This most amusing I see thread today yes.
best write up of the year goes to... svt923.
Sweet, do I need to PM my address to Badger to get my trophy?
As the newly crowned thread of the year champ, this seems like an appropriate time to do a victory lap.
You know because laps involve driving and there has been a distinct lack of that up until this point. It's amusing, trust me.
A lot of my trucks end up with de facto shelf queen status because I just don't have that much time to drive. If building shelf queens was actually the goal, imagine how much I could save by not installing electronics. Think of how many more trucks I could sorta build!
With that said, I got a call last week offering free run of a private 1:1 off-road park under the guise of testing a technically unreleased new truck. How could any of us say no to that kind of offer. Schedules were cleared and driving was most certainly going to happen.
The car was loaded, the weather was about 60 and sunny; there was no way it wasn't going to be a good day from here.
This was unofficially dubbed "The Day of Wraiths" since we had a brand spankin' new 1.9 Wraith on loan from our way too trusting LHS, a stock Spawn RTR, a "the only thing stock is the cage" type 2.2 Wraith, and my 1.9 WromberX-10. Also a Redcat Gen 8 to test the depth of mud puddles.
There was dirt, mud (both the brown water and wet cement type), and rocks: all on well maintained trail system that cleared of brush and leaves, and devoid of anyone else. It was glorious and all those elements were thrown at my previously undirtied truck.
Since it is front and center, I would like to note the cobbled together CMS setup works perfectly but the JXBros 12V servo definitely does not have the power of the Holmes servo. Who would have thunk when you blatantly copy something but use cheaper components, the end result isn't as good as the original?
One thing that was very noticeable while climbing was the torque twist. The back end is super compliant with the terrain but the rear springs have no problem supporting the weight of the truck. This one is a prime candidate for a swaybar.
Also note the Vanquish tires packed with dirt, while they didn't always clear out quickly, they didn't lose traction either. I believe these will be very good after some more run time.
The position of the electronics under the hood combined with the inner fenders allowed this to venture through water about half way up the doors without even getting anything electronic wet. I drove for about 2 hours then a full throttle blast through a rather small puddle splashed water just right where it got in the space for the extra channel plugs on the receiver. This lead to some reception problems where the receiver would go into signal loss failsafe when it got more than 5 feet from me. Once it dried out, all was back to normal and crisis was averted.
We did the normal thing of testing the typical performance traits of all forms of Wraiths back to back on all the same lines. There were things that the 1.9 versions did better, there were things the 2.2 versions did better, blah, blah. Then we got to the good stuff!
https://imgflip.com/gif-maker
Did we go all out KOH style, WFO rock bouncing drag races? Yes, dear reader, that is exactly what happened. And not just one time for enough footage to make a GIF, we spend over an hour just lining up the trucks and blasting full throttle down this rock covered hill in different combinations. My 1.9 vs. the new factory 1.9, the factory 1.9 vs. the 2.2 Spawn, modded 1.9 vs. modded 2.2, etc. This was about the most fun you can have with a solid axle truck, so much so that rock bouncing drag races are almost a certainty at upcoming events here. By the way, that new 1.9 Wraith came out completely unharmed, plastic links and all.
In the end, my haphazardly thrown together pile of parts performs way better than it probably should. I'm happy and things should get even better with the addition of a swaybar. Oh, it needs more power too. I become less and less understanding of people who say 35T brushed motors on 3S is all the wheel speed they ever need. Feel free to argue with me on that point because we are re-entering the world of furthering conversations on RCC.
Hold tight for the full video, it is just a jumble of fantastic chaos.
