Reinforcing the links of a standard RTR SCX10 Jeep Rubicon

As I have never built a RC Card before and my painting skills are very poor   , I bought the SCX10 Jeep RTR which came with the radio, a 7.2v/3000mAh battery. Basically I just took it out and tried under the trees near my place!

Having been driving 1:1 4WD in extreme conditions I have a slight idea of how a car react when tackling obstacles. This little 1:10 models are quite realistic in their behavior, of course the power ratio is a lot in favor of a model, although my car has close to 280 Hp it cannot jump like the jeep does on the obstacles.

So I realized very quickly that something was wrong with the 1:10 model and it was the rear suspension link which couldn't handle the 'power' of the electric motor combined to the grip on rocks or when the car is kind of stuck.

The plastic links are kind of ridiculously soft and they bend like hell! I have ordered a set of aluminium links but it will take some time to get them. So I tried to find a quick and cheap DIY solution.

To reinforce those links you'd need to add to the original one something that can give them some rigidity (unless you can machine new ones). I searched around me what could be used, something plastic, tubular or semi-tubular and I found the simplest thing you can imagine: an erasable marker!

So in order to do this great improvement you will need: 2 markers and 6 cable ties.

1 - Cut the body of the marker in 2 pieces.


2 - The way the standard plastic link bends.


3 - A reinforced rear link using the marker body and 3 cable ties.


I also noticed that the steering rod also bends a lot. This also happens very often on the real cars and you ends up repairing somewhere in  the middle of the jungle...

I applied the same technique to the steering rod to give it a bit more of rigidity and it works pretty fine as well. You will have to adjust the half-body of the marker, so it doesn't touch the command of the steering.

4: A reinforced steering rode.


This doesn't replace the aluminium links and steering, but it surely helps until you can get some!

Next modifications I need to do are:
 Waterproof the electronic. It's kind of weird that they sell and off-road car which components cannot stand water  . But rock crawling terrain is usually dry, which is not the case of the mini rain-forest of Singapore.
 Move the battery to the front. Just tried without moving the battery holder and there is a huge difference on climbing obstacles.

I went near my place in a park to test the links reinforcement. It is working fine, not really "scale" look but until I get the aluminium links it makes the car really usable. With those two improvements the handling is much better, the grip is more balanced between rear and back, and as there is less deformation of the rear drive train the car doesn't bounce on the obstacle like it did with the stock RTR. Later I may change the shocks and put mud tires probably a set of Mud Slingers.

Few pics of the test drive...

Thanks for sharing...

Join in the trails soon!

That's my intention! Your videos were the trigger to buy this rig.   

Before joining I needed to test drive a little bit, by experience I know that when going off-road (car or bike) there is always something that goes wrong the first time. Screws that need to be re-tightened, details that need to be improved. And as expected few stuff went wrong!

Hopefully if you go to a trail next week-end, I'll join you.

look out in the forum for the details of the next meet up.

looking forward to see your rig in action!