Monster Truck Madness – Talkin’ Losi LMT Spec Racing

Hey folks, happy Thursday to you!

This week we are heading into the monster mailbag as I got a good one involving the Losi LMT.

Hey Doug,

Recently I was watching some Trigger King races,  is there a reason you guys don’t have a LMT spec class anymore?
Not really a fair race when stock LMT’s are up against a modded out clod.
What about a shock on axle class?
The trailing arm trucks seem to have a big advantage.
Sorry if you have covered this in the past I just miss the close racing of the spec LMT class.

Thanks for posting the races online,  I’m looking forward to watching the new season this year.

Hopefully I can get down there and race with you guys one of these days.

Thanks,

Steve

There are some good questions here, but let me start with why my club doesn’t do a Spec Losi LMT class anymore.

I would hope at this point that folks know of my love of the Losi LMT. It’s one of my favorite r/c releases of all time and I love wheeling both of mine, which are modded to the gills. However, in bone stone RTR form they just weren’t a lot of fun for us to race.

Bare in mind we race on dirt, usually loose (i.e. nothing close to a hard packed blue groove). Because of that, the stock tires just did not grip whatsoever. That, combined with the sluggish stock steering servo made for the antithesis of competitive racing. Our experienced racers had trouble controlling them, and novices simply couldn’t. We talked about allowing tire and steering mods, but then we were modifying fairly significant portions of the stock package.

At this point, various racers were also starting to find success in the pro-modified racing class (where almost anything goes), simply by making those aforementioned changes to the previously “spec” LMT’s, so we decided at the end of a single season that running a spec class just didn’t really make sense anymore to our club.

Some other clubs out there have dropped LMT Spec class, some others still have it albeit with several mods allowed. While everyone has their own specific reasons for having a class or not, I hope that explains our reasoning!

As for a shock on axle class, that answer is fairly simple- we haven’t had demand for it. I do think that would be something to eventually explore, though.

What you are speaking of is sort of collectively known in the r/c monster truck racing world as “Ultra Mod”, though to my knowledge it means a scale tubular monster truck with a scale appearing driveline. Shock on axles is just a part of it.

We don’t have enough guys with them to make it viable for us at the moment, but that could change if more have them!

My advice to you would be take your stock Losi LMT and come on down to race with us. We will happily give you a set of loaner tires and wheels that you can try out for the day. That alone should be enough to have fun!

Thanks a bunch for the e-mail and I hope you make it to a solid axle monster truck race sometime, whether our club or someone else’s! I’m bias’d, but it’s the most fun kind of race day in the hobby IMO!!!!

If you have any r/c monster truck related questions, drop me a line at doug @ bigsquidrc.com

Until next time, keep it on all 4’s!