Everybody’s Scalin’ – I Pity the Fool

April 1st was a couple days ago but nonetheless, I still want to talk about something that looks foolish. It is without a doubt my #1 scaler pet peeve. It’s something we always laugh about when talking shop on the trail (you should hear our drift guy Evol rant about this!) – ugly tires.

Nothing absolutely kills the look of your scaler like a set of goofy tires. Doesn’t matter how cool the paint job, how detailed your accessories or how shiny those chrome wheels are. They also have a tendency to make you look like a noob.

So what exactly am I talking about? Well, pretty much anything that looks unrealistic. There once was a time when true scale crawling tires didn’t exist. Companies offered all kinds of wacky looking tread patterns when r/c rock crawling first became a thing, and many of them were re-purposed to use on the first wave of scalers when the Axial SCX10 made the genre go mainstream.

I’m talking about tires like Losi Claws and Hot Bodies Rovers, to name just a few examples. Hey, I used stuff like that back in the day when I first converted a Wheely King to a crawler and they worked great! It was 2010. Get with the times people! Now that better compounds and uber realistic patterns exist you never have to look back.

I get why people use them. Now that every company worth their salt has awesome looking and performing scale rubber on the market you can typically find these old dinosaurs in the bargain bin at your local hobby shop. It’s a cheap way to get aftermarket tires. I know hobbyists are all about savin’ that dollar when they can but this is not a place to save dough. Spend a couple extra duckets on those sweet TSL’s, Baja Claws or Rock Beasts…you’ll be happy you did.

To the buddies of mine who have a rig pictured in this article, I only did it for your own good! Remember, friends don’t let friends use fugly tires!

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