MOfroggy
Newbie
We all have reasons for doing what we do and I wanted to give you some reasons for building your own AX-10 Scorpion rock crawler.
I am 62 years old with the reflexes of a cat ( a really old cat!) When I decided to get back into the RC world I realized that the risk/reward ratio of me trying to build and fly a RC plane were skewed definitely in favor of the risk favor. I made the critical error of thinking that I could accomplish the same thing on the ground, so I bought a Revo 3.3. (Actually I bought 2 of them, thinking that I could interest my friends in racing with me. I now have 2 Revo3.3’s that have only had the break in gas plus 2 more tank full’s for sale if you are interested!)
Finally I came to my senses and realized that all of my friends with cat like reflexes were either dead or didn’t care about going “scale” fast and running my $500+ toys into a wall and me giving them a hard time for messing up a perfectly good toy.
I decided that the natural thing to do was to buy a T-Maxx electric since it wasn’t so high maintenance and didn’t go as fast . Boy was I wrong about the fast (but I was right about the lower maintenance). After realizing that control with any racing type RC car coming is different than control going and not being able to figure it out in the .200 nanoseconds during which it was critical, I decided that I needed to move on to something else
I got into the RC Crawler business due to the influence of the great guys at “Wings and Wheels” hobby shop in Tyler Texas. They were very instrumental in showing me the good things about Crawling. I think they realized that I needed to slow down a bit and gain more control. There were two people there that had input. Matt and Jacob. Jacob talked me into letting him build me a Wheely King crawler. He did an excellent job. He did a lot of research on RCCrawler.com and made the best WK crawler available. I took it out to my rock pile and I was very impressed with what it would do. It was a LOT slower and more controllable...more my speed! I was very impressed with what it would do and how much control I had over it. It was a lot more capable than I was. If I didn’t pick the right line I realized that it was my fault, not the trucks.
I did the e-bay thing and ended up with 3 or 4 “ready to run, only add batteries" deals and Matt volunteered to take on the task of checking things out and making them ready to run. I did make a couple of good deals that were kind of ready to run but the rest of them were disasters. Matt is still working on them as we speak trying to make good deals (in my opinion) into something that will work.
My advice to anyone that buys a crawler on E-Bay is to make a bid with the expectation of spending 30% more than you paid getting it up to what you expected.
The next step was a visit to the RCCrawler.com site!!!!!. I found the AX-10 build site and I was hooked! I have an engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin and I am always looking for things that scratch my itch for doing things with my hands and things that satisfy my need for doing things for myself. I bought an AX10 and after reading all of the hype on rccrawler.com I couldn’t wait to get mine. When it got here I kind of treated it like a Christmas gift. I waited till everybody else had gone to bed and opened the box and savored everything in there! Plastic, Metal, Tools, decals,,,,!!!!!
I went through the build in about 5 evenings of two to three hours per session. There were a couple of hiccups on my part because I didn’t believe that the parts that they said were there were REALLY there, but after a careful search on my part, yeah, they were there, I just overlooked them.
I finally completed the build (MY BUILD) and I was as proud as I could be. There is something about building something like a crawler from a kit that is different. You know EVERY nut, bolt and screw in it. You also know that if something goes wrong, where to go to fix it since you put your time and effort into making it.
I took MY AX10 out today, a virgin, never run creation, and exposed it to my course and it preformed way past my expectations. Everything has it’s limitations and like I have always said, “It’s not me and my version of my crawler against you and your version of a crawler, it’s you and your crawler against the rocks”. I put the AX-10 through the same course as the modified WK.The AX10 preformed much better than the WK. The flex on the AX10 was 90 degrees on several occasions and seemed to improve as time went on. I have not reached the limitations of the AX-10, I have only reached my limitations as the “driver”.
If you have been thinking about getting the AX10 kit and building it yourself, trust me, it will be worth your time and money. It is a quality kit with good instructions that will get you to a Crawler that you know in and out and will be proud of.
I am sorry that it has taken me so long to tell you about the experience of “making” my own Crawler from the AX-10 kit but I wanted to convey to you the satisfaction I have experienced in assembling my own creation and seeing it run way past anything I had experienced before.
Thanks for reading this far!
MOfroggy
I am 62 years old with the reflexes of a cat ( a really old cat!) When I decided to get back into the RC world I realized that the risk/reward ratio of me trying to build and fly a RC plane were skewed definitely in favor of the risk favor. I made the critical error of thinking that I could accomplish the same thing on the ground, so I bought a Revo 3.3. (Actually I bought 2 of them, thinking that I could interest my friends in racing with me. I now have 2 Revo3.3’s that have only had the break in gas plus 2 more tank full’s for sale if you are interested!)
Finally I came to my senses and realized that all of my friends with cat like reflexes were either dead or didn’t care about going “scale” fast and running my $500+ toys into a wall and me giving them a hard time for messing up a perfectly good toy.
I decided that the natural thing to do was to buy a T-Maxx electric since it wasn’t so high maintenance and didn’t go as fast . Boy was I wrong about the fast (but I was right about the lower maintenance). After realizing that control with any racing type RC car coming is different than control going and not being able to figure it out in the .200 nanoseconds during which it was critical, I decided that I needed to move on to something else
I got into the RC Crawler business due to the influence of the great guys at “Wings and Wheels” hobby shop in Tyler Texas. They were very instrumental in showing me the good things about Crawling. I think they realized that I needed to slow down a bit and gain more control. There were two people there that had input. Matt and Jacob. Jacob talked me into letting him build me a Wheely King crawler. He did an excellent job. He did a lot of research on RCCrawler.com and made the best WK crawler available. I took it out to my rock pile and I was very impressed with what it would do. It was a LOT slower and more controllable...more my speed! I was very impressed with what it would do and how much control I had over it. It was a lot more capable than I was. If I didn’t pick the right line I realized that it was my fault, not the trucks.
I did the e-bay thing and ended up with 3 or 4 “ready to run, only add batteries" deals and Matt volunteered to take on the task of checking things out and making them ready to run. I did make a couple of good deals that were kind of ready to run but the rest of them were disasters. Matt is still working on them as we speak trying to make good deals (in my opinion) into something that will work.
My advice to anyone that buys a crawler on E-Bay is to make a bid with the expectation of spending 30% more than you paid getting it up to what you expected.
The next step was a visit to the RCCrawler.com site!!!!!. I found the AX-10 build site and I was hooked! I have an engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin and I am always looking for things that scratch my itch for doing things with my hands and things that satisfy my need for doing things for myself. I bought an AX10 and after reading all of the hype on rccrawler.com I couldn’t wait to get mine. When it got here I kind of treated it like a Christmas gift. I waited till everybody else had gone to bed and opened the box and savored everything in there! Plastic, Metal, Tools, decals,,,,!!!!!
I went through the build in about 5 evenings of two to three hours per session. There were a couple of hiccups on my part because I didn’t believe that the parts that they said were there were REALLY there, but after a careful search on my part, yeah, they were there, I just overlooked them.
I finally completed the build (MY BUILD) and I was as proud as I could be. There is something about building something like a crawler from a kit that is different. You know EVERY nut, bolt and screw in it. You also know that if something goes wrong, where to go to fix it since you put your time and effort into making it.
I took MY AX10 out today, a virgin, never run creation, and exposed it to my course and it preformed way past my expectations. Everything has it’s limitations and like I have always said, “It’s not me and my version of my crawler against you and your version of a crawler, it’s you and your crawler against the rocks”. I put the AX-10 through the same course as the modified WK.The AX10 preformed much better than the WK. The flex on the AX10 was 90 degrees on several occasions and seemed to improve as time went on. I have not reached the limitations of the AX-10, I have only reached my limitations as the “driver”.
If you have been thinking about getting the AX10 kit and building it yourself, trust me, it will be worth your time and money. It is a quality kit with good instructions that will get you to a Crawler that you know in and out and will be proud of.
I am sorry that it has taken me so long to tell you about the experience of “making” my own Crawler from the AX-10 kit but I wanted to convey to you the satisfaction I have experienced in assembling my own creation and seeing it run way past anything I had experienced before.
Thanks for reading this far!
MOfroggy
