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I’ve been sitting on this e-mail awhile, but my friend “The Trail Rat” has a question about SMT10 chassis clearance. I have rear steer on my SMT10 and the clearance to the chassis seems small. Is there anyone in your club who has dealt with this? The servo hits the chassis when the suspension bottoms out. I also plan on getting [...]
The shot above is a screen grab from an Axial Facebook post they put online on a few days ago. They asked for suggestions, should they bring back the SMT10 platform. I figure instead of submitting a comment, why not just devote this week’s MTM to the topic? I’ve been building and racing SMT10s in monster truck competition for 4 years [...]
Happy New Year to all! As we head into the new year, I want to start it off by making three predictions that I believe will come to fruition by the time 2019 fades. Of course, these are all monster truck related. Let’s get to it. #3 – 1/10 4×4 Truggies are going to get really popular. Ok, so this one isn’t [...]
Hey all, it’s already December and the year is almost over. Time flies, doesn’t it? I had planned on chatting about something else this week, but I feel I need to follow up on last week’s MTM post in which I answered a reader e-mail who was asking me if I knew a way for him to stop blowing out wheels [...]
Greetings monster truck nuts! I’d like to talk Axial SMT10 transmissions in a minute, but I’d like to touch on some sad news first. A long-time member of the monster truck community passed away unexpectedly last week, BIGFOOT’s Ron Bachmann. Ron, affectionately known as “Lurch” to many, was a legendary road-warrior and great man. If you’ve ever seen one of the [...]
Brief plug before we get started here – last week I guested on the Radio Impound Podcast! It was a blast talking r/c monsters with hosts Jason Ruona and Gotti Jr.! We discussed my work with Big Squid RC, my monster truck club Trigger King and my time in the full scale monster truck industry. You can check it out [...]
One of the first questions an Axial SMT10 owner asks themselves after upgrading the power plant is “How should I gear this?” There are a several ways to approach the question, depending on your battery cell count, tire selection and intended use. For the premise of this post, I’m going to assume that you are running bigger-than-stock Clod sized tires, aka [...]
JConcepts officially debuted their upcoming Ford Raptor Race Truck Body at the Bigfoot 4×4 Open House a couple weeks back, and I was lucky enough to score a pre-release version! I’ve just finished it up and before I head into battle, I wanted to give you a look. I have it mounted to my Pro Modified Axial SMT10, which sits at [...]
If you have an Axial SMT10 monster truck and decide to upgrade the power plant, a wheelie bar had best be on your list as well. To be more specific, an RH Designs Wheelie Bar. The RH Designs Wheelie Bar (retails for $45) was developed by friend and fellow monster truck racer Ross Hinshaw. He got tired of doing unnecessary rear [...]
Hey folks, Doug here with another edition of MTM. It’s FINALLY time for some monster truck racing, as here in St. Louis, MO we are kicking off the 2018 Trigger King Jamboree Series this weekend. I’m heading into battle with three modified Axial SMT10s, a platform that I adore, and I thought some of you would be interested to see a [...]
Ever since starting this monster truck column in early 2017, I’ve fielded a number of e-mails from noobies. I was originally going to use today’s MTM as a mailbag, but my longwinded answers made it so I’d be better off splitting these up and answering each in depth over time. So yeah, for today I’ll just start with the question that [...]
In Monster Truck Madness #6, which I wrote in February, I went into detail on how best to get started modifying your Axial SMT10. The time has come to talk about juicing one up even further than that. Back in April I made substantial changes to one of my two SMT10’s to bring it up to snuff with the “Pro Modified” category of [...]
Hey all, Doug here. My monster truck club wanted to do something special for the 4th of July, so here it is! We thought it would be fun to recreate Dennis Anderson’s infamous 2001 “Wall of Steel” monster truck stunt. We like to call this the “Wall of Plastic”. The 1/10 version of Mr. Destruction belongs to good buddy Habo Gutierrez, and [...]
One of the most popular monster truck themed questions I get is, “What’s better, a Clod or shaft truck?”. This is probably the most asked question in the solid axle community. It’s also a very tricky one to answer as both types of vehicles have significant advantages and disadvantages. While I cannot give you a definitive answer, I can tell you [...]
Given that I’m a loudmouth constantly spouting off about the greatness of solid axle monster trucks, you may see the question posed in the title of this article and immediately assume my answer is “YES”. That’s not the case though. As much as I enjoy working on and driving them, they can be fickle beasts and therefore aren’t necessarily for everyone. I’m [...]
