I originally joined this forum circa 2006 as a kid and cut my teeth on the OG 1/18, and later 1/6, Nylint crawlers. They were a lot of fun for what they were, but they were fragile, lacked power, and repair/upgrade parts were not available. The 1/6 just took up too much space and it was hard to find fun terrain around the house, and I ended up breaking both of my 1/18s beyond where it was worth trying to repair them.
The Axial AX10 had come out on the scene to rave reviews on this forum as the first factory crawler; previously everyone was having to do very custom things with TLTs, Wheely Kings, Bruisers, etc. Then Axial released the RTR Scorpion version of the AX10 in March 2008 and I ended up picking mine up up around Christmas of that year as a broke-dick teenager.
Even straight out of the box, the AX10 RTR (AX90002) could literally run circles around the modded Nylints. What it lacked in finesse it more than made up with brute power and could easy bash through lines that were extremely difficult with the Nylints. However, the center of gravity was too high, as was the stock gearing, and the springs were way too stiff.
Here are some pictures of the AX10 RTR as it was straight out of the box in 2009.
The first round of upgrades I made in were the Axial 55T motor (AX24007), a 12T 48P pinion gear, 2 green "medium" 2.25 Lb/in springs (AX30215), gray aluminum link and hardware kits (AXA1432 & AXA1411). These upgrades definitely helped the crawlability, but the 12T pinion with the 55T motor lacked the wheel speed necessary for some climbs so I would often run the 20T pinion with the 55T motor. The high-clearance rear links helped a bit, but other than that the aluminum links didn't make that big of a difference. I put one green spring on the front axle, and one on the rear axle to improve articulation and keep torque twist at bay. I also ditched the foams and swapped over to some Proline Moab tires which were the shit back then. Overall, it was still very rollover prone and I am not sure the tradeoff with the 55T motor was worth it and I occasionally swapped back over to the 27T motor to be able to rip around in it.
Around this time, scalers were becoming a big thing, and I loved reading about all the scale builds on this forum. I got the idea that I wanted to build a scaler, so I got an OG SCX10 frame set (AX30525) and an HPI Bronco body. I also got a couple of sets of 7x70mm posts (AXA1431, mine were actually the red ones since gray was out of stock at the time) to use as upper links since the AX10 uppers were way too short for the SCX10 chassis. The AX10 shocks were way too long, and it sat up stupid high. The driveshaft angles were atrocious.
It looked kind of neat, but the loss of performance was unacceptable and I wasn't willing to commit to the scale thing, so I converted it back to an AX10 before long and trimmed the body a bit to deal with the tires rubbing. After wheeling it in that configuration for a while, the wishbone uppers were completely blown out on the axle end and it sat on a shelf for about 10 years collecting dust. I got out of the RC hobby since I was old enough to drive my own real 4x4 at that point, and I figured my money was better spent on upgrades for it.
The Axial AX10 had come out on the scene to rave reviews on this forum as the first factory crawler; previously everyone was having to do very custom things with TLTs, Wheely Kings, Bruisers, etc. Then Axial released the RTR Scorpion version of the AX10 in March 2008 and I ended up picking mine up up around Christmas of that year as a broke-dick teenager.
Even straight out of the box, the AX10 RTR (AX90002) could literally run circles around the modded Nylints. What it lacked in finesse it more than made up with brute power and could easy bash through lines that were extremely difficult with the Nylints. However, the center of gravity was too high, as was the stock gearing, and the springs were way too stiff.
Here are some pictures of the AX10 RTR as it was straight out of the box in 2009.
The first round of upgrades I made in were the Axial 55T motor (AX24007), a 12T 48P pinion gear, 2 green "medium" 2.25 Lb/in springs (AX30215), gray aluminum link and hardware kits (AXA1432 & AXA1411). These upgrades definitely helped the crawlability, but the 12T pinion with the 55T motor lacked the wheel speed necessary for some climbs so I would often run the 20T pinion with the 55T motor. The high-clearance rear links helped a bit, but other than that the aluminum links didn't make that big of a difference. I put one green spring on the front axle, and one on the rear axle to improve articulation and keep torque twist at bay. I also ditched the foams and swapped over to some Proline Moab tires which were the shit back then. Overall, it was still very rollover prone and I am not sure the tradeoff with the 55T motor was worth it and I occasionally swapped back over to the 27T motor to be able to rip around in it.
Around this time, scalers were becoming a big thing, and I loved reading about all the scale builds on this forum. I got the idea that I wanted to build a scaler, so I got an OG SCX10 frame set (AX30525) and an HPI Bronco body. I also got a couple of sets of 7x70mm posts (AXA1431, mine were actually the red ones since gray was out of stock at the time) to use as upper links since the AX10 uppers were way too short for the SCX10 chassis. The AX10 shocks were way too long, and it sat up stupid high. The driveshaft angles were atrocious.
It looked kind of neat, but the loss of performance was unacceptable and I wasn't willing to commit to the scale thing, so I converted it back to an AX10 before long and trimmed the body a bit to deal with the tires rubbing. After wheeling it in that configuration for a while, the wishbone uppers were completely blown out on the axle end and it sat on a shelf for about 10 years collecting dust. I got out of the RC hobby since I was old enough to drive my own real 4x4 at that point, and I figured my money was better spent on upgrades for it.
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