Wanted to introduce myself. The day after Christmas I bought the ‘RTR’ SCX10-3 JLU on a whim. Didn’t know anything about rock crawling besides what the 1:1 rigs can do. But it looked fun and I needed something to do when I take the family out to a 5 acre ranch we have access to.
I then went down the YouTube rabbit hole and watched hours of crawling videos. Based on those videos, I ordered the following parts:
- Vanquish Method 1.9 Wheel 105
- Pro-Line Hyrax Predator compound
- Pro-Line dual foam inserts
- Vitavon Brass portal covers
- Vitavon Panhard mount
- TGH Mild Overdrive gears
- Knight Customs front and rear fenders, rock sliders, door hinges, and grill insert.
First things first: I burned the stock dig servo within the first 5 minutes of running the car in the house. After a quick search, I see this is a common problem with the SCX10.3. I’m going to run without dig for now.
With the new wheels and tires mounted I hit the trails. The ranch has several different kinds of terrain: a long gully that the ground squirrels have burrowed into creating all sort of steps and ruts on the hillside. I climbed the banks with the stock tires and it was very challenging for a beginner. The performance increase with the new tires was a real eye opener! Those same hard lines now turned into just mild lines. I quickly experienced the rush of a proven performance part followed by the realization that I needed to find more thrills elsewhere.
Enter the rock garden! I fired up the weed wacker then the tractor. The property has a small outcropping of boulders, two of them waist high. I cleared the brush, moved a few of the smaller rocks around and this is what I came up with:
The best line is the drop onto the little bridge I made using a just barely wide enough flat rock.
I got hung up on the bridge in the weirdest way:
I thought that was going to be a once in a lifetime save, until my very next run!
There is still a lot of work to be done with the rock garden, but so far this provided me with a couple of hours of entertainment.
Edit: images resized
I then went down the YouTube rabbit hole and watched hours of crawling videos. Based on those videos, I ordered the following parts:
- Vanquish Method 1.9 Wheel 105
- Pro-Line Hyrax Predator compound
- Pro-Line dual foam inserts
- Vitavon Brass portal covers
- Vitavon Panhard mount
- TGH Mild Overdrive gears
- Knight Customs front and rear fenders, rock sliders, door hinges, and grill insert.
First things first: I burned the stock dig servo within the first 5 minutes of running the car in the house. After a quick search, I see this is a common problem with the SCX10.3. I’m going to run without dig for now.
With the new wheels and tires mounted I hit the trails. The ranch has several different kinds of terrain: a long gully that the ground squirrels have burrowed into creating all sort of steps and ruts on the hillside. I climbed the banks with the stock tires and it was very challenging for a beginner. The performance increase with the new tires was a real eye opener! Those same hard lines now turned into just mild lines. I quickly experienced the rush of a proven performance part followed by the realization that I needed to find more thrills elsewhere.
Enter the rock garden! I fired up the weed wacker then the tractor. The property has a small outcropping of boulders, two of them waist high. I cleared the brush, moved a few of the smaller rocks around and this is what I came up with:
The best line is the drop onto the little bridge I made using a just barely wide enough flat rock.
I got hung up on the bridge in the weirdest way:
I thought that was going to be a once in a lifetime save, until my very next run!
There is still a lot of work to be done with the rock garden, but so far this provided me with a couple of hours of entertainment.
Edit: images resized
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