By: Brandon Wilcox, Thomaston CT
January 30, 2008

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Winter time means downtime for RC fans; there is snow everywhere, it's freezing, and most clubs aren't having any events. It's the perfect time to build a new truck. I've built my fair share of decked out comp rigs, but this time around I wanted to build something that looked awesome, but still performed great. After some searching around I decided to go with a Budget-X chassis from M&L Art. Don't let the name fool you, there is nothing budget about this setup. The kit comes with everything you need, links, body mounts, the full chassis, mounting brackets and hardware for the axles, and even the steering kit is built into the truck. All you need to do is add axles and electronics and go.

The chassis is beautifully machined, and is polished to a mirror finish. The chassis came pre-built, and only took me 10 minutes to hook up to my clod buster axles. I didn't even need to look at the directions once. It was very straight forward, and the chassis was well designed to be a direct bolt on to Clod Buster axles. Here are the main components I used in my truck:

M&L Budget-X Chassis
Tamiya Clod Buster Axles
Pro-Line Badlands Tires
Castle Creations Mamba Max ESC
Novak XXtra Receiver
Integy 35 Turn Lathe Motors
Apogee 2 Cell Lipo Battery Pack

For this truck, M&L Art also hooked me up with a custom painted body to go on the chassis. My camera doesn't do this thing justice; man does this body look awesome! Tons of detail went into the body, from the bear on the hood, to the awesome tribal designs on the side, to the text that was done by hand. Every part of this body is awesome to look at. M&L also used a really cool custom mount so I can just slide on the front of the body and it only needs 2 body clips to attach to the truck.

Even though this truck will be mostly for show, I still wanted to be able to crawl with it. The truck features RC4WD diff lockers front and back, and the super soft Pro-Line tires are filled with Kreepy Krawler Memory foam for the best performance. I setup my Mamba Max speed control with 0% drag brake because I still want to be able to bash around with it a little.

For testing, I waited for most of the snow in the area to melt. Luckily we had a couple nice days last week so I was able to hit up my favorite spot in New Milford. I was pretty careful not to flip the truck over; I didn’t want to mess up my new body. I started crawling around and the truck felt pretty good. I already trimmed and adjusted the electronics before I headed out so I wouldn’t have to mess around too much in the cold. The 2 cell lipo had plenty of power and gave me about 20 minutes of runtime. Not bad for a 1500 mah pack. The chassis felt good and it articulated well. At first it actually would go to 90 degrees, which is a little too much for my taste, so I dialed it down by adjusting the shocks. The Budget-X comes with a convenient battery tray in the front and back of the chassis which puts the weight over the axles, which is exactly where you want it. I decided to go with the lightweight lipo, but if you were setting up your truck for speed, I would put a stick pack on both the front axle, and the rear axle for longer runtime. For rock crawling, I would recommend just using one pack in the front, unless you’re just bashing around the yard.

After draining my lipo pack, I went home and charged it for use the next day. I took the truck up to Burr Pond, in Torrington CT. There are rocks as far as the eye can see, which makes it the perfect place to test the truck. I had a blast driving around the truck, the Pro-Line Badlands tires hooked up extremely well, and even though they are a shorter tire then what I usually run, they definitely had the bite to make up for it. The tires rubbed the chassis at full steer, nothing to slow down the truck, but I did notice it when I went full left or full right. Nothing some wheel wideners couldn’t fix. The Budget-X chassis was well made, and nothing broke or came loose during any of the testing.

All in all the truck worked great, and it looked awesome. I would definitely recommend this chassis to anyone. The body that they painted for this truck was definitely one of the nicest bodies I have seen. Tons of detail, good color scheme, and I couldn’t find a flaw on any part of the body. To get your self a custom painted lid, or a rock crawling chassis, check out M&L’s website.