Losing grip – Digress, digest, donut
One of my favorite words in English, is digress. To digress. To lose track, for a little bit. As a word, not unsimilar to digest. In writing this column, I sometimes digress, and you as a reader digest my digression.
That was a digression indeed, considering this is a column about RC drifting. Well, eat it. Ha!
Well, as I wasn’t saying, I really need to rebuild a dozen shocks. Those for my YD-2S, for my RMX and for my Yeti. Problem is, I really don’t like rebuilding shocks. Wrenching I don’t mind at all, even though I prefer driving and painting to wrenching, but shock building I abhor. It tends to be a bit messy with the excess oil flowing out as the caps are tightened, and I find it really hard to get the same amount of rebound in all shock pairs. In addition, the shocks of my Yeti leak a bit (I can’t remember whether I built them with Traxxas X-rings or not, but think not), so I know I will have to rebuild them again in a month or two.
For my Yeti I would like either some Pro-Line power strokes, or G-made XD, but both are currently out of stock over here, and delivery times from overseas seem to be ridiculously long at the moment. My daughter is still waiting for a present sent to her from Australia some seven weeks ago. It used to take two weeks.
So, what to do when something boring needs to be done, but isn’t really necessary to do? Easy: postpone it. Rather than rebuilding shocks this Sunday afternoon, two of my children and I went on a walk, along with two Axials: a Yeti and a Bomber. Does a 9-year old care whether the shocks on her rig are leaking? Certainly not.
Going for a walk on the rocks along the sea, and on tracks in the adjacent forest, with two versatile rigs and two enthusiastic children – it doesn’t get much better. The sun was shining on brand new leaves, and I even got to do a bit of driving myself, a couple of minutes of the hour or so we were out. Maybe time to get a third trail rig? Something to complement two very capable 2.2” rigs. TRX-4, perhaps? SCX-10 III? SSD Trail King? I need to start saving. If I order it in a month or so, I might have it just in time for next spring.
A great hobby this is, and a couple of years after buying an Arrma SCT, I understand why people end up with half a dozen rigs. When I bought that Arrma, that was incomprehensible to me – why would anyone ever need more than just one RC car? Well, as a lot of you know, there’s a separate tool for every task, and a different car for every occasion. And if you don’t want to drive alone, one might need two cars for every occasion. This is when one needs to remind the other half that RC cars are a lot cheaper than real cars, more reliable than gambling and a lot healthier a hobby than drinking.
On the topic of RC drifting (digression ends here), not much is happening out there. Top news on Yokomo’s homepage is that their internal mail server is malfunctioning. Top news on MST’s homepage is that their CFX-W J35C crawler kit has been released. I’ve said it before, and i say it again: they really need to work on their product names. That’s eleven syllables, and they don’t exactly roll off the tongue. Compare that to the four of TRX-4 and SCX-10, three in Ascender and Trail Finder, or just two in the case of Capra. Nuts. But I digress.
In the name of drifting, I will finish this column by letting you rest your eyes on another picture of Thirdie Lopez’, of Skunkworks Customs, gorgeous GT35. Otherwise today’s title only makes 67% sense. I hope to post some details on this build next week.
When you’re done drooling, why don’t you read another column?
