- [Narrator] Very nice trucks you have there, young sir.
- Oh bonk!
- [Narrator] (chuckling) Bonk!
- Bonk,
oh bonk!
(narrator chuckling)
Oh bonk!
- [Narrator] This is the age we're at now.
- Oh bonk!
- [Narrator] (chuckling) Buh-bonk.
- Oh bonk!
Bonk!
Bonk, bonk!
- [Narrator] Yes that is the small Gelande II
or the Gelande from RC Four Wheel Drive
that we unboxed.
He has claimed it as his own
and there has been many sessions of demolition with it.
His two favorite trucks, right here.
Well, two of his favorite, I guess.
Amazing.
- [Boy] Hey Dad, truck
and that truck!
And that truck, and that black truck,
and that red truck.
Trucks, trucks!
- [Narrator] Good job!
I love it.
- [Boy] Truck, you, truck, look, look, truck.
(narrator laughing)
- [Woman Off-Camera] That's brilliant.
- [Boy] Look, Daddy!
- [Narrator] I'm looking, buddy.
I'm super-impressed.
- [Woman Off-Camera] I guess you are retiring.
- [Narrator] Yep, I'm done.
- [Boy] Truck, Daddy.
- [Narrator] Yes?
Ah, welcome back, my friends.
Check it out, lots of color at the RCSparks Ranch.
The rain has been falling
and we have been planning some fifth-scale races
for quite some time,
but at the time of this filming being
the beginning of July,
June is always a rainy season.
So lots of color, everything has to dry out.
It's all growing wonderfully now.
Check it out!
With rain becomes opportunity to play in the mud,
so the center channel I have here that always
collects all the rainwater running down from the shop area,
collects all the way down and makes a great mud pit.
And with mud pit comes a scale RC truck, of course.
This is an updated Vaterra I have,
it's actually an RTR, or ready-to-run version
that I went out and purchased from a local hobby shop
here in Calgary called Action Hobby.
I also bought some tires and rims.
Those are 1.9 Mud Slingers on Integy rims,
very mall-crawler-esque, but regardless,
we're gonna be puttin' 'em in the mud today.
1.9s, as I mentioned, with the Mud Slinger,
because I wanted a smaller, more scale tire.
I wanted to see how this truck does
on a smaller 1.9 size
and leave my other one already set up on the 2.2s,
which is, you know, something I prefer,
especially when I'm doing lots of crawling.
Now a lot of people will be asking me,
why didn't I go out and get one of the kits
that are available?
And really, just because it's a busy season
for me right now.
Normally I do a lot of my building in the winter times.
I just wanted to get out and have some fun, you know,
and hey, building kits is fun, too,
but I wanted to get out and enjoy the sun.
So here we are, an updated Vaterra truck.
There are releasing a new Vaterra truck coming up here,
it's actually really, really cool,
and you can see some pictures and stuff of it online.
It's a yellow truck, it's very, very cool.
Anyway guys, I don't wanna talk anymore,
I wanna get into the mud.
(narrator chuckling) Let's do it!
So everything in this truck is waterproof,
the ESC and the servo.
One of the things I've noticed is that
the servo that comes with it is kinda slow
right at turns.
But it's got some pretty good torque,
you can see that here.
It's on dry ground, and with Mud Slingers,
having that much traction, turning it like that,
not too bad.
Up and over, the flex on this truck is fantastic.
I actually showed a static shot on my Instagram
of this truck flexing with the front axle
tipped one direction,
and of course, the back tires all flat on the ground.
I'll leave a link to my Instagram
in the video description box down below.
The Alberta dirt is like a mix of sand and clay and soil,
so it's a very unique, wet, thick, sticky, heavy compound
that can really be tough on bigger pinions on the motors.
You guys might be wondering why it it
kind of tilting to one side?
It's really because the middle is way softer
than the outside of this channel here.
There we go, kinda line it up.
Looks like I shoulda put on a snorkel. (narrator laughing)
You can hear the water under the hood.
I still have traction on the bottom though,
for now.
Doin'good, doin' good,
it's not coming in the driver window yet.
I do get quite a few questions about waterproofing
my LiPos, or do you need to waterproof your battery.
And really, lithium-polymer batteries,
they can be very, very dangerous if mishandled or misused,
and would think that putting them underwater
would fall into that category, and that may be the case.
But LiPo batteries actually have to be sealed
against any air contact,
so they're usually already sealed against water, right?
Because no air, no water.
The one thing that you have to be careful of
are balance plugs,
the white plugs that are attached to the LiPos,
and of course, the connectors themselves,
the battery connectors.
They will start to show signs of corrosion,
depending on the ones you're using.
And if you're in saltwater you cannot take
a scale truck into it.
It's just, saltwater conducts way too much electricity
and of course that's a whole different episode
about motors and saltwater and all that.
But with LiPos basically a LiPo can get wet.
You will be degrading the warranty of course,
I'm sure most manufacturers won't warranty a LiPo
that's in water.
And always dry off the balance port
when you take the LiPo out,
just so it prevents any issues with you charging
in the future.
Another question I get is about waterproofing,
and do I have to waterproof,
your axles and bearings?
And the answer is if you take a stock truck
or even a customized truck that you've done,
depending on the mods,
your bearings are always going to be getting dirt and mud
in with the axles.
(tires squealing)
Look at that, so soupy over there, come on!
See if I can back out.
Straighten out those tires.
So you always have to basically remove,
if you're gonna go in mud and water use,
you have to take your axles apart, you know,
at least every couple of runs.
Make sure you don't have any sand and grit in there,
because they're bearing killers,
and one day you go out, you go to use your truck,
and boom, it's squeaky, it's irritating,
or it just simply doesn't work because it's frozen.
Same thing will happen with your motors
if you don't clean them out properly with a compressor
and use some sort of motor cleaner, right,
or some motor-specific bearing oil.
So that's another tip I hope that can help
some of you guys out there.
Motor oil, motor-bearing oil is fairly inexpensive.
You can get them at most hobby shops.
Let's go back to this mud where we got stuck.
I wanna see more of that.
I'm not even at full-throttle,
I'm just doing a gentle curve, ugh!
There we go, I needed a snorkel there,
but thankfully it's electric.
Maybe when we see the rise of full-scale electric cars
we won't really need a snorkel kit anymore.
(tires squealing)
Oh man,
nope.
Yep, oh, almost, come on,
come on!
Yes!
Mud Slinger! (narrator chuckling)
And that's on a 2S LiPo.
So that's good, I'm glad it had enough power
to pull through there.
The motor probably isn't very hot
but it has quite a bit of dirt in it,
so I'm gonna go and rinse it out.
You wanna come see the new truck, buddy?
- Leak?
- [Narrator] Yeah, it was dripping when I walked up,
it was all the mud.
Let's put it in the sun.
(boy quietly mumbles something)
Yeah, well I gotta rinse it off first.
- Mmm ho.
- [Narrator] Yeah, I gotta clean it with the hose,
that's right.
If it was only as easy to clean a full-scale that way,
and as cheap. (narrator laughing)
All right, so lined up nose to nose,
2.2 size tires on the right-hand side,
1.9s on the left-hand side,
and you can see there's not much of a height difference,
and you may be wondering why.
The tire is bigger, what's going on?
Well really it depends on how you have
your suspension set up, too.
If you've got the spring heighteners higher or lower,
that'll bring the nose or the rear of the truck up and down.
Now really it's clearance,
and you can see in the rock pile in the background there
that I have given the 2.2s their fair run,
and I'd like to take the 1.9s over there now,
now that all the mud is rinsed out
and see how they do just in some light rock crawling.
This place seems to be a good a start as any.
Let's see if we can do a slow crawl
with these Mud Slingers here.
Gonna have to watch my big bumper
doesn't get hung up on the rock cliff right away.
A bit of clearance, here we go,
back bumper scrapage.
Hmm, not too bad.
The right-hand tire trying to hook up with some traction,
turning my tires, driving the rock.
There we are.
Not bad, hung up on the back link.
That's okay though.
Small, controlled pushes of the throttle.
You don't want to be jumping your truck too far, right?
You wanna make sure that when it does hook up
you're not flying way too far forward.
This is a very skinny rock designed
to drop down your front tires right now.
Ah, the diff clears nicely,
so right now it's resting on the differential.
Let's have a look.
A stack of pallets in the back to be burned on the weekends.
So stuck right there, very wide at the back of the rock,
and of course it comes to a point.
Very nice, I'm liking these tires.
Look at that, it's a nice bumper anchor,
but it's actually holding me
from falling off the rock in the front here,
even though I've got quite a bit of room
to drive out of it.
Still, it was nice to kind of grab me
and act as a drag-brake, physical drag-brake.
Perfect.
Well I'm gonna try and drive the tire up here
and get up here,
see if that works.
So first that one, then the other side.
Yeah, too many holes, I think.
If we can get it to hook up on that other rock,
oh yes!
Okay, changing angles.
That was a good one.
The back-right tire is still left in a hole,
hopefully I can climb up here.
I'm turning right and left,
yes man, good crawl!
Lots of shadows today, nice and warm, very humid.
So we're on to a side hill now.
Very nice, drop it down getting ready for the valley.
Now the valley I'm about to drop into
is known that if you don't actually
ride your tires on the edges of each one,
you can go in sideways and you're done.
Oh, looks like I didn't quite get it.
Yes I did, perfect, driving into it
thinking about where my back tires will be placed.
Whoa, got a bit of strain.
There we go.
Oh, don't wanna scratch my front fender.
Beautiful, beautiful.
So there ya go, mud, rocks, and tips and tricks.
I hope it's been a good video for you guys.
Go out and get yourself one of these cool trucks.
Find some friends, go out, take some pictures,
take some videos, post them up!
Be a part of a really neat community,
and you know, if the videos inspired you to do that,
please give it a thumbs up down below
and maybe we've even earned your subscription.
And if you are subscribed, thanks for all the support.
Check that out!
It looks so boss!
I love the old Chevys.
Okay guys, until next time,
get outside, have some fun with RC, bye.