ASK Cub Reporter- What Say Ye Readers This Week? Version 03.01.2011

First off, one I stole from Brian’s mail bag……

Hey Brian,

First, after a 10+ year hiatus from the hobby I’ve finally returned and your website provides me a wealth of knowledge since a LOT has changed since then so I tip my hat off to the Big Squid Crew.

Speaking of changes, I have never seen such aggressive marketing in the RC world than what Traxxas is doing nowadays. All those sponsorships and mainstream racing events are making the public take notice. Here’s an example:

I have a co-worker who is a die-hard motocross fan and he just attended the motocross race up here in Oakland. We were talking this past week and I brought up the subject of how I’m back in the hobby. I even showed him pictures of my Revo 3.3, which he has no idea what it is but he was very impressed. He was asking me a bunch of questions like “how fast does it go?”, “is it easy to work on?” etc, etc. Then he says, “have you heard of Trakis?” (mispronounced) I said, “oh, you mean Traxxas?” He said yeah and continued to tell me about the demo Traxxas did at the race. He was telling me of how they had these rc monster trucks with really small bodies (I’m guessing E-Revo’s or mini E-Revo’s) do backflips off the jumps. So we went to the Traxxas website on my computer where I was telling him about the different vehicles and about the Revo I hopped up. He got really excited and was amazed about the speed and performance of the vehicles. He said he wants to buy one now but he doesn’t know if his wife will let him. LOL So I guess that’s sort of a victory for Traxxas marketing, either way, it’s working…..

Joe

Cubby– Cool email, and thanks for writing in Joe. And yes, our hobby is very fortunate right now, lets hope that Traxxas and the other companies pump’n the big bucks into marketing to the masses see a large enough return to continue doing so.

For those of you that have never been to an AMA/FIM/Monster Energy/Traxxas Supercross, support your hobby and give one a shot. Nine races remain on the 2011 schedule- Daytona, Indy, Jacksonville FL, Toronto, Dallas, St Louis, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Vegas. Traxxas sends a crew to every event to support a booth in the pits and to put on a small driving display. So if you hit a Supercross, drop by the Traxxas booth, they’ll be stoked to see some friendly rc faces.

Hey
Thanks so much for your help, I would be eternally grateful if you would help me with one other matter. I’m thinking of getting into Nitro trucks but don’t have a huge budget to blow, found this site called Nitrorcx.com selling Exceed Nitro trucks at a great price. As they are an American company and I live in Europe I thought you might have a scope on them, are they bona fide and if so what are the trucks like???

Any Intel on the matter would be greatly appreciated
Ciao
Jud

Cubby– Buongiorno Jud, and thanks for the email. Are you as anxious to see the 2011 F150 race at Melbourne as I am? Surely Alonzo can land the WDC this year….

So how is the quality of the trucks from Nitrorcx.com? Honestly, nobody at the BigSquid offices has driven one of their Exceed trucks, and they haven’t sent us one for testing… but… I have seen them in “action”. Well, I don’t know if I can honestly say I truly saw them in action, as they didn’t tend to run for very long. Based on what little I’ve seen of them in the field, I’d put them right around Redcat territory. To boil it down, at this point, until we get the opportunity to test one and prove me otherwise, I’d have to recommend that you pass on the Exceed trucks.

I’ll also recommend that you if you are gonna go nitro, don’t buy used. Too many used nitro trucks labeled as “barely broken in”, or “only 1 gallon on the engine” are anything but that. As a noob nitro buyer it’s hard to tell if a used engine has been abused- such as run without an air filter, run too lean, etc. Abused or worn out nitro engines will only make you curse, and then curse some more, then curse until you smash the entire truck with a sledgehammer. So buy new, buy from an established brand, and carefully follow the break-in procedure.

Hey, that’s it for this week folks. Shoot us an email, you know ya want to! Cubby at BigSquidRC dot com is the addy, so let’er rip. Whatever is kick’n inside those minds of yours is good for us. Supercross, Formula 1, nerd questions, hell, even rc questions, I don’t care, just send’em in!

YOUR Cub Reporter