We have lots of new upgrades for the RC18T, so we decided to give Rob's beat up RC18T a new lease on life. As an experienced hobbyist, I’ve played with all sorts of different R/C cars, but have never tried to set-up an 18th scale off-road vehicle, so I knew this was going to be a fun and exciting learning experience. To start off, I went through our bins and shelves of our new, 18th scale stockroom in search for the perfect parts for this build. After a couple of hours of torture. No really, its very difficult to make decisions, when you can have anything you want.

To start it all of I needed a good backbone, and in this case I decided to go with GPM’s 2mm Carbon Fiber lower main chassis. I was very impressed with the quality of the chassis and it made the truck look extra cool. I didn’t really know about a performance increase, but it did seem to be a little more rigid than stock, which is always good.

At each of the four corners I went with Atomic upgraded suspension A-Arm set. The great thing about these is that I can attach and integrate Atomic anti-roll bars both in the front and the rear. This comes in handy when I want my car to corner flatter and carry more speed through tight sections. In the front and rear I used Atomic Aluminum Hub Carriers. The finish and strength of these is second to none! Using these parts in upgraded aluminum is always a good idea when it comes to durability. After all you can’t win if you can’t finish.

A set of team associated Factory Team Threaded aluminum shock bodies tie the package up. They are smooth and consistent and absorb the bumps on the track effortlessly. The fact that they are threaded also aid in tweaking your ride height trackside, without major time or effort

If you want to go faster and longer, you have to pay very close attention here. The drive train in an electric 4wd vehicle is of utmost importance to go fast. I made sure nothing was binding and then I threw in a set of AtomicMods ceramic bearings and MIP CVDs all around. The Ceramic Bearings keep everything running free and the MIP CVDs improve the power delivery to the wheels tremendously.

This is the car I will use at the 1/18th scale nationals later on in April, so I can’t skimp out here if I want to be competitive. For my power delivery I chose the Team NOVAK Micro GT. People underestimate the importance of a high quality speed controller in their 1/18th scale car, but I don’t. The Micro GT is Novak’s top of the line, brushed Micro ESC. It doesn’t have reverse, but most races ban the use of reverse, so the added efficiency of not having reverse incorporated into the speed controller helps the car go faster in a straight line due to increased “punch” out of the corners. To steer this little beast, a KO PROPO micro ICS 1014 servo was thrown in. This servo is awesome! It is digital, so it is more powerful, more precise, it is small, lightweight and fast, so it lets me point the car exactly where I want to. For batteries and motor an LRP 7 cell Ni-Mh pack coupled with a Team Orion Baja Modified Motor help this truck explode out of the corners. This set-up is no where near as fast as a brushless and Li-Po set-up, but this car is for off-road purposes where it is more important to keep the truck smooth and controlled to stay competitive. Rob really wanted brushless, because he like to go fast so I promised him we would build another one with brushless to fulfill his need for speed.

The weather is a bit nasty right now, and I was eager to drive this thing, so I did some test runs around our local indoor Mini-Z track. We set-up some small RCP jumps and ran the truck a couple of times around the tight track. The truck was very capable, jumping long and flat and had more than enough power. I was very impressed with the performance of this little truck. It was fast and agile and on pace with most of the modified 1:18th on-road cars at the track, which is quite impressive for an off-road car.

I am looking forward to getting it outside on a proper off-road track so we can see what this bad boy is capable of. Once I do, I'll post more info.