All of us in the shop have been RC hobbyists for a long time, combined from us all would probably reach over 80years !!!! WOW makes me feel old lol :-)

It is something that brings fun, friendship, knowledge into a community of like minded souls, once you have experienced it you just want more. We have all been enthusiasts and now all of us race at various events and levels from local club races to attending World Championship events around the globe. Hopefully over time some of the funny stories/ experiences we have we can filter down enough to write about on here and share with you all.

In-fact part of doing regular blog post's is to share with the RC community our thoughts and findings about all things related to what we love. Starting this off is our own Modeltune Crawler test rig. This will be a long term test, from out of the box to adding upgrades and finishing touches. Our Choice for a long term crawler test rig is the Element-RC Sendero RTR.

RRP on these is £339.99 on our website (HERE)  Just needing to add a battery and charger of your choice and 4x AA batteries for the TX and your away !!!

We added a Bashing 2s lipo (HERE)  at 6000mah this should give us ooooodles of runtime. We already have a charger as most people do that have one or more model. The truck was super easy to get up and running out of the box, infact less than 10minutes to install the battery, TX batteries, set up and check the controls were all working correctly, bodyshell back on and away we went.

Being on 'Lockdown' we were limited a little to the back garden, but with 3 different drivers and rock garden to conquer we had a ton of fun for almost 2 hours on and off. The truck performed fantastically for an 'older' person, a 'female' driver and a 'teenager' !!! Things we learnt.... great fun, wheelies forward and even better into reverse lol. The kit TX is great for an RTR and we will be sticking with it for the long term test. the kit esc was a little sharp ( especially in reverse) for our lesser experienced drivers, but still controllable. Another item we found is that the kit bumpers do drag a little and the shell arches do catch the super grippy kit tyres on full compression. We do love the look of the kit so we are going to mod it a little to our tastes, after all part of 'crawling' is the individuality of your rigs.

So, mods we are going to go for are the Element RC utility bed, pictured here .....

A smoother more controllable esc like the 80a Hobbywing (HERE)  , hopefully this will help the overall control and drive-ability of the model for more severe terrain. We have a plan for the body too, you can buy clear ones to paint yourself, but as mentioned we kind of like the look and colour of the kit shell, just going to customize it a little more to our taste an hopefully make it stand out a little from the norm !!!

More things are planned already, but small steps with the first ones being more visual and to help smooth the driving out for a range of all users.

Another bonus for the growing 'crawler' enthusiasts is that the models can be used easily and safely in a wide range of areas such as your local park, forest as well as designated places such as the one that is currently being built by a local club called BADMCC. Why not give their FaceBook Page a like and follow to keep up to date with all that is going on there.

 For our first array in rock crawlers we were super impressed by the Element RC model, lots of fun straight from the box, tons of help and support online to from FB groups. ElementRC, to their own Youtube channel.

Lots of other great videos on Youtube to to help get through some of these 'Lockdown' hours too :-)

Parts are on order, so once we have them we will do 'Part2' with them installed and how the changes all work for us.

Other Crawler models are available and a huge choice for various budgets (HERE)  

In the meantime, stay safe, have fun and be creative :-)

#modeltune #werace #wedrive #wehavefun #yourmodelshop