Monster Truck Madness – SMT10 Chassis Clearance

I’ve been sitting on this e-mail awhile, but my friend “The Trail Rat” has a question about SMT10 chassis clearance.

I have rear steer on my SMT10 and the clearance to the chassis seems small. Is there anyone in your club who has dealt with this? The servo hits the chassis when the suspension bottoms out. I also plan on getting an RH Designs wheelie bar…is there a clearance issue on this?
John – The Trail Rat

Hey John, yeah this is something that a lot of folks deal with once they start swapping out servos on their SMT10. You don’t mention in your e-mail what servo you are trying to install, but having tried a bunch, I’m going to guess it’s a Savox. Savox servo cases can be longer than other brands and therefore it can be common to see fitment issues with them on certain applications…the Axial SMT10 being one of those.

I am currently running a Savox SC-1267SG on my Nuclear Banana truck (along with an RH Designs Wheelie Bar, more on that in a moment) and ran into the same issue when installing it. My solution was rather rudimentary but effective nonetheless- I cut a small section out of the chassis for the servo horn to clearly travel through. You can see the pic at the top of the page.

I have been running the truck like this, racing it monthly, for over a year now. The structural integrity has not been comprised whatsoever. Heck, this particular chassis is now over 3 years old and has close to 40 events on it, and you’d never know it for how it handles! So yeah, go ahead and snip the chassis. It’s simple and cheap. You won’t even see the notched chassis with the body on it!

As for the wheelie bar question, no, no clearance issues with that either and I’ve been sporting one since the prototypes came out 3 years ago. I actually wrote an article on it a few years back!

Hope that helps!