HYPER MINIS

I picked up a Redcat Vortex EXP a while back for under $190 shipped. For those who don't know it's a 1/10 short course truck that comes RTR and brushless. It's pretty nice for a chinese cheapo and very much worth the price I think. Horsepower comes from a 4400kv motor and 70A ESC. It's 4wd and shaft driven, aluminum towers and shocks. The body looks like a total rip of the slash, but it's smaller. Well, its shorter but the same width. They just slapped bumpers and a body onto a 1/10 buggy and didn't even change the tires. I'm still looking for some tires that look right on it, and perform too. All I've done to it is replace the stock 2000mah nimh batt with a 5000mah 2s lipo and add a fan/heatsink to the motor. I had to do some trimming to the heatsink and top chassis brace for everything to fit. That is why in the last pics you will see bare aluminum.

And here are some videos.

Awesome man. I still really like these rigs. I have considered picking one up several times, but my fear is that I won't be allowed to run it with the other SC trucks at our tracks.

Yeah, I doubt it would even be allowed to compete against the new 4wd slash. Perfect for guys like me though, no close track, just bashing. I would have waited and got the aftershock 8E if I knew it was coming out. Around $300 and it's based on a 1/8 buggy and comes RTR with lipos. From what I've heard it's insanely fast and the body/tires are almost identical in size to the SC10. So it seems to be more proportionate than the vortex. All the SCT tires would look correct on it as well.

I've been looking at those as well, and I may very well be picking up one of the buggies in the near future. I have to score an SC truck first, which will be soon. We have a new track coming that will be running an SC class so...Now I just have to decide between the Slash and the Blitz. I must say I'm really liking the look of the Blitz though.

the way sc is right now a brushless unit under 2 bills awesome you couldnt went wrong

Thanks. I know some people are totally against the small and/or knock-off companies but it seems like Redcat is really improving. They even have a solid axle monster truck coming out that was designed by the guy who owns CPE(Crawford Performance).

Yeah Redcat is def an up and coming company. I hear from everyone that their quality is on par with many other high end manufacturers, and with their parts becoming more readily available they will be a mainstream brand in no time. A good quality vehicle, at their prices, in todays economy is a win win IMO.

Well I've been meaning to do this for a while now. I raised the body fairly high to fit the cliffclimber tires underneath, which makes an ugly gap showing off the guts of the RC. I made these pieces to cover some of the gap. I used 1" angle plasit, corner trim strip. It's clear so I painted it black. It doesn't really cover everything completely but should once i get better tires and lower the body back down. It should also help with loosing the battery, which I did the other day while running away from the dog. Lipo is thinner than the nimh.

Not much of an update, but while ripping apart an old computer to make a power supply I stole the CPU heatsink and fan for the redcat ESC. The computer heatsink was a little bit larger and required some cutting and drilling. However it is also much larger and no doubt the heatsink alone would be a cooling upgrade. I haven't wired it permanently or tested everything in the car yet, but it works good on the bench.

I finally got around to messing with some of the parts I got from the HotBodies garage sale that Bill clued me in to. So I turned my short course truck, which wasn't much of one, into a stadium truck/monster truck. I got tires from the HB lightning 10ST and a body from the lightning 10GT. Grabbed some chrome savage/maxx rims for my custom 5.5" tall gladiator crawling tires too.

Well, todays run was extremely short. I ended up loosing the grub screw out of the pinion and was too lazy to walk back up the hill and replace it. Plus it isn't the easiest to get to either. I did get about 3 minutes of video on my uncle/neighbor's newly asphalted driveway. I'm very pleased with the cooling fans, body, and tires. It pulls wheelys any time, which is too often for this rock crawler, haha. Anyway, here's the video.