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Slash 4×4 Crawler (Part 2) Width

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Suspension Arms

The arms are going to be the single biggest difference maker when it comes to overall width. As part of my research I gathered a list of several Slash-compatible arms and their lengths. If you’ve got more arm lengths to add to that list, please comment below.

Bandit arms are 67mm wide, while the stock Slash 4×4 arms are 92mm. Just by making this switch we’re going to remove 50mm of overall width, bringing it from 296mm wide to potentially 246mm – less than the goal of 249mm. So we have some width we can add if need be.

Here you can see two sets of Bandit arms compared to the original Brushed 4×4 Slash arms:

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Slash 4×4 Crawler (Part 1) Introduction

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Can a Slash 4×4 transform into a trail-worthy RC crawler? I don’t think this is a new question, in fact Ultimate RC did something very similar with a Stampede 4×4 almost 10 years ago.

I took some of the cues from that build and wondered if we couldn’t do it even better. I don’t intend to keep it track worthy like Jang’s Chimera, but can we make it truly trail worthy?

Goal: Independent suspension trail-worthy truck

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Solar Charging Setup

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There’s a place I like to race at in St. Peter, MN called Shamrock RC Raceway. It’s an interesting setup because it’s a turf track set up outdoors in a hockey rink that would otherwise go unused in the summer. Rather than bring an insane extension cord to power my charger from the park restroom, I wanted to come up with a more portable (and green) charging solution.

So I put together this simple solar charging setup:

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LaTrax Wasteland Mashup

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When I was looking to get my daughter her first RC car, I eyed the Dromida Wasteland series of vehicles. That line is discontinued, but you can still occasionally find them at local hobby shops or eBay.

After researching them, I found out they have a combined ESC & receiver which would not easily allow me to replace the transmitter & receiver for a left handed version.

So when I saw a Dromida Wasteland truck body show up on eBay, I snagged it. The Dromida Wasteland and LaTrax Prerunner are both 1/18 scale and have similar wheelbases – 165mm and 179mm respectively. Being the same scale means the bodies should be proportional and more importantly swappable, albeit with some tweaks. The 14mm difference in wheelbase is about 1/2 inch, but I figured I could kitbash these two into one to make it work.

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Meatball Racing 3D printed products

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We’re launching a new shop with some 3D printed RC products for sale. I got a 3D printer earlier this year because there’s always been parts I wanted (mostly RC related) that I would have to ask my cousin to print for me.

Then came wanting parts that no one else had made yet, so I spent over 10 hours watching youtube videos on how to use Fusion 360 to design my own parts.

The first thing on my list was a bumper mount for the Slash to hold a flag. Sort of the way monster trucks do:

Photo Courtesy K&N Filters
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Send It, ‘Merica!

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Let’s customize a jump quick-and-easy with a stencil and some spray paint.

One of the best things about off-road RC vehicles is jumping. And when you’re just bashing in the street or the yard, jumps are tons of fun. One of the best accessories I’ve added to our Slash fleet are these 1080 jumps. They’re best found at garage sales or craigslist – often for half the price of new.

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