Un-Boxing
The biggest decision for anyone to make when picking up an SCX10 is: which one.
I've decided on the Honcho Trail Ready. Picked this up from the Hobbytown in Concord, CA. Thanks to Chino and Mike. The reason I selected this kit is that, with my experience with the Dingo Trail Ready, it really is one of the most fun kits you can play with out of the box.
All one needs to do is add in batteries for the truck and for the transmitter. In addition to that, one of the differences between the "TR" and the kit versions is that you get the LED lighting kit and have a painted body out of the box. As most of you that know me, I really dislike having to paint r/c car bodies. I know that is part of the build process, but in order for me to really be happy with a paint job, I would probably trash at least two bodies per kit since I don't have the patience to wait for paint to dry (between coats that is ;-)).
The cons of this kit is that you: get plastic links, which I have not found to be a problem in the past, if you drive your scale vehicle like a scale vehicle; the electronics while they do the job to get you going, lacks some adjustment depending on what your crawling goals are.
Speaking of electronics, this is the state of my ESC out of the box, hanging off the electronics box. I went ahead and replaced the servo tape, which while lacking "stickiness," is a PITA to scrape off the ESC!
Because the stock radio only has servo reversing and trims, not to mention is the standard AM variety, I didn't even bother with openning the bag. I have also found that the stock radio does not give you full steering throw. Maybe this is because there is no EPA or Dual Rate, but nonetheless, you want all the steering you want in a crawler. In it's place, I have re-purposed a Tower Hobbies TTX 2.4 gHz system: it fully throws the stock servo into the stops, has steering dual rate to dial back some steering so the servo doesn't burn up, only uses 4 AA batteries instead of 8AA, and it has no antenna to route for a better scale look.
Here is what the stock radio box looks like with the stock receiver. I just dropped in the Tower Hobbies system in its place.
After replacing the receiver, I just took the extra step to re-wrap the wires for a nicer fit, and gave all the wires a little extra slack as the stock setup was way too tight (especially around the servo).
Last but not least, I picked up a couple of Dynamite 1800 mAh nimh battery packs, a good match for my goals with this truck, as a set of 3000 mAh cost twice as much and I have found will run for over 1.5 hours--much longer than I usually play with my crawlers.
Now it's off to the backyard, for at least one dry run before making some simple mods.
