Scalers Magazine Issue#1

TAKING MALL-RATED TO ANOTHER LEVEL ScaleFab Crawl Da Coast Trail Armor is only RC Outlaws of California part of what they are take over the NorCal coast all aboutOctober 2016

Features This Blue Beauty is more than just a pavementprincess The Deadbolt that's got the style game on lock This Checy has got all the right details Departments Editor Shoutout Shop Talk Neck Of Your Woods



the rst ever Readers’Rides are here. Congratsto Nick Flood on beingthe rst ever “Ride of theMonth” with his stun-ning JK hardbody. Nickhandmade a lot on thisbeautiful rig including thechassis, sliders, bulbar, androof rack just to name afew. He has de nitely builtthis ride to handle what-ever the Perth, Australianenvironment can throw atit. This complete stock SCX10 ii kit was done up by Mi- caiah Holt from Redding, CA. Only change he made was the wheels and tires. His choice of electronics come from Holmes Hobbies for the ESC and Trail- master Pro 3300kv motor and Savox servo. He also added custom front bumper and rear bumper with a dirt bike carrier. Micaiah, this does not sound “all stock”, but great rig.This Power Wagon started life as a RTR Honcho.Jesse Ham added a narrowed AR60 up front with 38:13gearing up front and 43:13 gearing in the rear. GMadesteel wheels and RC4WD Baja Claws stuffed with CIfoams occupy each corner. Servo winch with fairleadand custom sliders make sure this rig can get over justabout anything. A custom styrene interior with DrWho at the wheel nishes things off. Hailing from Morgan Hill, CA, Shawn Fuentes has put together a gorgeous looking truck. Based off a RC4WD Gelande II chassis and drivetrain, he added SSD axles that got stuffed with Axial internals to make sure the RC4WD Interco Iroks always keep spinning when they’re supposed to. A RC4WD Blazer hard body tops this rig off.

Jeremy Son sent in this awesome Axial SCX10 JK sport- ing a slew of Vanquish goodies: XR10 width Curries, links, knuckles and C-hubs, tranny case and 1.9 Method wheels. Those wheels are covered with Pro Line XL Su- per Swampers that put the power from the Tekin RX8/ 2300kv Roc412 combo to the rocks.Justin Spargo runs this Axial Scx10 ii XJ in the monthly crawlcomps held by Western Australian RC Rock Crawlers which heis a member of. Powering this beauty is a Holmes Hobbies systemcomprised of a BR-XL waterproof ESC and 13T Crawlmaster Ex-pert motor. An OMG 20kg handles steering duties and gets extrajuice from a 10A Castle Creations BEC. Justin dressed up this rigwith a RC4WD Warn winch, Locked Up RC fairlead, SSD beadlocks wrapped in either Axial BF-Goodrich meats for trail dutiesor MT Baja Claws for scale 1 comps. Called Orange Heep for some reason, Brandon Bendinger loaded this “heep” with a heeping list of mods including Vanquish OCD axles, RC4WD two-speed transmission, Tekin 35T motor, Davos waterproof servo, RC4WD 110mm shocks, Vanquish titanium links and steering links just to name a few. The hard body was tted with a Pro Line roof rack and custom interior.Based on a Cross RC GP4L kit, BC Race (BC standsfor Big Country), co-founder of Down With the Sick-ness RC says it is one of the most complete kits hehas ever seen. With features like leafed dually rearand four link front suspension, metal drive shafts,two-speed transmission, bead lock wheels, completelight kit with controller and hard body, I would haveto agree with him. Would you like to see your ride in the Reader’s Rides? Send Hi-Res, scale shots to scalersmag@ gmail.com. Don’t forget to put Reader’s Ride in the subject line.

scalerfab is known for their line of Trail Armor accessories, but they are much more than that. They take the time to open their doors to us and let us in on what ScalerFab is all about. Started in 2013 by Troy Loftus and his wife, Casey, ScalerFab has become the go-to shop for quality steel accessories and one of the most recognized R/C businesses on the market. Troy started small, building gear for his own Honcho back in 2012. At the events he would go to, others started to take notice of his craftsmanship and effectiveness of his steel accessories. After making some items for local club members, Troy realized that the industry was in need of quality steel accessories. ScalerFab was created to ll that need. Today, they offer over 100 products covering all major platforms on the market Interested in being a part of the action? Follow ScalerFab on facebook or visit www.scalerfab.com and stay tuned for info on how you could be invited to join Team ScalerFab for the upcoming 2017 season

The quality of all these products comefrom the utilization of MIG and TIGtechniques owing through Millerwelders and Troy’s skillful hands. Thesesmooth, clean welds have been provento hold up to even the most brutal oftrail use. Just holding one of ScalerFab’sproducts in your hands and you can feelthe passion and workmanship that hasgone into creating it. Troy is always in theshop fabricating the latest and greatest inR/C Trail Armor, while Casey enjoys thecreative aspects of Social MediaMarketing and Web Design. Togetherthey are the perfect team, living andworking together, having turned theirpassions into a thriving business.With the quality and creativity from Troyand Casey, you can count on ScalerFabto continue to offer the latest andgreatest in Trail Armor & Accessories.As each new vehicle comes to market,ScalerFab will remain on the forefront ofdesigning and producing performance-engineered R/C Trail Armor for theworld-wide R/C Community. Addition-ally, with over $10,000 donated so far in2016, ScalerFab plans to continue tosupport the R/C Hobby throughsponsorships and giveaways.Big thanks to Casey Loftus for taking thetime to talk to me. -T, Henderson



hat began as a trade for a fairlymodded JK, quickly exploded intowhat you see spread across thesepages. From the beginning, I knewI wanted to build a rig that wouldlook killer and perform just as wellas it looks. This is how I did it:

. Starting with a Brazin RC Hi/Lo chassis inthe latest G10 berglass and the Jenve RacingBrick battery pack as the backbone, I had thestart to my ultimate build. The SSD D60 axles,which were already on the JK when I got it,were gutted and lled with every upgrade Icould get my hands on. GripFab lockers at-tached to Axial HD beveled gears front and rearare held in by SSD aluminum bearing carriersand shielded from the outside by SSD RockGuard diff covers. SSD brass tubes were alsoadded for strength and weight to both axles.SSD universals, aluminum C-hubs and knuck-les up front and SSD aluminum lockouts withVanquish Products (VP) axle shafts in the rearcap off the internals. Everything rolls smoothon Fast Eddy bearings.Those axles get held inplace with SSD links down low, VP links onthe upper rear and SSD panhard handling itup front. Keeping all fours planted are GMadeXD103 shocks.With the chassis and suspension set, it wastime to get the power gured out. The rigalready came with a Holmes Hobbies Torque-master BR-XL but the old motor wasn’t go-ing to cut it for me. So, out with the old andin with new: Holmes Hobbies TorquemasterExpert 40T. After waiting and waiting somemore, I was nally able to get my hands on aVP aluminum tranny housing and stuffed itwith Axial HD gears, Holmes Hobbies outdriveand, of course, Fast Eddy bearings. Motor andtranny come together via a Robinson Rac-ing pinion and a Hot Racing 32P spur. SinceI’m running a 3s LIPO, I wanted to make sureall that rotation made it to the axles, so, MIPshafts were enlisted for the job.I had to say bye-bye to the wheel and tirecombo that the Jeep came with in favor of someVoodoo KLRs in the soft gold compound. I lled the holes of the KLR donuts with someGearhead RC UTE 1.9 wheels dressed up withcolor match Gearhead rings. I did ip thewheels for a wider stance. Keeping those tiressupported at all angles are Lil Nova foams fromCrawler Innovations. A Hitec 7980TH servoconnected to SSD steering links swing thosefront tires side to side with ease.



I couldn’t just top all this off with some plain ol’, off-the-shelf jeep body. Starting with a fresh Axial JK bodTamiya Light Blue with a black backing. Knight Customs was then called upon for the 3D printed angry eydoor handles, tail lights, rear inner fenders and hood latches. I also used Knight Customs for the rear bumpeverything up front and houses the RC4WD 8274 Warn winch. To light things up, I used a simple RC Lighand tail lights, HeyOK Rock Lights to shine below and a MadDogRC 6” Slim light bar to turn night into daadd a few a scale items. Gearhead RC sand ladders, Integy hi-lift jack, Mad Skinz sleeping bag, ARB coolerswitch), SSD hubs, and a Precision Custom Graphics “MALLRAT” license plate nish off the scale look of tI couldn’t be happier with what has been dubbed the Mall Rat. It has been a great build and I thank everyothe way.

dy, I laid down a few layers ofyes grill, fenders, hood scoop,per while a SSD unit protectshts kit for the headlightsay. All that was left was to (which also hides the light the rig.one who has helped me along -T.Henderson

On LockI knew I was going to needhelp from the get-go with thismagazine and my good friend,Anthony, was more than willingto help me out and I appreciate ittremendously. Since he was so ea-ger to help me out, I wanted himto show off his ride but he had todo his own write up. Take it fromhere, buddy…



Hello and welcome to the rst issue of Scalers Magazine! My name isAnthony, but I go by Fern Thercguy on social media. I was thrilled whenTodd Henderson asked me if I wanted to be a part of the Scalers Magazinehe was creating and I eagerly accepted!The deadbolt upgrades have been trial and error and it’s been a blast tofeel the difference in performance with each improvement. I started withSSD titanium steering links, followed by axial green 98mm lower linksand SSD 84.5mm upper links. The stock tactic servo was not cutting it soI went with the waterproof Savox SW-1210SG and couldn’t be happierwith the power at 6v. My rst motor upgrade was the Tekin 35T brushedmotor and it was a huge improvement in power and torque over the stock27 turn; that was until a friend let me try his sensored brushless setup.The difference was unparalleled! After much discussion with severalpeople who run brushless setups, I decided to go with Holmes HobbiesTrailmaster BLE Pro ESC to power the Holmes Hobbies Trailmaster BLPro 540 2700KV. With that power plant running on Lectron Pro 5200 3SLipo, I added two Yeah Racing 30mm with aluminum housing fans, one onthe motor and the other on the esc for added heat dissipation and worryfree from overheating. The cooling fans are powered by a Castle CreationsBEC at 8.4v, I know most people that use cooling fans run on 3s (11.1v) but8.4v is the highest voltage Yeah Racing (YR) recommends. I also cut andpainted matching green fan covers using one eighth hardwire mesh clothtwenty seven gauge to protect the fan blades. For a full metal transmissiongear and housing I went with Hot Racing (HR) 57T steel full metal geartransmission and Robinson Racing (RR) 10T pinion on the motor. Nextwas Mip drive shafts connected to HD Axial Beveled gears incased withSSD D60 axle housings front and rear. The Axial HD bevel gears in therear I left stock ratio while the front I decided to go ahead with Axial HDoverdrive beveled gears so when I’m out on the trails the front tires turnslightly faster to help grab and pull my rig up and over inclines and ob-stacles. The internals of the SSD D60 axles consist of SSD brass tubes frontand rear, SSD aluminum Bearing carriers, Incision lockers, axial shafts inthe rear and Vanquish VVD forty- ve degree shafts in the front for that ex-tra turning radius. To keep all the internals of the axles and transmissionwell-greased I use CowRc’s Udder Butter, and the grease is sealed in theaxles with SSD HD scale diff cover (silver) along with SSD D60 axle truss/upper link mount, (silver) attaching the upper and lower links to the axlehousings are Traxxas 3mm rod ends. I replaced all the stock hardware andbearings with Fast Eddy’s Stainless screw kit and bearing kit. For suspen-sion I chose RC4WD 100mm king shocks (mainly for ascetics because theperformance of these shocks are sub-par at best) but they look great! TheKing shocks are mounted to Hot Racing (HR) aluminum front and rearadjustable shock towers.Keeping this rig planted on all fours are Voodoo KLR 1.9 with Crawlerinnovations two-stage foams; standard inner, soft outer for the front andstandard inner, medium outer for the rear. For my kind of style wheelI went with Incision KMC 1.9 Grenade, I love the look so much I wentahead and bought the 2.2 set for my bomber! I had to use the incision #5hubs instead of the stock #4 hubs in order to continue using my VP brassknuckle weights that are held on by VP eight degree knuckles and c hubs.



To protect the front of the Deadbolt I purchased a Trufab front bumper with winch mount plate fromTrufab himself at Axialfest 2016! I have the RC4WD Warn 9.5cti 1/10 Scale Winch with the upgradedCommando motor from LockedUp RC; that was a game changer for winching. The stock motor is moreof an assist winch than a performance winch. The Commando motor is powerful enough it will deadliftmy near nine pound rig all while keeping the scale look of the warn winch housing.To protect the rear end and to hold my red Yeah Racing tow hooks is the SSD Rock Shield Narrow RearBumper; sits nice and tight, great clearance.I installed Knights custom front and rear fender wells by James Knight for the scale look but they alsokeep so much dirt and debris from getting inside! My battery relocation to the front of the chassis wasone of the last things I installed because I had to make a custom bracket to offset the angle of KnightsCustom front fender wells. The mounts turned out okay and keeps my BPC battery tray aligned withthe angle of the front fenders. To complete the chassis I was waiting to order some Bentmetal rocksliders by Donny Fleming, but turned out I won them from the raf e prize giveaway at RC Outlaws’ 1stannual Crawl Da Coast event! I was stoked! The last thing I wanted to do was clean up the wiring byusing quarter inch expandable braided sleeving and of course it had to be green for the green machine.For the Deadbolt body I wanted to do something to stand out from the rest of all the other deadboltsout there so I went with Knight Custom’s angry grill made speci cally for the Deadbolt body. The grilluses the Axial light bucket set. I bought some 5 and 3 mm Common Sense RC red led lights for thateven more aggressive look in the front and red 3mm lights for the taillights. I used 3mm light bucketfor the rear taillights from Axial light bucket set. I used four mini switch on/on for the lights and forthe badass scale speakers from RC-DMV by Aron Panter. (These are amazing quality scale speakers,not ridiculous loudness where you will annoy fellow crawlers but plenty loud for your awesome scalecrawls with friends to enjoy some crisp tunes) Maddog RC lights provides daylight for night with a135mm (6in.) ultra-bright light bar, and four, one inch ultra-bright lights for lighting under the belly ofthe beast!

Until the next mod, I’m pretty stoked on how my Deadbolt came out. I’d liketo thank everyone I have met and all the assistance I have had throughout thisupgrade/build. I’ve only been into this hobby a handful of months and I feellike I’ve been doing this with everyone for years. You the readers, and everyonethat enjoys this hobby, thank you! With all the Facebook groups and rc-crawler.com forums, it amazes me how willing and helpful so many people areto one another. I know we have our own groups we tend to post on but it’s sonice to see everyone helping each other out one way or another. I have made alot of great friends in the short time I’ve been doing this and I can’t wait to hitthe trails and meet more of you wonderful guys and gals!

Affair

uilding a rig can be like getting ready for a fancyparty. From the shoes to coat, every detail has to coor-dinate just right to complete the package and the rightlook. Tyler Teasley nailed it with every detail he putinto this build spread across these pages.

Starting with a Megatruck chassis from Bentmetalthat he won at Crawl for a Cure 2015, Tyler slippedsome SSD Diamond axles in the front and rear. Sup-porting the axles are RC Crawler Customs stainlesslinks in a 3-link con guration up front and 4-linkin the rear. The front axle was dressed up withVanquish scale knuckles and C-hubs and loadedup with Vanquish CVDs and stock ratio, HD bev-eled gears while the rear axle was lled with underdrive, HD beveled gears.Making sure this thing can always get its groove onis the job of a Mamba Monster X teamed up withTekin’s Roc412 2300kv motor. A MKS HBL599servo provides the effortless side to side sway. HotRacing transmission gears and MIP drive shaftswith Super Shafty exclusive long shaft transfer allthat push from the motor down to the axles. Every-thing rolls smooth as butter thanks to Fast Eddybearings.Tyler looked to BPC for their Wraith battery trayto keep things low and stable and their winch spoolon his HeyOK controlled servo winch to make surehe can pull himself out of any situation.





Of course, no out t is complete without a nice pair of shoes, so Tyler laced up someLocked Up RC Ikari wheels wrapped in Proline 2.2 TSL tires.Topping it all off like a ne coat is a Pro Line Racing Chevrolet Silverado cab detailedwith SBC custom rear bed pieces.The Northern California native wants to thank MKS Servo USA, Locked Up RC andhis wife, Ashley, and their two children for all the support. Can’t wait to see what hecomes up with next.

CRAWL DA COAST September 24th marked the rst real event by the RC Outlaws of California: Crawl Da Coast. Located right on the beach in the little Northern California town of Fort Bragg. The weather was perfect and the smiles were everywhere all day. Twenty-plus drivers came out to enjoy and compete in the rst X4 race ever held here. The mixed terrain of sand and rock with the ocean as a backdrop really set the stage for a day of total enjoyment. The course layout did not disap- point either. Taking advantage of the different terrain, the course was the right mix of dif culty and fun which left everyone grinning from ear to ear. What a great family outing. I would suggest you bring the whole family next year. Crawl Da Coast will provide laughs and good times and RC Outlaws of California will provide the grub.





Playing in the Backyard BackYardOutlawRCScalers converged onto Redding RC and Hobby to take over their scale trails. About twenty drivers set off to scale bridges and trail that took them in and out of the creek and through 145 gates. The Pro Line Racing sponsored picture contest had stops along the way for photo ops and the chance to win a set of Pro Line tires. After the trail run, hot dogs were served to the hungry guest and a raf e was held for goodies provided by RC Mayhem Garage. Be sure to check out the Backyard Outlaws RC Scalers FaceBook page for info on future events.