, and selling them to whoever wanted to buy one for just slightly less than it takes to build a competitive truck. Suddenly the barrier to entry is no longer talent or enthusiasm; it's money. Wouldn't the teams who have invested the time and sweat equity to get where they are be upset by that? And rightly so?

Popping back to music for a second, maybe that's why I like the guitar so much. You can go out and spend $3000 on a new Paul Reed Smith, but if you can't play, you can't play.

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4 hours ago, Saito2 said:

It would be akin to freezing full size monster trucks in time, allowing them to never reach Bigfoot 8 levels of technology.

Well this of course is the opposite argument.  Full-size motorsport evolves all the time.  If we'd been upset about multilink suspension and mid-mounted motors on monster trucks we could have frozen the formula in time and we'd still be watching steel-bodied leaf-sprung giants lumbering around on the dirt, and we'd never have witnessed the huge jumps or the astounding freestyling that we've been blessed with over the last few years.  We could have frozen Formula 1 in the 50s and we'd never have seen the aero packages that we have today, we'd have missed the ground effect era, active suspension would have passed us by (OK, they would have been developed for other formulas - in fact another tangent to this is that if the rules are too restrictive, entrants might start a breakaway formula with their own rules - you can't stop evolution).

This is where RC competition is trying to be two things at once, which are often at odds with one another.  Monster truck racing is a great example of an RC sport that tries to closely follow the full-size formulas from its inception to today, with classes from retro to pro-mod.  RC touring is the other end of the spectrum, where the cars bear little resemblance to their full-size counterparts and have evolved to go fast on their own terms.

Despite the nature of my posts, I have nothing against allowing an RC formula to evolve in its own direction, and touring, buggies, stadium trucks etc. have been doing that for years.  Arguably rock crawling started out as that sort of thing (the first proper comp crawlers that I remember looked little like their full-size counterparts) but helped give birth to the scaler scene.  But I think equally there should be some balance - if we have touring for going as fast as possible, then let's keep frontie for being as true to 1:1 as possible.  If we have retro for replicating the original monster trucks and pro-mod for replicating today's trucks, let's have a new Unlimited class that lets people go crazy with the spec.  To an extent though, solid axle monsters will always be compromised because they are solid axle monsters, and the solid axle is an imperfect solution to the problem of going around a stadium quickly.  And let's not forget while we're at it that while we might point to the Clod as the original and best and most authentic monster truck, it does have its motors on its axles - which (to my knowledge) no full-size monster ever had.  That might add a little unsprung weight but in my experience it more than makes up for it by having no torque twist, so arguably the truck we think of as the most compromised actually has the best performance-related mod baked right in.

Quote

...kits geared toward, but not mastering a specific niche would be nice. The CR01 is an example. It was geared toward crawling but allowed a lot of mods to be made to make it better. Tamiya is great at this. The original RC10 was great for its time (still is) too and could be pushed in so many different ways based on the owner creativity or just enjoyed as is. That's perfect to me. Tamiya came up with one of the first race trucks with the King Cab. Great truck, but not perfect. Losi soon followed with the JR-XT. Game over. No more King Cab-style trucks and less and less conversion trucks. Its all downhill until we reach where we are today.

I still think the scaler scene is great for this - not only can you buy separate components to build your own rig, there are also things like the Element Enduro, which has the cheaper pricepoint and a chassis without today's must-have performance updates (single-speed transmission, no underdrive, no unlockable diffs, no portals).  It's a great starting point for a realistic but capable scaler and there's various directions you can take it in to improve performance and/or realism.

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At what point in time would you halt, progress?

Late 70's Countach?

The SRB chassis? 

Or later in time, and go for full Indy shocked RC10? 🤷‍♂️

RC has never been cheaper, with so much info at our finger tips and with 3d printing becoming more available, I don't think we've had it better, if you can think it, you can build it!! 

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1 hour ago, Wooders28 said:

At what point in time would you halt, progress?

Late 70's Countach?

The SRB chassis? 

Or later in time, and go for full Indy shocked RC10? 🤷‍♂️

RC has never been cheaper, with so much info at our finger tips and with 3d printing becoming more available, I don't think we've had it better, if you can think it, you can build it!! 

I would halt progress at the Optima Mid SE and the Ultima Pro, and the TXT-1.

As far as I can see, there hasn't been much progress since then in mechanical design of buggies, just adaptations for changing track conditions. 

TXT-2 I would say is a worse truck than the TXT-1.

Looking through Tamiya's line up of RC cars past and present, with the exception of the GF-01 Dump truck (And the  re-releases, which don't really count, because they're old designs anyway) I don't see anything that Tamiya have released since then that I would buy in preference to one of the old models. I was tempted into buying a Konghead, but now wish that I hadn't bothered.

I think of it like this, when I go to an airshow, I like to watch the high performance world war II aircraft, The P51 Mustang, Griffon engined Spitfires, the Bearcat, the Hawker Sea Fury. Yes, things like the Eurofighter, the old Tornado, and even the Harrier can fly faster, roll faster, climb vertically for longer, but I always enjoy watching the old aircraft more because they're classics. A model car that handles better or goes faster, does not necessarily translate into more enjoyment of that model than the previous one. 

And sorry to disagree, but....

RC has been cheaper, I can remember seeing Frog and Subaru Brat re-releases available for £35 + postage from Hong Kong pre 2008. I bought a Full option Tiger I for £300 delivered to my door from HK back then too. In 2014 I bought a High Lift kit from Banzai for under £250 delivered. RC has been getting steadily more expensive for the last 10 years. Even in the last few years, everything seems to have rocketed in price. When I started my foray into brushless motors and LiPo (5-6 years ago), I bought a hobbywing combo for £60, and a 3 cell lipo 4000mah from Hobbyking for £18. They're about 50% more expensive now just 4 or 5 years later.

 

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1 hour ago, MadInventor said:

I would halt progress at the Optima Mid SE and the Ultima Pro,

Ok, I class 'vintage ' as running 2" wheels , so kind of agree...., once the 2.2" where the norm, it kind of went a bit, samey (?), and now you struggle to tell what make of car is what going around a track.

Modern cars have moved on, but great when you can, resto mod, and nail modern tech (multi plate slipper etc), into vintage cars.

 

1 hour ago, MadInventor said:

RC has been cheaper

Ok, under the current climate , prices have gone through the roof. 2008 ish ,was when I starting getting back into it, so looking like I missed out!

But compared to the 2" era, you can get metal geared fairly quick servo for a little over a tenner ,a brushless motor and esc for under £30.

 

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