The Backyard – The Losi LMT Gets a Firmware Update

Good day folks, and a Happy Friday to you! Welcome to the Backyard! This week is gonna be a throwback to my Monster Truck Madness days, because it’s all about a new monster!

The Losi LMT 2.0 has been announced, and the Losi team has done a good job of making several significant updates to the platform. You can read the product page for all of the features, but I wanted to point out a few that are the most significant to this long time Losi LMT racer.

– Updated Axles – Losi has changed the axle to a new two piece design, which looks to be much stronger. The older design was four pieces, and while I wouldn’t call the previous axles “weak”, it did create several points where they could fail under extreme use. This should help limit that. They’ve also increased the pinion bearing size, which is another welcome change.

– The DRIVE electronics are a big thing. Having not driven the truck, I don’t know how well they work. Some folks that I find reputable HAVE driven the vehicle though, and all say it seems to work as advertised. For those that don’t know what it does, it allows for various two wheel tricks that the full size trucks can do, like power wheelies, stoppies, and bicycling, to be able to be carried out with relative ease on the r/c truck. Due to physics, many of these tricks are basically impossible to do with regularity in an r/c monster. Not anymore though, apparently, as the onboard gyro will manage throttle control to allow the LMT to do some of the stuff the big boys can.

– New wheels at the 2.6 “standard monster truck size” – The OG LMT utilized short course style split dimension wheels that went against the grain of the “Clod sized” monster truck wheel that’s been the standard in the r/c solid axle world forever. I understand of the logic of why they went with it, but I don’t think it wound up being a smart choice for a variety of reasons, the least of which being cosmetics. The 2.0 looks so much better with the new tires/wheels!

– New stronger servo and servo saver – This was the most important upgrade to make if you bought the OG LMT, and I’d argue it was pretty much mandatory if you wanted to do anything save for light duty bashing. I mean, servos usually are always the thing you need to upgrade in an RTR vehicle, so perhaps it’s not saying a lot, but still! I’m happy that Losi has addressed this and offered a new servo and a redesigned/stronger servo saver.

The LMT 2.0 is set to release later this month, and my LHS is getting a demo rig next week. I’m hoping they will allow me to test it out so I can get some hands-on time with the DRIVE system to report back on how it feels. If I get some trigger time in, I’ll post my impressions!

That’s it for me this week. The way it’s gone this year so far, what with a big announcement dropping seemingly every Thursday, you can expect me to discuss next week’s big news drop next Friday!

Until then, keep it on all 4’s!