ASK Cubby- Original Questions, Same Old Answers

“Help with tires, please!

Hello,

I was wondering if maybe you knew of a company that makes low profile, high performance, belted, beadlock tires to fit 3.8″ aluminum wheels. I really like the SRC tires but they do not make a beadlock tires to put on somebody else’s wheels And GRP tires kinda suck. I have looked all over the Internet trying to find something in rubber form to fit these and haven’t had any luck. I know that I can have bananaskins foam, high speed tires glued to them but I would much rather have rubber. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Steven S.”

Cubby- Yo bro, what’s kick’n? Thanks for the email, in case you didn’t get the memo, send us your snail mail for your sticker pack.

And well geez homeskillet, you sure are asking for a lot from a set of tires aren’t you? So you need beadlocks, that are belted, which are low-pro, that fit on 3.8″ aluminum Traxxas wheels. I seem to trip over boxes of those every day when stopping at my LHS, I am amazed you haven’t found a set yet. (Do I really need to insert a sarcasm tag here?)

If I had to guess, and yes, you are making me guess, you’ve got some killer looking aluminum beadlock wheels and want to run high speed with them, but can’t find the right tires. What I am going to tell you is that aluminum beadlock wheels look trick and are scale realistic, but you really don’t want to run high speed with them. Why? Because they are a ton of unsprung and rotating mass, two things you really don’t want for high speed runs. Plus… you are bound to crash, and crash Really hard, when doing speed runs, and tacoing out a set of aluminum wheels isn’t cheap, or easy to repair.

My advice to you is get a killer set of off-road tires for your bling-bling aluminum wheels, then do up a set of dedicated high speed run belted kicks when you are trying to set the radar gun on fire.

Or… I could be way off base with what you are trying to do and are just wasting your time, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

“Battery upgrade

Cubby,

Sorry, but I just bought my first rc a traxxas Bandit & I have a question about batteries. On the web it looks like everyone is using a Lipo battery, why is that better than the nimh that came with my bandit? What kind of connector should I use?

Thanks
Ivan W.”

Cubby- Hola Ivan, thanks for the email.

So you are a proud new owner of a Traxxas Bandit. Props to you, the Bandit is a buggy that a LOT of people got started with in the hobby. It isn’t perfect, but that is part of the hobby, learning how to wrench on things, how to make set-up adjustments, and then mod’n it out.

Why do most people in the hobby use Lithium based batteries now days? The simplest answer is energy density. What’s that? It means that Lithium based cells can simply hold more energy than older types. That means, for a given form factor, a Lithium pack will give you more juice than a NiMH of the same size. Modern Lithium packs are lighter, yet still yield more stored energy, that’s why we use them. We simply get more performance from LiPo batteries. Now that isn’t without a downside. Because LiPo batteries have a higher energy density, they carry more energy per a given form factor, which can result in more damage should something catastrophic happen to the pack.

About connectors… I am going to guess that your Bandit came with a Traxxas NiMH kick’n a Traxxas connector. For your application the Traxxas connectors will work just fine, so there is no need to change from them.

Peace and love my friend, peace and love…

So there it is, there’s your ASK Cubby for this week. You can submit your questions at thecubreportrc at gmail dot com. Letters that make the big time get a sticker pack and I will be picking a “Letter of the Month” winner next week that will get a free BSRC t-shirt.

YOUR Cub Reporter