ASK Cubby, Version- Your Week In Letters, My Weakly Responses

“Ask Cubby

Good evening ( Swedish local time )

Cubby, Thomas P from Sweden here, awesome reports and “asks”. Got a Q for you and would love to see how you think about this one. Long story short, been doing RC cars for 32 years from the first car I owned (still got it) a Tamiya Wild Willy, to my present ARRMA fleet. Between that.. 235 ic track, 1/8e/nitrobuggy, 1/10th 2wd and 4wd race cars, 1/18 and tons of others. So I’m a racer and a true genuine basher.

Does a “basher” set-up the car/truck they use? Do they only follow the stream or do they not dare to test different oils to fit their own driving style? Different shock positions, different sway-bars, Ackerman, toe-in rear or toe-in/out in front, anti-squat, wheelbase, caster? My experience (not much but little) it feels that the regular basher adapt to the car and not vice versa. I mean most (not all) cars have many tuning/setup possibility’s and I find it hard to understand why this might be so. I mean why should I adapt to the car when it can be tuned to fit most driving styles today? I do it and it is very fun to run a proper set-up, meaning all the mentioned possibility’s above on my Monster truck.

Best Regards
Thomas P. – Sweden”

Cubby- Hey now Thomas, thanks for the email and please shoot us your snail mail so that you can receive one of our uber BSRC sticker packs.

Ya know Thomas, I’ve noticed that too, that many bashers don’t play around with camber, toe, or different shock oils. In fact, several guys on our bash crew never change a setting on their personal trucks, they just keep on driving them. I am like you, I am wired to change things to make a truck suit my style. If I have a truck that understeers, I soften the front suspension a bit and add some negative camber up front, or whatever, just to get it to handle better.

Now… I believe some bashers don’t make changes for a couple of reasons.

1. They just like driving, they simply aren’t into wrenching. They are really casual about the sport and are just looking for a driving fix, not to add any more complexity (like learning how to properly set up a car).

2. In the case of some of the guys on our own bash crew, they simply beat their trucks so hard that if they do indeed dial in some negative camber, chances are they are just going to tag a curb and bend it back to straight. What is the use of meticulously dialing in a car if you are only going to knock all the settings to smithereens after a couple of runs?

Happy Holidays to you Thomas and feel free to email any time.

“Suggestion

Long time BSRC fan Isaac here with a recommendation. In your reviews, you guys always have a “primary competition” section. I think it would be great to just do a couple comparisons without doing a full blown shootout. At the end of the review say what specific product you thought it was better than and what product it was just shy of beating. Ex.) Bushmaster was better than the Apache C1, but just shy of the RC8B3E. I think this would be awesome and give more insight and help to those reading who are seriously interested in making a purchase.

Happy Holidays!
Isaac S.”

Cubby- Yo Isaac, shoot us your snail mail so we can hook you up with a BSRC sticker pack. I’m sure you have plenty of trick rides to plaster them with.

Ya know… we already do that, of sorts anyways. For example, if we go out to test a 2wd SCT, we always bring along a Fury, or a Slash, or whatever else we having laying around, just to help give us a rough of idea of how the new vehicle fits in. However, the trucks we bring along have often been modded from stock, and all of them have been beaten to death, so it is real hard for them to truly to be a good comparison. In a perfect world it would be awesome to have fresh/un-beaten trucks to bring along for a better comparison, but until Monster/Red Bull/Go Pro/ect steps in and starts cutting us huge mass marketing checks, I don’t see it happening any time soon.

Well there ya have it, yet another funtabulous edition of ASK Cubby. Don’t be skeer’d, shoot me an email. It can be a question, an answer, an epic rant, or about nothing at all (Ok, so ya, it should really be about something). You can hit me up at thecubreportrc at gmail dot com.

YOUR Cub Reporter