ASK Cubby, Version- You Ask Me Questions, I Simply Ask Why

“A lil bit about putting spikes in tires

Hey Cubby,

I am in Anchorage ak and with that folks keep having this radical idea about putting spikes or screws into rc car tires. I was asked about that yesterday by a friend I know. He hasn’t ran an rc car since the eighties.

Well umm he knows better now because he got to yank on one of my rides….3s lipo and a 13.5 turn lrp in a ta02t tamiya f-150. He now understands the danger. He likes the new technology that’s for sure. Yeah you guys are rocking an awesome site here and well if you guys could kindly get the word out of the dangers of spiking tires on a 6s 100c monster machine that might be beneficial.

…….keep on rocking it, Rc cars are addicting

Eric T.”

Cubby- Well hello there Eric from Anchorage. I haven’t been watching the weather for your part of America, hopefully winter hasn’t been too insane so far. Here in the greater mid-west we’ve had a really strange winter. It has been unseasonably warm, then we got the crazy flooding at Christmas that pretty much put most of our favorite bash spots under water. Which then froze to ice. Niceee.

So, to get to your actual letter, I’m guessing a friend of yours wanted to put spikes/screws/nails into normal rc tires to help him get traction in the snow. On a low powered RTR/brushed system, I can see it working. But… on a 6S HPI Savage Flux, I can see the tires shooting out the nails at 80 mph in various directions, including towards the driver and the pack of nuns pushing baby carts that are out for a leisurely Saturday afternoon walk. Please people, don’t kill any nuns or babies by making your tires a shrapnel grenade.

“Kyosho Dodge Charger

Dear Cubby,

I was very impressed by the Kyosho Dodge Charger in your un-boxing pictures the other day. Thanks a lot Cubby, now I have to buy one. I have not purchased a new on road car in years, primarily because nothing has caught my eye until this. My question is, do you think the Kyosho Dodge Charger can help turn around the on road portion of rc? Where I live it has been dead as a dormouse for years.

Best regards,

Gary N.”

Cubby- Ya know Gary, that is the 100 million dollar question, how do we turn around on-road sales. A lot of people have tried. All have failed. On-road sales are in the dumpster, with no perceivable way out. Sure, drifting is doing ok as a niche, and yes, companies do sell a few cars here or there, but overall the on-road genre is freak’n dead.

However… the news about the Kyosho Charger (and Challenger) have done really well here on BigSquidRC. From the initial announcement, to our unboxing pictures, the Charger has generated more interest in an on-road car than we’ve seen in quite some time. Today the Vaterra 1972 C10 was also announced, which looks spectacular, so who knows, maybe on-road will take off again grass roots style thanks to memories of big block engines and scale realism.

There is no doubt the cars are better than ever. For example, take a look at pretty much any car from Vaterra. They all have incredible scale detailing and their chassis drives well, while taking one hell of beating without breakage. If you remember back in the “glory years” of on-road, the cars were brittle and scale realism was a joke. So it definitely isn’t the car’s fault that on-road is dead. IMO (like I always blame everything on) it is marketing. The buying public has to be told that the next cool fad is to meet up in a parking lot with an uber’ed out 1/10th scale muscle car for a weekly bash/cruise/drag fest. Nobody is marketing that way right now. In fact, most companies spend little to no money towards on-road marketing. Ya, I know its a dead market, but everything comes back around sooner or later (if disco and bell bottoms can, anything can do it!!!), it is just going to take some creative minds (with the marketing cash behind them) to pull on-road out of the gutter.

It’s a wrap folks, time to turn out the lights and head for home on this edition of ASK Cubby. Do you have a question for me? Of course you do, so feel free to shoot me an email. thecubreportrc at gmail dot com is the addy you want. Until next week, go fast, turn left, and break lots of parts.

YOUR Cub Reporter