Running RC Truck in Wet Leaves

Ready to run!

Wet leaves are the enemy of traction to cars big and rc.  The surface of leaves of slippery which makes them to lose traction with tire, but also the surface they rest on.  The result is out of control driving.  Yesterday I experienced both the crazy slickness of the leaves with my Honda SUV and Traxxas Slash 2WD.  The Traxxas has no stability control, but my Honda does.  Even the Honda had a hard time keeping traction, but I was always in control.  The wet leaves allowed me to do some burnouts and doughnuts, which aren’t hard to do with the slash 2WD with any amount low traction surfaces, but it was still fun kicking up the leaves.  I had to get some time in with my remote control truck before the snow starts flying.  I have a feeling the 2WD is going to be useless in the snow. 

All of this wheel spinning fun is taking its toll on the rubber, time for a tire rotation.

Traxxas Slash in wet leaves

Short Course Truck as an RC Trail Truck?

I’m pretty intrigued with getting a scale remote control trail truck, but budget priorities don’t allow for it right now.  I still want to explore the scene, and give our readers and YouTube viewers a chance to see what something other than a trail truck looks and acts like on the trail.  For this I used what many have a short coarse truck.  I used a stock Traxxas Slash 2WD, a monster truck would be better, but I wanted have a bit more of a challenge.  One of the complaints about the Slash is its high center of gravity with the standard chassis.  This is true on a track, but for general bashing and running around outdoors it is a plus.  Still for running on the trail the ground clearance is still not that great and the wide chassis is going to get into contact with everything, unlike the chassis on a trail truck.  However, this exercise isn’t about modifying the hell out of a Slash to turn it into a capable trail truck, it is about simply getting out and having fun on limited resources.

The trail I was running was flat to rolling hills and had blanket of leaves.  It had no big gullies, massive roots, or rocks to climb. A short course truck is not for technical crawling and will just lead to frustration if you try to do that.  The slash ran just fine trough the wet fall leaves without any trouble.  Although the leaves gave me almost no traction at the parking lot.  My biggest problem was running across sticks.  Small sticks often got wedged in the chassis and I had to drag them along.  The chassis would run up on higher sticks and give enough lift of the wheels to lose traction and just spin.  The Traxxas Slash handled small roots just fine.  Overall I enjoyed running the slash on the trail although; I have to admit it looked pretty dumb compared to scale jeeps and pickup trucks. 

Well I think I’ve been bitten by the scale trail truck bug and I’ll have to start saving my pennies.  I think the object of my desire is an Axial ACX10 Jeep of some sort.  

Action Camera on RC Car: Slash and SJCAM SJ4000

Today we mounted a SJCAM SJ4000 Action Camera on our old friend the Traxxas Slash 2WD for the first time to get something of a FPV (first person view) feeling.  I have a couple of GoPro Hero 3 Black cameras, but those are much more expensive and I didn't want to bash the rc into anything and especially not roll it over.  The camera was simply clipped on to the large plastic plate that GoPro cameras are attached to in their packaging.  That plate was then attached to the Lexan body of the slash with duct tape, which is visible in the rearward-facing shots.  The simple attachment method worked well even through water.  I attempted to not roll the truck over during this test, but I still did about four times.  The camera and its waterproof case both came out fine.  The camera did come loose of its clip mount and go flying when I hit a stationary object.  I’ll have to come up with a tether so it won’t leave the car and get lost in the grass.   

I was pleased with the results and they were pretty much like I expected.  I’ve seen plenty of videos with cameras mounted on short course, monster trucks and other rc’s.  I ran my setup down a couple of wide walking trails, which gave it a somewhat scale racetrack feel.  I also blasted the completely stock Traxxas Slash 2-WD through puddles, leaves grass, down a large black pipe and across parking lots. All of this was done on one 7-cell NiMH battery which got pretty tired by the time I was driving through the water.   Speaking of water I drove the poor vehicle into a pond, it didn’t turn, lost traction and got sand in the motor.  The motor was jammed, but I got it fixed and was able to shoot the rest of the video. 

I have a lot more experimenting to do with this set up.  In the future I plan on trying some different mounting methods to get different perspectives on both the external and internal parts of the rc car. It should be interesting, and I’ll share the results with you hear and on YouTube.  I hope you enjoy the video.  

Traxxas Slash First Run of Doughnuts

A remote control car flips in the air after taking a turn too sharply.
No damage done in this crash

We took our truck out yesterday to a parking lot which had a thin layer of dirt.  It was prime conditions for the tires to throw dirt in the air and do some doughnuts.  It was a lot of fun, but could be hard on the motor.  I think we'll take it easy next time, well, maybe...

Traxxas Slash 2wd kicking up dirt after a standing start.

Traxxas Slash Basic Operation

Our first video showing some basic operation of the Traxxas Slash two-wheel drive short-course truck.  Everything on this truck is stock except for the scratches we've added.