TLT: Competition Tweaks

So you've built a flippin' sweet ride, and now you're out to beat the socks off that pesky kid who won the last competition. Here are a number of little tips and tricks that just might give you the edge you need to conquer!

- Put weight in the front tires. Go to your local tire center and get some adhesive wheel-weights. They'll wrap nicely around the outside of your wheel (before you glue the tires on, obviously) and will greatly assist your climbing efforts! You can also fit them to the axles, or to the inside of your wheel, assuming you have room.

- Cut or sipe your tires. There are many ways to change the tread of a particular tire, so my advice is to search the popular crawling forums and see what people are doing. You can sipe tires with an exacto knife or dremel for extra bite, which is particularly useful on tires with harder compounds. I like to use curved lexan scissors to cut tread, it's fast and easy.

- Add tread to your tires. Glue tread from your old meats on to an area of your tire that lacks tread, such as sidewalls. This can create a little extra bite, and who knows, it may be just what you need to pull you up that rock face. I suggest a black rubberized CA glue.

- Smooth the bottoms of your axles. Using Mr. Dremel and a sanding/grinding wheel, remove the lip that protrudes from the seem of the TLT axle housings. This can catch a bit on rocks, and halt your forward progress. A smooth surface will slide much more easily.

-Use a skid plate. Dont leave the gnarled bits and pieces of your chassis/links/tranny to catch on rocks. A smooth lexan, aluminum or ANY material skid plate will make worlds of difference when crawling. You can even get fancy and make multiple skids, such as one for you front or rear links.

- Run High-clearance links. These are like regular links, but bent in such a fashion to keep them off the rocks.

- The 60/40 Split: Mount your tranny/chassis forward. A forward weight bias will help you climb, so make shorter links in front and longer links in the rear for a 60/40, 70/30 or whatever ratio split you like!

-Front Dig. The ability to disconnect your rear driveshaft is quite handy, and can make accents, decents and tight turns easier. Adding a rear brake is even cooler!

- Install a carrier bearing driveshaft setup. Want uber ground clearance? Try running your rear Driveshafts up high to a carrier setup, and then back down to your rear axle. You'll get an insane breakover angle.

- Try a traction goo. Trinity's "Buggy Grip" works very well, but feel free to try whatever you have around the house to 'sticky up' your tires before that big comp.

- Lighten up! Look at your truck, and decide what you can eliminate or chop off to loose some of the weight. A lighter truck will break less parts, and more often than not be able to scamper up obstacles that heavier trucks just sit on. There's a lot of material on the Stampede tranny alone that can be hacked off. Drill lots of "Cool-guy go-fast holes!"

- More go juice. Wheelspeed is incredibly important, but so is a good crawl ratio. Once you found a gearing you like, just add cells. Most of the guys here are running 7 or 8. You can also try faster motors, of course...

More to come!