Well, I finally got my new truck. I went with the newly released Ofna Monster Pirate. It's based on Ofna's Pirate buggy, but it has many changes to be a capable monster truck. There was a review of the truck in the September 2000 issue of
RC Car Action magazine. This truck is very similar to my USA-1 that I had, except there is a lot more aluminum parts here. The shocks and upper radio deck are aluminum and a lot of the other parts are much more beefy. Also, there is no center differential so you can get true 4 wheel drive. This kit is not sold by very many places yet, and I bought mine through Ace Hardware Hobbies. They carry mostly nitro stuff and have fairly good prices. My only complaint is that they have very poor communication skills!! I ordered the truck and an Ofna engine and they sent me a RB Concepts engine instead without asking me first. It's a good engine, but I wish they would have asked me first.
Here's a few pics...
Well, now that I've had a little time to run this truck I can say a little
more about it. At first I was impressed at how it would do wheelies so
easily, but then it got to be a problem. When I jumped the truck it would
bounce really badly and usually flip end over end. I found that the one
TINY hole in the shock piston was WAY too small so I bored it out to 1/16",
that was better but adding a second one was just about perfect. Once I got
the shocks the way I wanted them I got a little carried away and started jumping
and ended up breaking a rear lower suspension arm. I'll admit, it was a
really hard hit at a funky angle. Until I get around to ordering a new arm
I epoxied the broken one and it works alright.
