Losing grip – Akela: a new dawn for my SCX10
If you’re in this hobby you probably have the same kind of bug I have, always itching in the back of your head: things could be improved. And when they finally cannot, up pops ideas for the next project, which could be either just slightly better than the last one, or something entirely different.
My SCX10 is a case in point, and I am happy to report that it has now matured to its third a final iteration. A while ago, longer than I want to admit, Club5Racing were kind enough to send me a bunch of upgrades for the crawler formerly known as Viper. Things were looking good, very good. Then Amain chipped in, and I knew that in order to make it all justice, a new paintwork was needed.
First Viper Blue. Good. Then Viper Yellow. Better. Akela: third time lucky?
Yes, I think so. The new paint job is easily the best of the three (and the most difficult to pull off!), and the accessories take it to a level it just wasn’t on before.
I know that there are better looking trucks out there, but I am very happy with this one! It was a lot of work, but a labour of love. Thinking of it – is “work” really an apt term when we’re talking hobby?
Now, admittedly there’s an absolute s**tload of upgrades on this truck, I do not dare estimate how much it all costs. But mind that some of the things that I think really make a difference, come in cheap. Two of my favourites are the hinges and the headlight guards. The hinges add a crucial bit of extra detail, and the headlight guards is a very easy way to give it a bit more personality. If I were to spend only ten bucks on cosmetic upgrades, I would go for the hinges. They look so much better than stickers!
The accessories from club5racing are of excellent quality and a joy to work with. Fit has always been excellent, as well as the level of detail. The screws are miniscule though, a set of tweezers and a portion of patience helps a lot. And mind that a 3D-printed bumper will never be as sturdy as one in stainless steel, so it’s probably a bad idea to drop your car on the winch guard. When driving scale though, that’s not much of a problem really.
There’s a couple of upgrades that can’t be seen on the pictures below that are worth mentioning. One is the servo relocation kit, a redesign of the front steering geometry which uses a winch servo mount for the steering servo. This moves the servo forward a fair bit – for a more forward weight bias – and toughens up the lanyard mount a lot. It looked as if it improved steering angle slightly as well, but since I didn’t properly measure I can’t tell for sure. There’s a picture of it among the thumbnails, neat thing.
Second, the “Ezon” light kit, a plug and play light unit that works very much like the Traxxas Pro scale LED light set for the TRX-4. Just as with the Traxxas set, there’s two circuits: one that attaches to the body for all the LED light connections, and a control unit on the chassis, wired into the receiver. Between the two there’s just a single servo cable, making it very easy to connect and disconnect once set up. Below is a picture of the unit that goes on the body, in my case taped to the underside of the interior. Mind that the wiring is still a work in progress, it will get cleaned up.
It’s a great way to add functional break lights, turn lights, reverse lights – the lot. In my mind, something that Axial themselves ought to make – if Traxxas can, why not Axial? But with Axial falling short on this, good job Club5Racing for sorting us out. My only gripe with this set is that it doesn’t come with a wiring diagram, clearly outlining which leds should go to which port. That means that it takes a little while to get it all correct. I was in a bit of a hurry – assembling in between packing shades and such for a move to Australia – and obviously didn’t get it all right: the bumper lights are not turned on in the pictures. In the end though, it’s offers all the functionality you could ever want.
Enough talk, now have a look at the pictures instead.
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