ASK Cubby – You Supply The Questions, I Supply The Non-Sense

“T2T Braces

Hey Cubby, what is the best T2T brace for my Kraton? I like hitting big jumps and want to stiffen up my rig!

Captain B.”

Cubby- Hello there Captain, I hope you and Mrs. Tennille have been doing well. 🙂

So, about those tower-to-tower braces…

I am personally not a big fan of them for hardcore bashing. Years and years ago I tried them, but have since gone back to not using them very much. Why is that?

I feel that tower to tower braces can help in certain situations. However, when you are REALLY sending-it, that is not one of those times. For light to medium hardcore driving, a T-2-T brace can help keep things where they are supposed to be. However, when really sending it (above 20 feet for example) a T-2-T brace can result in more damage upon landing to bulkheads, shock towers, etc.

The trucks we build to really send, we build to be repairable as quickly as possible. We use trucks with a single aluminum chassis, not plastic. Plastic can simply snap, and completely replacing a chassis, particularly out in the field, sucks. We know we are going to taco the chassis on nearly every truly BIG jump, so we want it to be easy to bend back in place. After a huge huck, and yet another taco’ed chassis, we hand it over to our guy “Wrench Bill”. He pretty much just puts a truck over his knee to then bend the chassis back (he is amazingly good at it Btw). Nope, it is not perfectly straight afterwards, but then it doesn’t have to be on a “send-it every weekend” type vehicle. Those types of trucks are only straight once- the time they have before they hit their first ramp.

So Captain, if you keep your bashing relatively sane, go for a T-2-T brace. If you plan on going truly epic, my personal advice is to skip the extra bracing.

“New ARRMA Bent Chassis

Cubby,

Your review of the 8S Kraton was terribly misleading. I drove my 8S Kraton one time before the chassis was bent and a shock was broken. You said it was a good truck. Care to explain why you were so far off the truth?

Roger E.”

Cubby- Well hola there Roger Dodger, thanks for taking the time to write in. As you probably already know, if you send me your snail mail, I will hook you up with one of our BSRC sticker packs.

Oh, so I/we were off on our ARRMA Kraton 8S review? That is of course your opinion, I know otherwise of course. LOL. We didn’t have a huge amount of time with the 8S Kraton before the review went live, but I do think we were spot on for our review time with the truck.

Btw, we sent the 8S Kraton off a single story roof a half dozen times. We landed to the wheels and drove away. I’ve seen multiple videos on-line of people tweaking/twisting/bending the stock chassis on the Kraton, with people being mad about it afterwards. This is completely ridiculous! Why???

Because the people bending the chassis on their 8S Kratons are totally hucking it. If you send an rc car, ANY rc car twenty feet high into the air, there is a strong chance it isn’t going to work after the landing. Doesn’t matter if its ARRMA, or any brand, that is simply a ton of force for the truck to deal with.

During our review of the 8S Kraton, we kept the driving real. “Normal” consumers who actually pay for their cars aren’t sending it off a three story building. A handful of hardcore guys will, but those guys should already know they will probably be wrenching and/or waiting for parts after it lands. For you to have already bent your stock chassis, you would not have done that by coming up short on the triple down at the local track, you would only have done it via a gnarly hit of some type. If for some reason you thought you were buying an rc car that was unbreakable, the bad is on YOU, not the car manufacturer, LOL.

So, I am gonna stand by our review fully. Sure, we could have sent it off a 200 foot high bridge, then sounded freaked out after it broke, but instead, we tried to do you real consumers a solid by driving it like normal people would.

Have a wild question? Need an even wilder answer? Have a verbose rant that you just have to get off your chest? Email me- thecubreportrc at gmail dot com.