bobmon69's Monster 4-TEC

Preface

When I first got my 4-Tec I was so excited. It was a great car, it had great speed and was pretty much unbreakable. After a while I got bored of having to stay onroad while my friends jumped with their offroad cars. So I decided to make my car a rally. It held up pretty well but I just wasn't satisfied with the performance. Then it hit me... MONSTER TRUCK!

I began asking around on the Traxxas Forum and got some tips from "pooycow" on how to put rustler arms on the car. I didn't worry about it breaking because I couldn't break it jumping off of curbs and small platforms or slamming into the curb at full speed. So I began to gather parts and assembled what you see now.

Modifications

All images and descriptions by bobmon69 (bobmon69@yahoo.com).

** Be sure to click on the images below to see the large, zoomed-in versions **

Here it is, complete, basking in its glory. This is the finished product. This is what all the time and effort I put in turned out to be. A one-of-a-kind Monster 4-Tec. The Atomik R/C body makes this car look sweet when it's going offroad.

Here it is with the body off. As you can see there is a poorly made battery holder but it works. The front arms are put on backwards so the half shafts can be lowered and not run against the arms. The front turnbuckles kept popping off the little bolts so I decided to use heavy duty screws and keep them on for good.

Here is a pic of the front suspension. As you can see I trimmed down the front bumper so the wheels could turn completely. I drilled some holes on the suspension arms to put the shocks on and I used long turnbuckles.

The arms are put on upside down so I would be able to lower the car down to 4.5" ground clearance if I wanted to. The half shafts are the ones used on the stampede. Yes that is the stock stinger motor. I have a 22 tooth Trinity Zero Gravity pinion gear and a 90 tooth Duratrax Spur Gear.

Here is a shot from the top.

This shot shows you the bottom. It kind of looks like the Jang's dremelled chassis except it came that way. And yes, it is great for bashing or racing because it is light, flexible (a little), and it just won't break.

This is a side view. The truck itself with the body on is about 8.5 inches tall.

Epilogue

Since these pictures were taken I have removed the dual battery set up to save weight. I have out a 4-cell reciever pack on to increase run time and not lose control when the battery gets low. I will be replacing the stinger motor with a Speed Gem 2 17x1 around February '02. The servo will be replaced with a high torque metal geared servo that dishes out 132 oz/in at .18 seconds. The shock oil will be replaced with Trinity 100 weight silicone shock oil to beef up the suspension even more. The ESC is a Duratrax ESC-100. It makes a difference compared to the stock MSC. Thats all that I have planned for now.

I hope this inspires some of you to try your own crazy ideas.