Well, nothing left to do but to do it, eh?

Watch the video below and enjoy the action shots that follow. Summary of it’s performance so far at the end.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiBWSJcM2nc[/youtube]

Thank you Traxxas for the waterproof electronics! LOL.

So I’m sure the question on everyone’s mind is.. How did this perform? My answer.. it did OK. It was not the best thing I have ever driven. My driveway you will see has a nice thick coat of ice beneath the snow, and on that it worked ok. Where there was a thin layer of powder on top, the skis were able to carve through it and steer the car. Other times on just ice it skidded straight even with the wheels locked in one direction. It made for an interesting drive.

One big note to keep in mind when doing something like this.. is the quality of the snow. We have about a foot worth of what was once just fluff.. Sun and wind have hardened the top layer, but it is still dry fluffy snow underneath. Because of this.. the performance may not be the same if we had really heavy wet snow to run on.. but as I said in the opening.. I just wanted to get this thing out there while I could.

Some other things I noticed that might be able to be improved. The SC Sling Shots I’m not sure have the most ideal track width. I would have liked a little more contact patch after running it. They aren’t a bad tire though. I’d choose these over a normal tire just for pure cool factor. I also would make sure that the shocks are as upright as possible for maximum ground clearance. Mine weren’t during running and it hampered the performance when it broke thru the top hard layer and dug into the fluff below, the rear skid/tranny just rested on the snow. A little more ground clearance at the rear axle would have helped.

The other issue.. POWER. I noticed on a few passes at the deep snow.. that wheel speed was your friend. Going into the untouched snow in the yard at full throttle def. helped get it to go further than if you allowed the weight of the truck to sit on a given area and sink in. This truck is begging to have the VXL system dropped in it.. if not something faster.

All that said, was it worth it? I’d say so. It was a nice break to take a day off of all the racing stuff I do and focus on a fun basher project for a few minutes. Hopefully we’ll get to run this for a few more packs over the winter and be able to provide a real review. If not.. there’s always the beach, right??