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PandaHobby Tetra X3 1/24 scale crawler

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I saved $300 on a portal-axle G500 crawler!

Or did I?

I was at Hub Hobby, my local hobby shop, getting some body posts for the LaTrax Prerunner after they busted out on the ice.

I wandered into the RC section and noticed they had a few of the new PandaHobby Tetra 1/24 scale portal-axle rigs. I asked the sales guy if they had blue. He said they did in the back and went to go get it.

I didn’t expect to buy anything besides LaTrax parts, but I guess I’m doing this! I already knew of some of the 1/24 Tetra’s shortcomings – having subscribed to a Tetra Facebook group a while ago.

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LaTrax Servo Replacement

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At our last outing to the frozen lake ice track, the stock servo in the LaTrax Prerunner finally gave up the ghost 👻 I figured it was a matter of time as I’ve replaced the included servos in all of our other ready-to-run vehicles: Slash & SCX24. I had a feeling this was inevitable.

I started with this video put together by the fine folks here in town at Dollar Hobbyz:

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1/18 scale studded tires

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Rather than making a snow track in the back yard this year, I decided to venture out and try some ice racing on a lake. There’s a group called MN R/C rally, rallycross and ice racers on Facebook and they create and maintain an ice track on Pickerel Lake in St. Paul.

Before we would visit the lake I wanted to make some studded tires for my daughter’s 1/18 LaTrax Prerunner.

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Garden Railway Track Work Part 3 – Paint and Ballast

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Racing against incoming snow in 2021, I was working to get the track work (including ballast) down before it was buried for 4 months. The last step was to finish painting and add ballast over the top.

The tracks were already covered with a silvery-gray base-coat primer. The next coat of paint would be a rusty brown to paint the ties and the sides of the rails. I purchased a quart of the cheapest flat exterior paint I could find at Menards. The color I landed on is called Fudge Truffle 😋

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Garden Railway Track Work Part 2 – Decking

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Looking at several garden railway roadbed installation methods, I wanted to mount my track to boards for smooth operation. We’ll use the crusher fines as a base under the boards, and later on the top and sides as ballast.

I started by cutting my 1″x4″ cedar boards to the exact length needed for the straight sections. I did rough cuts for the curves on 1/2″ pressure treated plywood:

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