Drag Maxx

As you can see, this isn't your normal T-Maxx. We started out by coming up with a wheel and tire combo that worked well. The rear wheels are Monster Pirate wheels mounted backwards with custom centers from our aluminum wheels. Front wheels and tires were tough to come up with. We wanted something pretty narrow as well as light and realistic appearing. The front tires ended up coming from a RC aircraft and are 4.5 inches tall. We had to make custom wheels as well for them.

Once the wheels and tires were figured out it was time to decide on suspension. The truck maintains stock suspension components except for "Big Bore" shocks and some Rix Gear shocktowers. Front track width is narrowed by 1.500 as well. The front of the truck needed to have some "sag" in it when at rest to provide some weight transfer upon acceleration. This was accomplished by using four shocks but removing two of the springs. The rear was pretty simple, just needed to make it fairly stiff so the truck could "plant" the tires upon launching.

Next on the list was a powerplant. It had to be insane. We had thought about another OS but wanted something wild. One of our friends in California came across an RB Concepts S7. As you know, these are non pullstart engines. After some research and design work, we figured out what was needed to convert the RB to a pullstart. We made a few special parts to accomplish this and it worked perfectly and we modified our friend's RB as well. This requires some very accurate machining of the crank as well as a few other little parts to make the RB's pullstart engines.

Now that we had the engine built, suspension complete and set up it was time to layout the chassis. We left the steering servo in the stock spot as well as the throttle/brake servo. However, the throttle/brake servo now became a dedicated brake or trans brake. This is used when "staging" the truck, the brake is locked and engine rpm is brought up to "set" the driveline and suspension......it works perfect. Throttle servo was placed near the engine to avoid any bellcranks or extra linkage. For a fuel tank we used a 75cc unit from a Rustler. Receiver battery is mounted near the rear of the truck to get all possible weight on the rear axle. The truck is about a month old (8-1-02) and we are still experimenting. It is a bullet IF you can keep the thing in a straight line ;-). We are still designing and changing things here and there to get the truck set up correctly. Next on the list quite possibly will be a solid axle four link rearend set up.