Monster Truck Madness – Four Link Blues

Hello gang and Happy Thursday to you! That means it’s time for Monster Truck Madness. I’ve been on the road for a week, so sadly no update on my Tiny Titan build. I do hope to put it together this weekend, though! In the meantime, I’ve been sitting on a couple reader e-mails.

Hey Doug,
How goes it ?
I have run into an issue with my monster truck build and hoped you could help me out.
After testing it I have a problem with the steering. On full lock the front tyre gets stuck on the front trailing arm. I have turned down the steering travel to 65% in order to get it running, but obviously this results in a really huge turning circle.
Any ideas?

I am running jconcepts renegades on their tribute wheels and their 25mm alu extension. Axles are rc4wd d44 wraith width and ssd rc yeti trailing arms.
Have to admit I am pretty stumped. I have looked at extending the 12mm hex but there is not enough axle to mount the wheel on so can’t see how to fix it.

Any help you can give would be very much appreciated.

-Kristian

Hey Kristian, the usual solution is what you’ve done already. Turn the steering down. However, if you use a stock servo that has a lot of drift along with an analog remote where you can’t fine tune the steering rate, it can be tough. If you have a high torque servo that holds true along with a digital trim radio, you can set your end point to where you have maximum turning radius juuuuust before you hit the link bar and you’ll be ok most of the time. This is another reason why a high torque, digital servo REALLY helps on an SMT10.

You can get the ultra wide adapters (I think jconcepts sells them in their dragon wheels) but if you put the wheels out that far, you are going to have axle stress issues under heavy bashing. Your axle tips will NOT like it.

You can also get or make different link bars that aren’t as wide, therefore giving you extra clearance. The yeti style trailing arms (also found on the SMT10) are known to have clearance issues. A little bit of extra clearance goes a long way. I hope this helps!

Hello guys,

Kyosho announced the USA-1 awhile back and I’ve not seen them at my hobby shops yet. I’ve also not seen much talk about them at all since the announcement. Do you know what gives? Was a big fan of the old truck back in the day!

-Jim K.

Howdy Jim and thank you for the e-mail!

Yes, I think it was last May that the USA-1 got announced and then we had a lot of radio silence. However, I’m happy to report that it seems like hobby shops are starting to get them in limited quantities. Kyosho has also started doing some promotion for the vehicle again, so the full release appears to be imminent.

While in this case I have no inside knowledge, I’d assume it’s the same thing that’s an issue for everyone right now – the global shipping logistical problem. It’s hard to get those sea crates full of trucks over here, and most likely USA-1’s are stuck on the water just like everything else!

That reminds me- I think it’s a great idea to do you Christmas shopping early this year if there’s a truck or accessory you are needing to be under the tree. Like, I mean get it tomorrow if you can. By the time the holiday season hits high gear, inventory is probably going to be VERY low, and this shipping issue is going to continue into next year.

Thanks for the e-mail guys, and I’ll see ya next week.