Cost to build up a monster truck?
 

The local track is looking at doing some monster truck racing. A couple of guys have bought the axial grave digger RTR and basically upgraded everything but the axles and transmission case. If it comes down to just using those parts off an RTR I'd rather just build one up. What's an average cost to build one? I'd buy a kit but I didn't find much available for link style suspension.

that's the trouble : no solid axles monster truck on the market is good enough for solid axle monster truck racing ! you will have to build one yourself : the good news is that there are lot of parts available.

I'm not sure how to guide you because i never build another truck than my home made monster truck, which is not good for racing anyway !

you might want to find some specific threads and forums about those racing trucks based mostly on clod buster and axial, as far as i know !

A big advantage of buying a RTR is you don't have to figure out which parts will fit before you can have a functioning truck.

All of my monster trucks have cost in the range of $700 by the time I finished upgrading them. I only had one solid-axle monster truck though, and I didn't keep it very long because the handling was even worse than a normal monster truck with all that extra unsprung weight.

TRIGGER KING ! i was searching for this name !

and by the way Anthony, check the clod buster thread here in this forum, i remember some nice racing pictures!

You could spend up to 1500-2000 on a fully loaded clodbuster if you wanted to get nutty. Your best bet will be to find a good deal on a used truck in the facebook groups. The resale value of these trucks is horrible, so that is the path I would recommend. Check out the "Tamiya Clodbuster owners society" and "Solid Axle Monster Mayhem (SAMM)" pages on FB

The resale value of all RCs is horrible. The market value of used RCs is held-down by RCers who sell vehicles beaten to hell as "lightly used". It's kind of like lawyers and politicians, where 99% of them give the rest a bad name.

...okay, I thought my Wraith MT handled like crap, but my definition of "handling like crap" just got redefined by these videos. My Wraith MT handled like it was on rails compared to the trucks in these videos.

i wouldn't judge on this video ! i think they rarely drive on slippery concrete ; most race i watched were on carpet. and of course it depends on the driver too ! and finally, this vid is 2 years old now

Mostly they seem to have no throttle control. If they're actually racing, they can't drive like they're in Monster Jam.

exactly !

but i seen some vid with really good pilots !

Brushless kills smt10 parts
 

I’ve got 1200$ invested in my smt10. Going brushless kills every drivetrain part in them. It’ll require steel parts, vanquish drivetrain parts, mip driveshaft etc. I run my truck almost every day and it took over a month of constant breaking down to get to finally go through a whole battery. These smt10 builds on YouTube are done by guys who shelf them because it’s impossible not to break if you run it. I never even bash it- it’d probably break twice as fast! Every single part below the frame on mine required replacement within the first month. Any questions just ask