RC drifting is similar to scale rock crawling. It is oddly satisfying, rewarding and relaxing. Don't know it until you try it!
There was a time when I was into bashing RC's and I thought crawling would be slow, boring and lame and not hold my interest. Obviously, that turned out to be far from the truth and scale rock crawlers hooked me like no other segment of RC has ever done before! Don't knock it until you try it! I've always been terrible at that and often knock thing before I try them. Learning to eat my words many times over the years has me making this assumption much less as an old man.
Anyway, I was interested in RC drifting years ago when everybody was putting PVC tires on AWD touring cars, but that wasn't much fun and definitely didn't look realistic. Then it progressed to CS, or counter steer, drift chassis that were still AWD, but the rear wheels were dramatically overdriven so that you could get the rear end sliding while having to counter steer like in a 1:1 drift car. I had a Sakura D4 AWD and never found this fun nor could I get the hang of it. Now we have RWD RC drift cars thanks mostly to gyros. Never thought I'd see the day where we would be able to controllably drift an RWD RC car.
Fast forward a decade or so and Traxxas announces the 4-Tec Drift Mustang. That car can be thanked (or blamed) for really sucking me back into drifting. I thought it was crazy that Traxxas would enter such a small niche market. Apparently RC drifting has blown up across the world. And just look at that body...it's beautiful! The looks sucked me in. And I knew Traxxas wouldn't release a drift car unless anybody could drift it. I am always up for new challenges. I love learning about new hobbies and trying to learn how to do them. The only bad part was that I do not have a local drift track. This means I will be relegated to parking lots and open basketball or tennis courts if I can find them. That was another reason to choose a durable basher brand like Traxxas for my first RWD drift car. This Traxxas Mustang kept popping up in my social media feed and eventually I had to have one. These were only sold in stores for the first few weeks and my LHS did not have them, but the LHS in the next town over had them in every color except green. No biggie because I wanted the "orange" AKA copper one anyway.
Isn't she pretty?! Next to scale truck guys, the drifting crowd does scale right. Traxxas gives you a good base to start. But the drift builds you will see are unreal, especially for Lexan bodies.
After a bunch of practice and learning to control my throttle trigger, I have gotten this far in my progress at drifting. Throttle control is uber important and that is something I have problems with. I live my life a quarter-mile at a time. Not really that reckless in my "mature" years, but I do like going WFO in my truck, on my motorcycles and on RC. I'm a throttle jockey or, more accurately, a throttle junkie. Learning to modulate the throttle and steering is critical in drifting. You can't go from stopped to WFO and back to stopped or full lock left to full lock right or you're just not going to be good at drifting. Modulation is the key.
Click the image below to see my current progress. It is a video when you click on the image.
There was a time when I was into bashing RC's and I thought crawling would be slow, boring and lame and not hold my interest. Obviously, that turned out to be far from the truth and scale rock crawlers hooked me like no other segment of RC has ever done before! Don't knock it until you try it! I've always been terrible at that and often knock thing before I try them. Learning to eat my words many times over the years has me making this assumption much less as an old man.
Anyway, I was interested in RC drifting years ago when everybody was putting PVC tires on AWD touring cars, but that wasn't much fun and definitely didn't look realistic. Then it progressed to CS, or counter steer, drift chassis that were still AWD, but the rear wheels were dramatically overdriven so that you could get the rear end sliding while having to counter steer like in a 1:1 drift car. I had a Sakura D4 AWD and never found this fun nor could I get the hang of it. Now we have RWD RC drift cars thanks mostly to gyros. Never thought I'd see the day where we would be able to controllably drift an RWD RC car.
Fast forward a decade or so and Traxxas announces the 4-Tec Drift Mustang. That car can be thanked (or blamed) for really sucking me back into drifting. I thought it was crazy that Traxxas would enter such a small niche market. Apparently RC drifting has blown up across the world. And just look at that body...it's beautiful! The looks sucked me in. And I knew Traxxas wouldn't release a drift car unless anybody could drift it. I am always up for new challenges. I love learning about new hobbies and trying to learn how to do them. The only bad part was that I do not have a local drift track. This means I will be relegated to parking lots and open basketball or tennis courts if I can find them. That was another reason to choose a durable basher brand like Traxxas for my first RWD drift car. This Traxxas Mustang kept popping up in my social media feed and eventually I had to have one. These were only sold in stores for the first few weeks and my LHS did not have them, but the LHS in the next town over had them in every color except green. No biggie because I wanted the "orange" AKA copper one anyway.
Isn't she pretty?!
Next to scale truck guys, the drifting crowd does scale right. Traxxas gives you a good base to start. But the drift builds you will see are unreal, especially for Lexan bodies.After a bunch of practice and learning to control my throttle trigger, I have gotten this far in my progress at drifting. Throttle control is uber important and that is something I have problems with. I live my life a quarter-mile at a time.
Not really that reckless in my "mature" years, but I do like going WFO in my truck, on my motorcycles and on RC. I'm a throttle jockey or, more accurately, a throttle junkie. Learning to modulate the throttle and steering is critical in drifting. You can't go from stopped to WFO and back to stopped or full lock left to full lock right or you're just not going to be good at drifting. Modulation is the key.Click the image below to see my current progress. It is a video when you click on the image.
