Traxxas Slash On Road Racer

Just as radically as RC car designs have evolved over the hobby’s roughly 40-year existence, so has the end user’s experience and expectations. Our industry’s pioneers were typically tasked to hand-fit and modify parts to assemble their kits, piecing them together over the course of several evenings hunched over an old bath towel covering the kitchen table. Additional hours were spent finishing the build with bits made from scratch, often as a preventative measure but sometimes to change the model completely. It was this spirit that birthed some of the most popular vehicle types in RC history: early conversions performed by builders and aftermarket companies of the Team Associated RC10 and Team Losi JRX-2 spawned the stadium truck class, a process repeated some 15 years later to create today’s 1/8-scale nitro truck. ˆ e practice slowed as hobbyists were attracted to the ease of the Ready-To-Run, and with manufacturers waging an arms race with class-busting new releases in pursuit of the “next big thing,” little creativity is left to the aftermarket. When JConcepts sent me their Scalpel on-road conversion kit for the rugged off -roading Traxxas Slash 4X4 (read all about it in “Performance Proven” in the February 2013 issue of RC Car Action), the connection hit me immediately – that’s where the budding GT class started … with 1/8-scale buggies dropped and tubbed for road course duty. ˆ e instant I got the body mounted and the meaty on-road treads glued and bolted in place for photos, my inner Tim Taylor started grunting for more power, even before driving it. Sounds like the perfect time for a project!