ASK Cubby, Version- You Asked For It, You Got It

“X-MAXX Trouble

Cub Report,

After having run my new X-MAXX for a little under 2 weeks, I have concluded that it breaks ALL THE TIME. Am I doing it wrong? What is your advice for keeping one together?

Love your column and read it every week,

Bud W.”

Cubby- Well hello to you Bud and props for hitting the big time. You know the drill, shoot me a snail mail so our shipping department can get ya out a sticker pack. And yes, you probably need a lot of our stickers to help keep your X-Maxx together.

So ya, in stock form the X-Maxx is fairly durable. You can bash it relatively hard without breaking too many parts. However, if you start putting some real power in there, like the type of power it should have come with originally, I’ve found our test X-Maxx is lucky to survive a pack without breaking something. Oh and, our test unit likes to break all sorts of different parts, so it’s not like we can just keep a few spares around, we pretty much need an entire second truck to keep the first one up and running. But particularly, our truck loves to break shock shafts and CVDs. We pretty much plan on replacing at least one of each every single time we run the truck.

So what’s the best way to keep an X-Maxx together? IMO, it would be to not drive it at all, even then, it might just break sitting on the shelf if you’ve got a big Castle system in it. Otherwise…. we are going to have to wait for the aftermarket to catch up. And yes, they will, just give them a couple of more months. There is bound to be a flood of aftermarket parts that will help keep it alive in the Very near future.

“Smell the fumes

Cubby,

I have read most, if not all, of your Cub reports. In your infinite wisdom, when do you think nitro is going to come back around? I have always owned nitro-burners and never fell into the trap of running the flashlights, but I am getting sick and tired of being the only person in my group making noise.

Thanks,

Colin J.”

Cubby- Ya know Colin, everything, and I mean everything, comes back around. I mean, look at disco. Disco sucked sooooo bad back in the late 70s, yet it has made more than one comeback. Look at bell bottom jeans, they seemingly become “cool” once every twenty years or so. And yes, nitro was soooo dominant around 2000 during the T-Maxx era, but since then it has failed to make a comeback.

So yes… nitro will the bomb again, but no, I have no idea when. It’s just that electric is SO superior to nitro right now, it isn’t even funny. Electric is faster, easier to drive, and sooooo much easier to keep running. Yes, electric may be more expensive, but at least when I want to drive today chances are that my ARRMA Kraton will turn right on and haul ass. Good luck getting your nitro Savage started, let alone keeping it running for 1 hour continuously.

And lastly… the whole small scale gas engine thing has completely fizzled out. The HPI Octane gas engine, as well as the one from Losi, just weren’t quite “there” yet. They just didn’t quite do what they promised, which was to fix all the aggravating downsides of running a nitro engine. IMO right now, it is just too expensive to make a small gas engine work as it should, but I know first hand there are still people in the industry working on fixing that problem. And yes, when they do, even I want will want to run a fuel based engine again.

Oh yes, I’m calling it a wrap folks, now my weekend can officially begin (Yes, I take 4 day weekends). Have a question that you think is worthy? Just wanna talk some smack? Don’t be shy, shoot me an email, the worst I can do is curse you out, and chances are, you are long overdue for a good chew’n anyways. But seriously, next weekend I am posting a “Letter of the Month” winner which will receive a free t-shirt, so get those letters headed my way.

YOUR Cub Reporter