The story goes something like this...
A racing buddy shows up at the track with this crazy beast that is basically an RC10T with Kyosho Big Brute (?) wheels and tires. There were some other mods, but I can't remember them.
He puts it on the track and it flew. He ccould go flopping over the tubes at will and the thing generally looked like an absolute blast. This is years before the T-Maxx. Years before ANY performance oriented MT entered the scene.
I went home and immediately started figuring out my own setup. I ended up using the same wheels and tires because anything bigger was Clodbuster (WAY too big) and everything smaller was 2.2. I had an XXT at the time and my old RC10 Graphite chassis. I figured it would be underpowered with them big tires, so I hacked two motor plates together and mounted two motors on an XX truck tranny.
Here is Gen 1:
It was pretty fast, but with XXT arms on a regular length wide chassis with wheels with very little offset, it was wider than long! Still crazy fun though.
I cleaned the slate and started over. I bought a carbon fiber chassis blank that had a 30 degree kick up molded into the front. I think it may have been Composite Craft. I was able to get about another inch of chassis length, but I had to hack and hack and hack with a dremel and drill to get everything mounted on it. And I didn't stop there, I went for a double deck design with 2 packs and 2 motors. I ended up using an LXT/JRX-T/JRX-2 steering rack, but with a doubled up bar because with just one it would fold up pretty easily.
Here is Gen 2:
After that, I decided it needed still more power, so I bought an Aveox 1409/3Y brushless motor and ran it on 12 cells in series (2 packs with a special plug setup to put them in series). This was probably 5 years before 95% of people had even heard of brushless motors. The controller has terrible resolution. It was designed for airplanes. I think it had maybe 15 steps through the full range. But it was insanely fast. At that time, on pavement, it would win a drag race with anything meant for dirt. Anything. Like buggies with 12 turn motors. Coupled with the big tires, it made some seriously evil noise coming down the back straight at the local track. This was perhaps the most fun I have ever had with RC. The primary problem was the tranny. I'd get about 2 runs on a center gear. Less if I wasn't being nice to it.
Over the years, I worked on it and modified it to be stronger/more durable when stuff broke. And the Dahms body finally was wasted beyond use. That is when I got a Durango body for it. Another thing I did was add dual shocks to the rear. And the RPM two stage shock pistons made a huge difference. In the picture below, the front shock tower is actually the chassis from pic number 1
The last remaining part from my very first RC car.
Gen 3:
You can read some more detail and some pics not shown here on my website: A work in progress
I still have this truck. It sits on a shelf looking for the most part like the last two pics. The Aveox has been redeployed to a project I'll be sharing at some point that is in some ways even more unique.
Thanks for reading!
