Beat Your Truck - Project RC Rock Crawler

We hope you enjoy "Project Rock Ripper". We started this project as rock crawling newbies and still have a lot to learn. Throughout the project pages, you will see what we did with our truck and we will also try to list some alternatives to get the job done. Our hope is that by providing some alternate methods to acheive the same end goal, more people will tackle a project like this and get into crawling!

GETTING STARTED...YOU HAVE TO CRAWL BEFORE YOU CAN RUN!

One of, if not the, fastest growing segments in RC right now is “crawling”. RC crawlers are specifically built to crawl over objects the average RTR truck could never dream of. In the world of RC crawling, BYT is a huge “newbie”! We really wanted to learn more about this very cool chunk of the RC world and in our minds, there was no better way to learn than to jump right in with both feet!

RESEARCH
Our first mission was to start checking out the RC crawler scene to see what was available, what chassis, what electronics, what tires, what shocks, etc works. As we quickly found out, there are tons of options available. We took our time studying them and tried to decide which one would be the best to go with.

Ultimately, we decided to build our own Clod Buster based crawling machine (as many crawler fanatics do) however if fabrication is beyond your means, there are many ready to build packages available (The Stick, NN, CX1, Gecko, Gecko II, etc).

The following project will go into some detail on how we built our crawler and we will also try to give you some alternatives to investigate. OK….read on!

THE DONOR CLOD BUSTER
Once we decided on a Clod based build, the hunt was on for a donor truck! We searched for several weeks and finally found (and won for $102) an e-bay auction on an old, crusty Tamiya Clod Buster. It looked like it had been sitting out in the snow and rain for a year or more however all we really needed was a set of axles. When it arrived, thankfully the axles were in perfect shape! The axles serve as the “start/beginning point” for our project.

Alternatives to a used E-Bay Clod Buster:

1. Buy a new complete truck kit, snag the axles and sell the rest of the kit to try and recover a few bucks. Tower Hobbies has complete Clod Buster Kits for about $190.

2. Buy a set of new Clod Buster axles from a company like RC4WD.com for about $145 (not a bad deal as they come with bearings…a $30 value all on their own).

PILE O' PARTS
We will be using parts from FullForce RC, Team Losi, Maximizer RC, Novak, Apogee, Integy, HiTec, Deans and more for our project. As with any project, you can always find alternatives. We feel that our choices fit our particular build very well.

Click here to check out STAGE 2 of Project Rock Ripper....Setting up the Axles.

Click here to check out STAGE 2 of Project Rock Ripper....Setting up the Axles.