RC Bashers

Got my Redcat Vortex today. First impression is that it's a pretty good deal for $187 shipped. 4wd, brushless, rtr, even includes a 2000mah nickel pack. Battery is charging now so I decided to start messing with it. Swapped the ugly tires/rims for some 1.9 black TC dish rims and tamiya 3.5" rockhard BFG MT's. These tires will have no traction I'm sure. I also lowered the body 1 notch in front and 2 notches in the rear, still looks too high. Here's some pics, opted for the red just to be different.

reminds of my tc3 kinda. Curious to hear your report on how it runs

Those tires have no grip, though I only tested on asphalt and grass/straw. I was surprised that it went pretty good in slightly too tall grass, I hate to mow. It did get warm but think that is due to the 23T pinion. I'd like to find a scale looking tire with good traction somewhere between these, 3.5", and the Slash tires which are about 4.25". I think these look awesome, but what's the point of brushless if your tires won't grip right?

Nice addition J. Congrats and really like the look. Keep us updated and tanx for da eyecandy.l8r,w.

Well I had some juice left in a bettery that I wanted to run down, so I figure why not run this thing. While I was at it, why not take a video. The road and grass really do it no justice, not to mention poor driver skills. I really need some dirt to play in with it. Anyway, here's a half dead battery video.

I'm not a fan of monster tires on a short course truck, but I think it will be fun to run. I raised the body all the way up, raised the suspension some, and bolted up the Cliff Climber tires. I also changed the pinion from 23T to 17T. If it will stop raining and give me a chance to run it I'd like to build a ramp and do some jumps on video. But for now here's the monster truck pics.

that looks pretty cool............

Mmmm... beefy.

Well know me I like it

While waiting on a guy to come buy my tires I ran almost every RC I own today. Those that were runable anyways, Ferret, Tamtech, crawler, and the redcat. It may not look scale but the bigger tires make this thing fun in the grass and gravel. Here's a couple vids of it. Seems like the cool parts happened off camera though.

Looks good J. Seems to me you are having a bit to much fun. J/K there is no such thing. l8r,w.

I'll have more fun once I buy my new charger and a couple 5000mah 2s lipos. I've heard some so-so things about this setup and 3s so I'm sticking to the safe side.

Currently the electronics are in the stampede. Theplastic seems to be ok, but I'm not really hard on my vehicles, haven't had and big hits yet. That 1/8 is getting all kinds of good reviews from what I've seen. It seems like it will fit slash/sc10 bodies as well. Does it come with 2.4 radio too? I saw that some of redcat's higher end stuff will be getting 2.4 soon.

Shouldn't be too long before I can pick up a 2ch 2.4 radio for cheap. I've probably already paid for it in broken/bent antennas, haha.

RC4WD has a couple 3 ch ones for under $100 also. At one point I thought about a $30 6ch stick from hobbycity and cramming the guts into a pistol radio, seen it done on youtube before. But then again a crawler or scaler is the only thing I'd ever even want 6 channels for, much less need.

Hi Jamus, I was thinking of getting one of these....in your opinion,are they worth the price ?

Are they worth under $190, yup. However if I had waited, I would have bought the next up model. The Redcar Aftershock 8E. It's around $300, brushless 1/8 chassis with a body almost identical to the SC10, brushless, comes with 2 2S lipos(thats running 4S), and newer models will have a 2.4Ghz radio. Check it out here. http://www.rcshortcourse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1615

I still like my vortex though, and it hasn't failed me yet. It's just smaller than a slash/sc10 and correct tires for it are hard to find. I think I will eventually stretch the chassis and run slash/sc10/blitz bodies and tires.

Thanks Jamus, I've read reviews on redcat products saying they are "junk"....even after reading the reviews I took a chance & bought their RS10 crawler for $140.
I'm very pleased with it's performance & construction & thought this may be the same for the vortex.

I was sceptical about the RS10, it's similar to the cliff climber with 380 motors and MOA design. So how are the motors on the RS10 as far as torque? They run 7.2V batts right? Might be a good motor upgrade for my cliff climber. Or is it that the RS10 has better internal gearing, CC is like 52:1 or something.

I'm not sure about the gear ratio but,I find it to be a better all-around crawler than the CC.
I'll post a thread on it in the crawling section.
Didn't mean to take your thread off-topic

Small update on this thing. I got my lipos/charger setup working and added a fan/heatsink to the motor. I had to cut the top chassis brace and some fins off the heat sink to get everything to fit. But in the end it did. Won't look so terrible once I strip the truck down and paint every blue or bare aluminum piece black.

Well I've been meaning to do this for a while now. I raised the body fairly high to fit the cliffclimber tires underneath, which makes an ugly gap showing off the guts of the RC. I made these pieces to cover some of the gap. I used 1" angle plasit, corner trim strip. It's clear so I painted it black. It doesn't really cover everything completely but should once i get better tires and lower the body back down. It should also help with loosing the battery, which I did the other day while running away from the dog. Lipo is thinner than the nimh.

Not much of an update, but while ripping apart an old computer to make a power supply I stole the CPU heatsink and fan for the redcat ESC. The computer heatsink was a little bit larger and required some cutting and drilling. However it is also much larger and no doubt the heatsink alone would be a cooling upgrade. I haven't wired it permanently or tested everything in the car yet, but it works good on the bench.

Good idea, I like it. So you ever run this much or just sits now?

Yeah it sits a good bit. Just can't find the right tires for it. So what I'm thinking of doing is ditching the short course body and making it a basher buggy. I'll keep those beefy bumpers though, no matter how ugly they will be with a small body. I'm thinking some of the cheap ebay 1/8 badlands knock-offs. That or some MT tire, like what you'd find on a stampede.