RC Car Reviews - RC Reviews and Articles featuring RC Cars, RC Trucks, RC Helis, and RC Airplanes

By: Brandon Wilcox, Thomaston CT
July 31, 2007

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The competitive rock crawling scene is definitely fun, but super slow motors and super sticky tires are only good for 1 thing, rock crawling. There are times when you want to take your truck elsewhere, like on a trail, where there’s mud, water, and other challenging terrain. A rock crawler is quite capable on the trail, but to really get the most fun out on the trail, it’s more fun to build a well rounded scale rig.

For my scale project, I decided to start with the chassis and tires and go from there. I wanted something that looks sweet, but also performs well. I decided to go with the MFM Scale Chassis from MFM Racing. The chassis comes in silver brushed aluminum, or you can get it black powder coated. I went with black for a sleeker look. For tires, I decided to go with Imex G-Hawgs. They are a mean looking tire that should perform well on the trail, and would look good with a number of bodies.

Once I received the chassis in the mail I opened it up and got everything ready to build. MFM Racing also hooked me up with their new scale bumper and transmission mount, these will definitely help the appearance of my truck. They are both powder coated black to match the chassis they sent me, but they also offer a number of different versions for the bumpers. You can get black, or the plain aluminum, with the option of black or silver rails.

The truck went together well; MFM Racing gives you all the nuts and bolts needed to get your chassis together. The chassis is precisely machined, and the black powder coating looks awesome. There are tons of holes in the chassis, so you can set up your rig with a number of different suspension setups such as droop, leaf springs, or standard coil spring setups. I decided to use standard T-MAXX shocks. For my tire setups, I decided to go with the new Kreepy Krawler memory foam tire inserts. The red foams worked awesome on my competition rock crawler, so I decided to use the stiffer pink foams in this scale truck. Unlike ordinary foams, these memory foam inserts never wear out, and are much softer then normal foams. Here are all other parts I used in my build:

After the truck was built I aligned the servo and tested the truck to make sure everything worked well before taking it outside. I headed up to Pequot Ledge Campground in Oakdale CT, a beautiful campground with plenty to do, and plenty of muddy trails and rocks to have fun on. I started doing some hill climbing with the truck to see how it worked. To my surprise, the truck didn’t have any torque twist. The center of gravity was also very low, and this helped me get right up and over a very steep muddy hill. There was also some rock in the area that I went over without any problem, the G-Hawgs with the memory foams inserts seemed to work very well.

After killing off 2 batteries, I put the truck away and charged up the packs for the next day. I headed out to a CT rock crawlers get-together that we had just 20 min down the road from where I was staying. Upon arrival, I noticed a large mud pit near the rock we were crawling at. I immediately skipped the rock and tested the truck out in the mud. It was a blast. The truck went thru the mud no problem, and was even able to go over some went logs that were near the mud pit. The Mtronik ESC gave me no hiccups at all; it worked great and stayed nice and cool. After adding some water to the mud pit I continued to empty another battery pack thru the truck. It was a blast, and truck certainly performed well.

After playing in the mud for a while, I started navigating thru the rock that was set up for the 2.2 comp rigs. I was able to get thru most of it like the other trucks. The chassis worked well, and even though it’s a scale chassis, it felt like I was driving my comp truck. With the G-Hawgs that were covered in mud, I left some nice footprints on the rock, but without weight in the front tires, it had trouble on the very steep stuff. With Pro-Line Masher 2k's on this truck and some weight up front it would have been a cakewalk.

Overall I was extremely happy with this chassis; it’s beautifully machined, works great, and is very adjustable. A must have upgrade for anyone with TLT or Wheely King axles.

Where can you get the MFM Chassis and accessories? Directly from MFM Racing: http://www.mfmracing.com/

For Kreepy Krawler memory foam tire inserts, check out Kreepy Krawler Designs.