MONSTER BUGGY!

Since the release of these big beasts in 1992 I had always wanted one. Recently while at Thunder On The Beach III I had talked to ShoDon from MaxxTraxx. He has three or four Monster Buggies. I had called him when we got back to St.Louis and inquired if he had any he would like to get rid of. He did have one but it would need a lot of work and parts to get it up and running. We held off on purchasing this particular buggy. A few days later, ShoDon called me and told me he knew of a VERY nice complete car that was for sale. I followed up on it and it turned out I knew the person that owned it. It was Rob from Trick Parts. After a couple of hours of asking questions about the car I bought it.

These cars are made by Traxxas and come RTR minus radio gear and receiver batts. You will need two 1/4 scale hi-torque servos and one hi-torque standard size servo. The picture to the right shows the heart of the beast. The engine is a 2 cycle 23cc engine. Much like you might find in a weedeater. I believe the stock engines are rated at a little over 2.5hp which doesn't sound like much for the size of the car. The little engines do JUST fine at getting all 24lbs of buggy up to speed. Stock, these cars will approach 40-45mph which is SCARY. After a few mods you can squeeze another 1hp or so out of the engine. The car came with a optional tuned pipe and a K&N air filter.

After the car arrived to us from Rob I gave it a good once over. The car was basically new. He had owned it for about a month or so and had bought it from a guy that had it for maybe 2 months. So, the car is NEW as far as I am concerned. Rob went ahead and threw a very nice radio in for me too. The radio is a Airtronics 3PJ which is somewhat like an M8 (just older). It is an FM/PCM radio which is highly recommended in a car of this nature. A FM radio is more glitch free and is safer to run in something like this. Also included was two new 1/4 scale steering servos which I was glad to get as they are about $100 a piece and this car needs two for steering. Once the radio gear was installed and everything checked out it was time to go play.

After fueling the car up it was time to fire her up. No nitro here guys, just regular gas and 2-cycle oil like you run in your 2-cycle weedeater or leaf blower. These engines start SO easy and will run for about 45 minutes on a tank of fuel. At first I had a tough time getting used to driving the car. The suspension was kind of mushy for my liking but I just dealt with it for the day. Once you get the hang of driving the car it is a BLAST. Being so large it draws a lot of attention no matter where you go. The sound of the engine is chilling........it sounds like a hopped up chainsaw. With the tuned pipe that is on it the car doesn't have a ton of low end torque but that is just fine as it will smoke the back tires across a parking lot as long as you want.

If you are thinking of getting one of these monsters.....think it over a lot! The car alone is $900. Then you have to pick up a decent radio, two 1/4 scale servos, one standard servo (all hi-torque), a hefty receiver battery pack. The battery pack in our car is a 3000mah pack custom made by Ballistic Battery. The big servos will suck the life out of a standard battery pack in no time flat. I am guessing to buy one of these cars new with all the equipment you could spend a little over $1000 if not more. There aren't a lot of aftermarket parts for these cars but we plan to fix that in the near future.

As you can see in the picture to the right, we once offered aluminum wheels for the Monster Buggies. However, due to the scarceness of these vehicles in the RC world, we decided to discontinue them. They were costly to machine as well as stock. Perhaps someday we will run a few sets but more than likely the wheels that we did make will be the only in existence. 

Here is a picture of the Monster how it is set up now. This picture was taken 4-9-02 so it's pretty recent. We are still running the ADA Racing billet head and the hi-po barrel. The barrel however has been mildy ported and polished. Also did some numbers and found out that the barrel has been machined to raise compression. The head and barrel increases compression to approx. 13.5:1. We run 100 octane fuel as well to help the little Zenoah scream more. Also in the picture you may notice the addition of aluminum shocktowers. For more info, head to page two of the Monster Buggy section.