1/10 Gas Trucks- Mid Motor Zombies

I can't shake it, I'm a dreamer. With every winter I start to imagine the world outside the office, the garage, and the indoor tracks. The world that I can run free, sans rain boots and umbrellas. A world where the tracks are groomed and lit up late into the night for summer racing. A world not unlike the one we saw at The Dirt Nitro Challenge this past year.





If there's an RC bucket list. And I had one. I'd put that on it. Along with an RC surfboard. Meanwhile, I'm gonna bookmark that youtube page and look forward to coverage of both the E and nitro 1/8 buggy races coming up on Feb. 23rd.


Nitro rc cars and trucks are nothing new to the hobby. But they have always remained fringe, no matter how "ready to run" they are sold as. It sems to be a basic fact, ask any adolescent(or adolescent at heart) what they're prefer, the gas powered or the electric?

And so goes that power lusting consumer. Down the path of hard to tune high speed needles, poorly charged receiver packs and glow ingnitors, and into their new life with a funny diesel smell in the corner of their garage.


I think this is where the racer splits off from the hobbyist.

The racer knows that with maintenance comes lower lap times and thus, a rewarding experience at the track.

The hobbyist, on the other hand is a tinkerer playing a god. They understand that this insane orchestra of gas, electronics and control over the infernal beast is the satisfaction. Getting around the track -at all- is enough to warrant a standing applause, and thus a rewarding experience at the track.

Zeus! No talking on the driver's stand.

There is a rare time that the hobbyist will survive the nitro hangover and become a racer, but when it happens, when they decide to play as mortal, they bring with them the nitro thirst.

Events like the Dirt Nitro Challenge and the Silver State and ROAR Nats and IFMAR Worlds keep off road nitro alive. These events are mostly buggy(and, ahem, truggy), but there was time when the little scale that could, tenth scale, showed up because it had something to say.

The conversation to bring those "little guys" back has sprung again in this LiveRC Talk It Up article.

Bringing a dead category like 1/10 Gas Truck back to life in RC sounds tough, but I'm all for it. The Nitro SC10GT short course from AE was a huge spark, but I dont think it really caught on. They made videos and had some real drivers show everyone the possibilities.  Sure, they're a little clumsy, and probably slow compared to everything else... but they're nitro!!!






The Nitro Truck was alive at an unfortunate time. Those days were before youtube and during the peak of the rap/rock genre of music existed. As this archaeological discovery shows here:







1/10 scale nitro truck would be an awesome zombie to resurrect. Not very difficult to find an RC10gt or gt2 rtr on Craigslist for about a $100 and you can hawk all that rtr electronics to a crawler(crawlers are always looking for new controllers for some reason. Perhaps the controller wheel offers good rock grip?)

The sun seems to be showing itself a little more every day here. Now, is right about the time of year when I should be squirling away funds for outdoor offroad wheels and tires for my buggy. But I have a feeling I'll decide against doing that rational, and reasonavble task and instead get the old RC10GT back together for backyard summer action. We'll see if that after run oil put in a decade ago did it's job.