tech question…..im currently awaiting delivery of an hpi mini trophy truck …. my intent is to build a 4wi suspention rock crawler/trail rig i have misc. parts from an axial scx10 i bought used and beat more than sunk money into ..but anywho i want to use either the whole locked diff or the locker block in it in the rear only diff on the hpi would you know if it will fit? i want to run a vxl3s esc to the brushed motor statistically the vxl claims it will run a brushed motor my question is will it burn up the brushes faster than stock esc in the trophy truck?
Tim H. (via Facebook)

Cubby- Yo hey Tim, what’s up and thanks for the questions. How about last one first. Will a Traxxas VXL-3S speed controller burn up brushes faster than the stock HPI Mini Trophy Truck speedo? Yes, there might be a slight difference in brush wear between the two speedos, but I’ve never personally performed such tests, so I can’t say first hand if there truly is or not. If there was a difference I’d guess it would be very, very small. However, I will say this, if you are truly concerned about brush wear- take the extra hour and properly water dip (read seat/break-in) the brushes. Properly seated brushes yield much longer motor life, that I can assure you from first hand testing. And… if you ask a dozen people the proper way to seat brushes you’ll probably get a dozen different answers. My personal “standard method” (which came from Jammin’ Jim S) is dipping the motor in water while applying a low voltage load until you notice the color of the water starting to change. This can take anywhere between 10-45 minutes depending on the motor and voltage used.
Now, about your first question. If I read it properly, it sounds like you are making one heck of a unique trail truck. It sounds like you are making a trail/scaler machine (with a locked rear diff) out of an HPI Mini Trophy Truck. Good for you, unique projects are great fun. Will the locked rear diff parts from an Axial SCX10 fit in the Mini-Trophy truck? I have absolutely zero clue, nor am I going to tear two trucks apart to find out. You have both trucks in hand (or will soon), give it a try and let us know. If they aren’t compatible there is always the old standby of JB Weld to lock that rear diff solid as a rock. Good luck, and shoot us pics/vid of that beast when you are done.

I am pretty sure someone has emailed about SMC Lipos, but if not, I am. I have owned a few SMC 2s packs and just ordered some more and I have had really good luck. I have also followed the SMC Lipo Battery Lipo thread on rctech.net and there are a lot of good things being said about them. The reason I am sending this email is because I think they sell and produce a better battery than the gensace 5800 that won the lipo shootout. Their batteries are also less expensive. Now before you jump to conclusions, I have owned many gensace lipos and I really do like them, I just think these smc lipos have an edge. Anyway’s, it would be nice to see SMC lipos in your next lipo shootout. Also, if there isn’t a shootout planned in the near future, I think posting a link about these batteries would be helpful to the bashing community. Good batteries at a cheap price are hard to find sometimes.
P.S. – I really do enjoy your site!
DMW

Cubby- Yo hey DMW, shoot Brian your snail mail for a free BSRC sticker pack. Hopefully you are as good of a spokesman for BSRC as you are for SMC Batteries. We haven’t reviewed any SMC batteries for a while so I have no clue if they are any good now days or not. I don’t know if we’ve contacted them lately, but I’ll put Brian and Kevin (our new ad rep guy) on it to see if they are up for a solid third party review. If they are truly after a piece of the enormous basher market maybe they’ll hook up with us and advertise. Btw… we do have a couple of Lipo reviews coming up in the very near future, two packs from A Main Hobbies/ProTek. We started the review process a couple of weeks ago, maybe one of the reviews will be ready in the next week or so. Not to spill any beans, but what we’ve learned about their packs should make for some interesting reading for you guys. Lastly on the Lipo topic- I have been awfully impressed with the last Pro-Match Lipo we reviewed. No, it doesn’t put out the most voltage we’ve ever seen on the West Mountain, however it has done something I consider to be more impressive- it has put up with crazy amounts of abuse (for over a hundred cycles) and still puts out solid numbers while always stayed well balanced. The pack I’m talking about is their 2S 5000 mah pack that we’ve used for numerous truck and charger reviews. We’ve subjected that pack to multiple runs at 60 amps on the West Mountain, we’ve charged it at 20 amps (multiple times in a row with no cool down period), and run it in high draw 8th scalers, yet today, after over 100 cycles, it performs like a champ. That is truly the most impressive thing a Lipo can do in my eyes- to withstand hard use and still last.

This is the second Cub Report I’ve typed up using 9 fingers. A couple of years ago while catching trucks falling out of the sky at our i-Hobby demo one of my fingers got chewed up by a spur gear, and I chewed up another one on Saturday. I tend to be pretty core though, I’m quite certain that even if all ten of my digits were FUBAR I’d be typing this out with my nose, one slow letter at a time. As they say- the show must go on.

Speaking of show… I’m official tired of the Vettel runaway show and want to change the channel. Even the uber robotic charisma of Kimi Räikkönen can’t overcome how tired I am of a Vettel dominating yet another F1 race. “Sigh”. Maybe the engine changes next year will put someone new at the front of the pack.

Even though I could easily bench race about F1 or Supercross for a couple thousand words a week, Brian insists that I actually touch on rc. “Double Sigh”.

We got to talking about “bubbles” the other day in the office, specifically it started with Bitcoins, then made the rounds to housing, the stock market, and then of course to tulips. The conversation eventually made a turn to rc, that’s what we eat/breathe/sleep around here, and because our hobby has never had a speculative “bubble”, it turned to talk about HPI and Associated.

It’s been a long time since HPI has announced a new car. Yes, sure, they’ve had some issues of late, no doubt part of the reason for their lack of newly announce cars, but is that even a bad thing? We’ve been “trained” for years now to expect a new car announcement from a manufacture every month or so, so when we don’t see it we kinda say to ourselves, “OMG, HPI hasn’t announced anything for like 6 months, they must be screwed!”. Hopefully the recent lack of new releases leads to a series of all new and uber HPI product for us all to enjoy.

Associated is a good example of a company that announces a new car very frequently. They just announced their new Apex 18th scale TC (and MT) which is basically their old RC18 platform re-badged under their Qualifier Series of bashing gear. Just what good is it to the hobby that AE decided to put out an old design under a new logo?

What causes an economic “bubble” is when the price of an item has been pumped up to be much greater than its intrinsic value. For example, the “new” Associated QS 18th scalers are old tech, yet their price is right in-line with what new tech would/should be. The product itself doesn’t do anything to take the hobby forward, yet it costs as much as a better, newer, product should. And its not like AE is the only company doing it, several of them are (hint, hint, TRX).

So how does this all tie in together? Putting out old and overpriced gear is bad for the hobby. Putting out new, original, and superior product is good. I think we’d all like to see manufactures put the time/money/effort into actual new product once every 6 months than to put out some old re-hashed car every 2 weeks. Old/overpriced gear leaves consumers ticked off, new innovative product makes for long term hobbyists.

Yes, it’s certainly tempting to make the short term cash of putting out a new car every week and filling shelves with inferior product. A lot of the makers and shakers in the hobby are getting older and staring right at retirement in the next decade, and a few of them act like they don’t care if they kill off the hobby 15 years down the road.

All I’m saying is that all that old regurgitated gear is wayyyyy overpriced for what it is, and that consumers deserve better. The companies putting out all this regurgitated gear should care more about their customers and the long term future of our hobby.

That’s it for this week ya freaks, support your local hobby shops and bash spots when ya can.

YOUR Cub Reporter

Have you checked out the BigSquidRC YouTube channel? If not, HERE is the link.

i have to say, the scale winch by integy looks freakin awesome! i really want one but i dont have a crawler, so, my question is, do you think it will fit on the my stampede? maybe with a little modding? i really want one but i dont want to drop the cash and it not fit.
Mason

Cubby- Hey what’s up Mason, thanks for the email and be sure to shoot Brian your address for a free sticker pack.

I soooo don’t know anything about scalers or winches. So… I’ll just make up an answer.

Having worked around Brian, Bill, and Adam now for such a long time now, I would have to say it would be no problem to mount that winch on your Stampede. I say this for two reasons- 1. I’ve seen Bill do things with JB Weld that would shock Stephen
Hawking, and 2. the Integy comes with a relatively “universal” mounting plate. So ya, buy one, bolt it to something solid on the front of your Pede then shoot us some pics, we wanna see how trick it looks when it’s done.

Question about the 1/12 scale HPI Mini Trophy Truck
I just want to say I enjoy reading all your articles on your website.

Do you know if hop-up parts going to be available for this kit?
I did a major overkill in this truck, I put a mamba max pro esc and a reedy sonic 4t running on 3s lipo. Im pretty amazed that for being so skinny it handles pretty well. With my setup its kind of loud, it reminds me of the Ofna Hyper 10 I had running it with an 1/8 scale motor but loud is good. This thing hauls
Thanks
Mike

Cubby- Yes Mike, I do believe you are a BSRC kind of guy, where “major overkill” is pretty much the norm.

And yes, I can only imagine what a beat the HPI Mini-Trophy Truck is on 3S brushless power.

One of the BSRC Bash Crew (Jim S) has gotten in a lot of time with the MTT. Straight out of the box it doesn’t handle that well so Jim put in the time and got it to handle/jump much better. If I remember correctly he spent most of his time on the
rear suspension. Personally I felt like HPI just missed the mark with the MTT, it didn’t handle well out of the box and it was a pain to work on. Oh and it was about an inch too narrow, which made it barrel roll like mad when crashing.

So… are there after-market parts for it? There are some out there. For example, GH Racing has a few aluminum parts for the MTT. Other than that, there aren’t many out there.

Not having a ton of aftermarket support can make the MTT fun in another way- finding parts from other vehicles that will work. If you are dialed with a kick ass local hobby shop you can take your truck in and find other shock towers, shocks, hubs, a-arms, etc that will either bolt up or you can modify to work. Yes, that is a bit more time intensive than just clicking “buy” off the GH Racing website, but once you are done you’ll truly have an uber one-of-a-kind machine that will astonish the guys at your local bash spot.

you guys did a radio shoot out a while back i was wondering why you did not include airtronics? or is any not worth considering, how would the best airtronics compare to futaba 4pks
thank you roger

Cubby- Yo hey Roger, thanks for taking the time to shoot us an email.

Why was Airtronics not in our last transmitter shootout? Pretty simple answer to that one- they don’t talk to us. We’ve tried contacting them multiple times, but they don’t/won’t work with us on any level.

Have we torqued them off at some time in the past? Maybe (read probably) so, I’ve definitely offended just about everyone there is to offend in the hobby industry, but the fact remains, “Cubby” is a very small part of BSRC, and I certainly don’t
speak for anyone else here. And more importantly, regardless of what kind of garbage I spew, BSRC could be considered to be one of the, if not the, leader in rc bashing websites. If Airtronics really cared about promoting their products to the bashing crowd they would work with us to some extent.

I can say first hand that Futaba actively wants bashers using their products, as does Tactic, Spektrum, and HobbyKing. These companies know that bashers are what make this hobby go-around, and have no problem catering to them. IMO, if you want to
support companies that support bashing I would spend my hard earned cash with them instead of other companies that might think they are “above” the bashing crowd.

That’s it for this week gang, shoot me your questions, answers, rants, raves, and manifesto’s to Cubby at BigSquidRC.com. If your email hits the front page you’ll get a free sticker pack, if I proclaim yours as “letter of the month” we’ll totally hook ya up with one of our new t-shirts.

YOUR Cub Reporter

“Scale” short course comments

As a long time – 30 years – RC enthusiast and racer, I feel that you guys are way off the mark with your “scale” comments lately regarding short course. The class will never grow if we don’t move it more and more towards performance. We cannot go back to Slashes and hard “realistic” tires. Do that, and the best selling RC kits in a long time will wither and die.
Also – dish wheels are not only scale and realistic – they look cool.
Tony F.

Cubby- Yo hey Tony, thanks for the email and congrats, I’ve just proclaimed yours as “letter of the month”, thereby entitling you to a free (and quite uber) BigSquidRC t-shirt. Be sure and shoot Brian your snail mail and shirt size so he can hook ya up.

Don’t ya just love America? The land where everyone can have their very own opinion, one that can never be swayed.

There is a reason why DE Racing and JConcepts are selling “dish” short course rims, people like you Tony. You dig that look and that is totally your right, it’s part of the beauty of America.

However… my view is different than yours. I regularly “quiz” muggles on things like “How does this truck look to you?”, and I’ve found they immediately warm-up to a scale looking SCT, and come up with some pretty baffling answers when shown an 8th scale buggy or 10th scale “stadium truck”. It only goes to reason that if most “outsiders” find SCT’s attractive and inviting then that’s what we should be racing.

And… going to scale looking tires has absolutely nothing to do with going to a rock hard compound tire. On the full scale side of things, I don’t know if you’ve held a full scale SCT race tire in your hands lately, I have, and I can assure you
it was not composed of a rock hard compound. On the small scale side of things, a tire in M4 compound doesn’t “look” any less scale than one molded in the rock hard stock Traxxas compound.

On that subject, do you think it’s impossible to have a great performing rc tire in a “scale” tread? I can tell you from first hand experience that the stock tires on the Axial EXO Terra Buggy are phenomenal. They provide great mechanical grip on blue groove and drive like champs out in the fluff. Nobody talks about the EXO tires because they are rarely raced, but I’ve driven them on well over a dozen tracks from coast to coast, and while they do not give quite the traction of the preferred tire at each track, they are Amazing on a wide variety of surfaces. Given some development time I have no doubt that a company like Pro-Line could put out scale looking tires that would amaze you. Based on this I see absolutely no reason why scale looking tires are not mandatory in the SCT and SCB classes.

You say “The class will never grow if we don’t move it more and more towards performance.”. Here I think you sound like some sort of hard-core long time rc racer. Racing isn’t about knocking tenths off the track record, it’s about beating the guys you lined up against. Rc racing is horrible about it all being about knocking out faster lap times at any cost, not about actual competition, and really that’s one of the many reasons rc racing has become the joke that it has. And you say you’ve been in the hobby for “30 years”, but if you actually knew anything about rc racing you’d know that faster does not mean more fun or higher turnouts, far from it.

Lastly… you mention that dish wheels look realistic? Realistic to what, cars running on the Bonneville Salt Flats? In case you’ve never seen a full scale SCT wheel/tire combo in real life, HERE are three pictures. The pics are representative of what every truck in the TORC and LOORRS series are running. The photos were taking by me at a TORC race last season and I can absolutely assure you I didn’t PS them to remove a dish (LOL). If you still think I’m full of it simply Google Image search “TORC Racing” and see how long it takes before the first “dish” wheel pops up.

And finally… have you ever thought about what you can do for your hobby? Just because you can run UFO looking dish wheels on your SCT does that mean you should? How many muggles see you driving/racing each year? Do you want to leave them with the impression “OMG what the hell are those things?” or would you rather leave them with “OMG those trucks looked awesome!”?

Hey Cubby, I have a question to you I have an hpi blitz with all stock.. im looking
to upgrade it with a brushless system Im thinking about buying the castle creations
sv2 4600 So here is my question: Can I use this brushless system with the stock hpi
radio and receiver??
Thanks! (no name given)

Cubby- Hello Mr No Name. I’m about all written out after Tony’s email so I’ll keep it brief. Yes, a Castle system will work with your stock HPI radio gear, but I’d recommend the 3800kv SCT system for your Blitz. Why? Because it has a bit more torque and it’s a lower kv, meaning it’ll be easier to gear properly, it will run cooler, and it’ll have more low end snap.

YOUR Cub Reporter

* Motor mount accepts all common 56mm motors and the enormous Castle 2028 motor
* Room for blower fans
* Main chassis made from 4.1mm heat treated aluminum.
* Velcro battery synching system with plenty of room for wide, tall LiPos.
* Chassis designed with 4 degrees of anti-squat geometry in the rear for quicker acceleration
* Battery tray adjusts to 3 different positions forwards and aft for tuning weight distribution
* Available with optional 1/4 scale servo mounting plate
* Also accepts KD’s Direct Drive Gearbox

Street price for the Kershaw 5SC chassis is $430 and they are available right now. For more information hit up the official Kershaw Designs Website.

It’s been a long work week, treat yourself to a TGIF Mystery Link.

We were the first to break the news a few weeks ago on our Google Plus show, Cubby then talked a little about all the details we had. Then again when all the other websites were claiming HPI was bought, we assured people that it wasn’t the case. HPI has now confirmed what we have been saying all along since we broke the news.

Here is the official announcement from HPI Racing about their exclusive distribution deal with Hobbico/Great Planes.

“In light of recent media speculation, HPI would like to confirm that it has appointed Hobbico/Great Planes Model Distributors as their exclusive distributor for HPI RC Cars in North America. This distribution partnership is a further extension of the HPI’s exclusive distribution network that is operating very successfully throughout the rest of the world.

HPI’s dedication to product development, marketing collaborations and our distribution partners will ensure HPI will remain the front runner in the worldwide RC market.”

So there you have it folks, expect big from HPI and Great Planes in the years to come. For more information on all of HPI’s fine products HERE is the link to their official website.

Another week has flown by and is in the books, why not give your luck a try on a TGIF Mystery Link?

25 days, 1 hour and 42 minutes until the cars roll off in Melbourne, “sigh”. It seems like it takes forever for the F1 season to get started.

The “big” story from Dallas last night (Saturday) was why rookie Honda/Geico rider Zach Bell was allowed to race after literally crashing his brain out in his qualifier. Bell’s crash in his qual was one of the worst crashes I’ve ever seen (massive face plant after a triple), and from my big-screen it looked like he was knocked unconscious. Yes, racing is important, but not as important as actually breathing, remembering your name, etc. Seeing crashes like that (and Bell’s other big crash in the main) makes me feel good that I’m only climbing drivers stands now days, not swing’n a leg over a 450.

And on to rc…

WireGate 2013 rages on, last week Jeff from Fantom sent out another response to the ROAR banning of Trinity D3.5 based 17.5 motors. It seems Fantom sent out a wire sample to an independent lab who used a Smart Scope MVP OGP and it was determined the diameter of the wire was .031556″ (.8015 mm). ROAR posted a now infamous pic showing they measured .84173 mm. One of the two doesn’t know how to measure the diameter of a piece of wire, and at this point it doesn’t really matter who, Trinity is the big winner here regardless of how thick the wire might or might not be. Congrats ROAR, the exposure you’ve given Trinity on this one is priceless.

In more rc news…

It seems a lot of consumers believe that the Champaign based behemoth Hobbico has “bought” HPI USA. We first “broke” the news a few weeks ago during one of our Google+ LIVE shows, but the news is that Hobbico/Great Planes is the exclusive distributor for HPI in North America, not that they own the entire HPI USA company. We’ve spoken to multiple Hobbico people at length (in person) on the subject and they assure us they did NOT buy HPI USA, they simply bought up their inventory and got exclusive distribution rights. It sounded like HPI USA was having some financial ills so Hobbico stepped in and bought their inventory to shore them back up. That is the official word right now folks, but we can expect to learn more on March 1st when the “official” PR goes out.

Also…

Last week we posted our BigSquidRC Transmitter Shootout #2. If you haven’t checked it out HERE is the link. We certainly dig shootouts as we feel they are the best way of truly finding out how a product stacks up. Who won? The Futaba? One of the Turnigy’s? The Spektrum? Hit the link!

We’ve been working on a Quadcopter Shootout for some time now. We grabbed the Traxxas, HeliMax and Ares quads and have been bashing them like escaped mental patients (all in the name of science of course, LOL). We finished up our testing at Slot and Wing Hobbies in Champaign Illinois on Saturday. Our categories were- 1. Price, 2. Looks, 3. Durability, 4. Payload, 5. Ease of Flying, 6. Run-time, and 7. Features. The quadcopter shootout goes up Tuesday February 26th, even if you are a surface guy you’ll have a blast reading this one.

Lastly…

Another big week here on BigSquidRC, we’ll be posting our review of the Vaterra Kalahari and TrakPower DPS power supply (plus another surprise review), we’ll be posting all sorts of cool rc news during the week, and of course we’ll be talk’n the rc smack on our BigSquidRC LIVE Google+ show at 9 pm CST on Wednesday night.

That’s it for this week guys, have a fantastic week and support your local hobby shops and bash spots when you can.

YOUR Cub Reporter

HPI Racing has just released a new video of their Ken Block WR8 FLUX in some wild action at their European warehouse. Watch the video to see not only some sweet drift action, but also what rc is all about, having some good old fashioned fun. Don’t forget to check out the HPI Website for more information on all their products.

While you are surfing the web today, why not check out a BigSquidRC TGIF Mystery Link?

* Photo realistic die-cut premium vinyl decals include window frames, head lights, tail lights and more!
* Front and rear 3D light buckets
* Overspray film and vinyl window masks make painting fast and simple
* A decal instruction sheet is included for decal placement
* The body has dimple marks for body post drill locations
* Molded from clear polycarbonate plastic for durability and long life
* Clear body (finished example shown)
* This is an officially licensed replica
* Part #108064

Expect a street price of right around $30 for the new Scion body and you can get more information on the official HPI Website.

Are you a big fan of HPI? Find more HPI news right HERE on BigSquidRC.