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My good buddy Travis Sutton is always building really cool project trucks. You may remember his BIGFOOT Ranger that I posted recently. He’s been at it again! He recently built a Stage 2.5 (more on this in a minute) leaf spring equipped monster truck chassis for another friend of mine, Colby Marshall. Quick plug to Colby- if you enjoy watching TheMonsterBlog [...]
Re-releasing classic vehicles is definitely the “in” thing to do in the hobby these days, but with the exception of Tamiya’s offerings (my 2015 Blackfoot, pictured above, rocks my socks), most of the vehicles getting love are decidedly non-monster truck. Hey, I think the Kyosho Optimas and OG RC10’s are as cool as the next guy, but being an old school [...]
The MST MTX-1 solid axle monster truck has been teased quite a bit over the last month, and enough has now been shown where I think it’s worth having a preliminary discussion. The first thing I should say is that I’m excited for another SA truck to hit the market. I’m not super familiar with the MST brand, but I’ve heard good [...]
Ever since starting this monster truck column in early 2017, I’ve fielded a number of e-mails from noobies. I was originally going to use today’s MTM as a mailbag, but my longwinded answers made it so I’d be better off splitting these up and answering each in depth over time. So yeah, for today I’ll just start with the question that [...]
The monster truck world said goodbye to one of the titans of the sport last weekend; legendary driver Gary Porter. If you’re an extremely casual monster truck fan then you may not know that name, but I bet you’re familiar with his creation- “Carolina Crusher”. The original Carolina Crusher was built in ’85 as a promo vehicle for the family 4 Wheel [...]
In Monster Truck Madness #6, which I wrote in February, I went into detail on how best to get started modifying your Axial SMT10. The time has come to talk about juicing one up even further than that. Back in April I made substantial changes to one of my two SMT10’s to bring it up to snuff with the “Pro Modified” category of [...]
Hey all, Doug here. My monster truck club wanted to do something special for the 4th of July, so here it is! We thought it would be fun to recreate Dennis Anderson’s infamous 2001 “Wall of Steel” monster truck stunt. We like to call this the “Wall of Plastic”. The 1/10 version of Mr. Destruction belongs to good buddy Habo Gutierrez, and [...]
One of the great secrets of hardcore r/c monster truckers; where do our crush cars come from?. It’s by far the number one question that I field from YouTube viewers on my Trigger King channel….well, right after “what do these cost?!”. I also get e-mail from readers on here as well, when they see them in pictures. I’ll answer that in [...]
The hobby has gone Traxxas TRX-4 mad as of late, but for this edition of MTM I want to look at the truck where it got all its mojo from – the Summit. The Traxxas Summit was originally released in 2009 and is still available today, albeit with several upgrades from the OG unit. Based on the Revo platform, it has [...]
Last week JConcepts announced a very cool new body for monster truckers- the “Grandma” 1951 Ford Panel Truck. One of the most iconic monster truck bodies of them all. No doubt several of you are curious as to what the “Grandma” is in reference to, though. The official press release gives a nod but isn’t explicit. “Grandma” is the nickname that [...]
One of the most popular monster truck themed questions I get is, “What’s better, a Clod or shaft truck?”. This is probably the most asked question in the solid axle community. It’s also a very tricky one to answer as both types of vehicles have significant advantages and disadvantages. While I cannot give you a definitive answer, I can tell you [...]
Over the weekend I attended the annual BIGFOOT 4×4 Open House in Pacific, MO and helped to put on an r/c monster truck race with my Trigger King friends. There were a lot of cool looking r/c’s and full scale rigs, but the vehicle that has everyone in the solid axle community buzzing is the replica BIGFOOT Ranger that was [...]
When two r/c monster trucks are together in the same place at the same time, be it toy grade or the latest 6S bashing animal, it’s only natural to want to race them. And if you’re gonna race them, why not use a makeshift course similar to the real thing? Whether you are just having some fun at the bash spot with [...]
Given that I’m a loudmouth constantly spouting off about the greatness of solid axle monster trucks, you may see the question posed in the title of this article and immediately assume my answer is “YES”. That’s not the case though. As much as I enjoy working on and driving them, they can be fickle beasts and therefore aren’t necessarily for everyone. I’m [...]
Few, if any radio controlled model kits have lived the life of Tamiya’s infamous Clodbuster. So, how does a vehicle that was released 30 years ago not only remain relevant, but also be arguably the most popular it’s ever been, save for maybe the early 90’s? I know that many non-monster truck people actively wonder this. For them, I’ll try and [...]
