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March Bashness is has been super surprising to me. I'm not trying to take anything away from the Dominus or the Ruckus. As a matter of fact, I have a Ruckus with brushless. Just modded some VXL driveshafts and it's been rock solid. It just doesn't stand out to me as a monster basher out of the box. Neither does the Dominus. I feel like bashers need to have some decent power out of the box. Those two really don't. The price point, however, is awesome. So it's give and take there.

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Bash Heavy!

[quote="evan_bigsquidrc"]Hey Craig! You build a loop yet?[/quote]

i did one for a day but i dont have anywhere to store it so i pulled it apart

Hey everyone,

Got back into the hobby about a year ago after a 21 year absence. My previous car was the AE TQ-10. I miss that buggy! Since I have a bunch of folk reading this thread real time, I thought I'd pose a question to you. I just got a XXX-SCT Roller with crappy electronics (Rustler XL-5). I need to be as frugal as possible, but want a brushless motor / esc (perhaps staying in stock class, what is that 17.5?), along with a better radio and receiver, and a Lipo balance charger and Lipo batteries. My track is hard packed. I'd love ANY input! I was looking at the Caste Sidewinder combo, what do you think? What about the Traxxas Velinion? Does that fit on XXX-SCT without dremeling motor shaft?

Thanks everyone!

I love bigsquidrc.com!

That's just a smoke bomb. Rather fake looking to boot.

Hey Icculus! Welcome back to the hobby!

I have a little bit of input here. First, the Castle Sidewinder/SCT combo is a great motor and ESC for SCTs. I've ran that combo in my Blitz, as well as my Slash2, and loved them. Plenty of power, good run time, and Castlelink makes programming the ESC a breeze.

With that being said, there's nothing wrong with the Velinion setup from Traxxas. You will probably need to cut the shaft down to make the gear cover fit (or drill the gear cover). They are pretty good systems, but if you plan on racing I'd suggest the Castle stuff for programming.

As for Lipos... The BigSquidRC Lipo Shootout 3 is going to get posted...VERY soon. That will be a great guide for lipos. I personally have been running the Gens Ace lipos from HobbyPartz.com and really like them. The shootout will tell the tale however.

Radio/receiver... Depends on how "frugal" you want to be. Got a price range?

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Bash Heavy!

Bummer man. Got a 60MPH Power Wheels yet? LOL!

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Bash Heavy!

hobbypartz.com for cheap but great radio unless you can find one at a hobby shop, I love to support the hobby shops when i can, but $200 for a radio just doesn't work for me. I've got some good answers for you, but the wife says I got to put the kids to bed, I was in the same boat as you just recently, same truck too. Check back in a bit, hopefully I can post up some suggestions.

Thanks for the input. the Sidewinder it will be! How about a Lipo balance charger? I remember seeing a bunch of people using the same one at my track. One word name, a little more than $100, not bulky. Any clue?

As for radio, as cheap as possible, but still maintaining quality. I don't care about it being Futaba. I just want quality. Function before form. Really, function before form for all the electronics I need. My budget is so tight, that the cheaper, the better, without buying crap.

Does that make sense?

Thanks!

-Adam

jtec a LHS is thinking about having a bash, if so i'll be biulding a 8' loop for them

I do what I can to support the local guys as well... If you're planning on being in the hobby for awhile, and plan on getting some additional vehicles in the future, I recommend the Futaba 4PL. It'll cost more up front, but it's a great mid-range radio, and receivers are only $40-$50. One radio, lots of vehicles. When I started I had a ton of the $30-$60 radios and realized that it would have been cheaper to just get the 4PL. Check out BigSquid's radio shootouts or reviews for some suggestions as well. To be, a radio is a big deal. I want something comfortable, reliable, with enough features to keep me happy on a bashing, racing, and scaler/crawling front. The 4PL was it for me.

If you're looking for super cheap, but...reliable. Check Hobbypartz.com or eBay for a Traxxas set or a Tactic set. You can grab either used for a great price. I understand a budget is a concern for a lot of people.

As for your charger question... I have a couple Hyperions, a Hitec X2, and a couple super cheapos from HobbyPartz. Honestly... They all seem about the same as far as performance and balancing, and I paid a ton more for the Hyperions and the Hitec. Hyperion is high quality though, and really nice. I also really like my Hitec.

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Bash Heavy!

I love the new RC10B4.1 Worlds Car, and that will probably be my first buggy purchase since 1990, but I have to ask, does anyone know anything about the ARRMA ADX-10? I'm really intrigued by this company. Their design is just radical, and the ADX-10 looks great (but I would prefer my own paint job). I just can't find any reviews, not even on good ole Big Squid!

I'll give out another piece of advice for a guy on a budget. Check out Google/YouTube for videos or tutorials on how to turn an old PC or Server power supply into a power supply for RC chargers. If you're handy with a soldering iron, you can score a killer power supply for super cheap (I begged craigs_asylum for mine).

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Bash Heavy!

Great advice, but when it comes to Lipo I don't want to f- around. I'll pony up the money for a balance charger. It's worth it to me.

Put the Castle SCT combo in my XXX SCT, the think flies now. havent' tried it at the track yet, but I'm sure it's going to be plenty fast. It wheelies down the street.

Radio, FLY SKY GT3B? Great radio, Like $40 or so, receivers are $7, has ABS, very adjustable, takes some figuring out cuz the instructions are in Engrish as it's a Chinese company, you'll have to look up the manual online cuz it doesn't come with it, but with some forum help and youtube tutorials, you can figure it out, I had to reverse the throttle channel, worked better once I figured that out.

Most of the batteries from Hobbypartz are pretty good, Iv'e tried sky lipo and blue lipo, I'd try Gens but they're always out of stock, most of the charger are good too there, I went with a thunder AC6? $60. There are differnt versions, mostly varies on what kind of wires and connectors it comes with. For the bats, I like to get the higest C they have in stock, hard case, usually 40C, 4400 mah or higher, 2S

Hope this helps.

If the charger was red in color i would say that is the checkpoint charger. It's a good solid charger that is basically an updated version of the old duratrax ICE chargers.

As for the radio, take a look at the bigsquidrc 2.4GHz radio shootout. Also, with just about everyone running 2.4GHz now days, it leaves the old 75 MHz band pretty much wide open. Not too many frequency conflicts any more. So you may be able to find and old FM radio with lots of features for next to nothing as everyone is/has moved to 2.4GHz. Stay away from 27 MHz because of all the old traxxas radios still in use.