Hobby Central

Rock Crawling

Rock crawling is very popular in the RC world right now.  There are many many manufactures' of crawling parts and kits and modifications for trucks. 

Here's the Newest crawler on the block, the Tamiya CR01 Landcruiser.  It works very well out of the box.  It wouldn't be classified as a competition crawler, but it is really fun to drive.   I like the scale looks..

A truck from Tamiya is the F350 High Lift (and Toyota Hilux High Lift).   It is a solid axle 4 wheel drive truck with a 3 speed transmission.   In stock form it doesn't articulate too much because it uses actual leaf springs.   With just a few modifications, it can be made to a great crawler.

One of the first manufactures' to produce a complete articulating rock crawler from the ground up is Axial with their AX10 Scorpion.  It is awesome out of the box and has huge aftermarket support.

HPI has a crawler-to-be on their hands, the Wheely King 4WD.  The axles are perfectly suited to making a 2.2 size crawler.  With the HPI Crawler Conversion, you can turn the King into a very capable crawler.

Due the many manufactures of parts, we don't stock alot of stuff for rock crawling mods.  We can order most of it, but it's hard to have everything.

This is my Tamiya F350 High Lift with a 4 link rear end, 1/2 inch block lift up front and custom 5/32" brass rod roll cage.  The wheels are Traxxas Stampede rims that have been narrowed 5/8" with HPI Yokohama Geolander tires with narrow cut inserts.

The front has been converted to a 4 link also because the leaf springs took a beating when the truck tumbled end over end down the hill behind our shop.

Here is a customer's HPI Wheely King 4WD converted to a 4 link crawler with just some spare link rods from a Revo, a Jato and a Monster GT.

Here's a Tamiya TXT-1 (I sold it..Doh!) with Hitec digital 1/4 steering servo and Pro-line Narrow Cheyenne beadlock wheels.  I narrowed the wheels another 1/2 inch and used the Pro-line narrow XL Moab tires.  I used Hot Racing 23 mm adapters to fit the wheels to the axles.  The rest of the chassis is stock except for the aluminum servo mounts, skid plate and Traxxas aluminum T-Maxx shocks.

The Original Monster Truck that most of all the Gnarly "Unlimited Class" crawlers are based on is the Good 'ol Tamiya Clod Buster.  Shown here is the newest version, the Super Clod Buster.

In stock form as shown here, it sucks as a crawler.  It's really bouncy and doesn't articulate very much.   What makes it great though is the axles.    Click on the links tab at the top of this page and you will see how crazy these trucks can get.

Here's one example:  The Rock Bull 2 from RC4WD.com using Clod Buster axles.