Monster Truck Madness – All Over the Road

Good day my four wheel loving friends. I come to you with a smorgasbord of random MT related topics this week.

That new CEN Racing Ford F450 sure seems to be making a big splash this week, doesn’t it? Jeremy, our resident scaling fanatic, will probably be touching on it in Friday’s Everybody’s Scalin’ so I won’t steal his thunder, but I do want to say that at first glance I immediately thought “That sure would make a nice platform for an open-air Tamiya Clod Buster hauler.” The big dually may be a bit too large to properly fit the scale, but when I see one in person I’ll snap a pic of it with my Clods to see if it’ll work.

Boy, I don’t know what’s in the air lately but I find myself really wanting to get a nitro or gas bashing monster. Driving that massive Primal Raminator a few months back stoked that fire, and it’s starting to burn a little more hot in recent days. I love my electric monsters as much as anyone and do not miss the mess that comes with a fossil fuel burning fleet….but I’d be lyin’ if I said I didn’t miss the sound and smell a little bit. I don’t need a bunch, just one!

You know what would be the perfect truck for me? A large scale, old school style solid axle monster truck with a gas burning mill located up front. Preferably sticking through the hood. That would be a blast to just rumble around my yard with. I don’t know the mass market appeal something like that would generate, but I’d cut a substantially large check for something such as this!

The r/c monster truck segment has been churning out some big releases lately from the likes of Traxxas and RC4WD, but the announcements aren’t done yet. There continues to be smoke (like, big rig under heavy load smoke) that one of the hobby “big boys” has a major MT release scheduled for this Fall. COVID and all of the resulting fall-out from that have played havoc with timelines, but everything that I hear says this thing is on track to make a splash before the leaves come down from trees. I hate to keep being so vague on this, but hopefully I don’t have to be much longer!

I have not written about my Traxxas X-Maxx 8S much since I got it. The weather has just been too dang hot to properly enjoy it. Hey, I have no issue bashing in the heat usually, but given that my monster truck racing club has had race days in the 100’s all summer long (and those days are 7am-5pm track prep/racing/teardown) it’s just wiped me out to do anything else r/c in the heat.

Well, cooler temps are finally here (it’s in the 70’s as I write this) and 3 of my good buddies all have an X-Maxx now, so we are looking to get together soon for an epic bash day. We are also expanding our solid axle track area to accommodate the big X’s, so look for more on that soon.

That it’s from me this week. In Cubby-style, be sure to support your local hobby shops and bash spots when you can.