Where are the factory 1/8th E Truggy kits?

[Thirdgen89GTA]

MFG's are putting out electric 1/8th buggies mainstream now, but manufacturers don't seem to be taking advange of this work by building electric versions of their truggies.

Just curious if anyone had read about it anywhere? OFNA has 4 or 5 electric kits now in buggy form, but not a single truggy even though their truggies share so much between them.

Same for Losi? They've got the E 8ight buggy, but no electric version of the truggy.

Why are truggies lagging so far behind when so much of the development work going into making an electric version of a 1/8th scale buggy can be applied to a truggy.

[magman]

IMO...MFG'S are seeing how popular the buggy versions are first. I agree by now truggy versions would and should have been released.

[nastety92]

HPI makes one.

http://www.hpiracing.com/kitinfo/107018/

This is the only one that I know of so far. It looks pretty good and it's priced reasonably at $500 rtr. To bad it doesn't have a MMM combo.

Nick

[Thirdgen89GTA]

Originally Posted by nastety92

HPI makes one.

http://www.hpiracing.com/kitinfo/107018/

This is the only one that I know of so far. It looks pretty good and it's priced reasonably at $500 rtr. To bad it doesn't have a MMM combo.

Nick

Yeah, I remembered the Trophy Truggy flux after I posted this. The Trophy Truggy is based on the old Hot Bodies Lightning Stadium truggy. In fact, its down right nearly the exact same truggy as far as suspension geometry is concerened. Uses the same chassis braces too so not much is different.

This is both good and bad. The original LSP was a great truggy for its time, and still makes an excellent club racer / basher for the beginner. Durable, easy to work on.

Price wise its not bad either. Consider some of the bargain basement E-Buggies like the OFNA Ultra LX2e roller for $200, but then you have to provide the electronics and its so easy to approach the Trophy's $500 price tag. Definitely worth the money.

Aren't the FLUX electronics essentially castle stuff re-branded? I can't remember. Actually, looking at the Flux ESC, it looks an aweful lot like the MMM case with its 3 caps. Same layout for the motor and power wires too. Did some searching and everything pointed to it being Castle rebranded stuff. Not sure what the motor is, but its probably a 15xx series.

[magman]

Forgot about that one. I do believe those are castle products as well.

[brainanator]

I don't think the scream and rage (motor and ESC) on the trophy are castle OEM. The torq and blur (ESC and motor) on the savage flux ARE castle OEM. If you look at the savage flux page on HPI it says "Powered by Castle" under the photos. This is absent in the trophy.

[FG101C]

If you look on the Serpent website in their catalog it looks like they will be doing a kit for the Truggy, which I am hoping will be identical to the buggy.

http://www.serpent.com/catalog/index.html

[nastety92]

Originally Posted by brainanator

I don't think the scream and rage (motor and ESC) on the trophy are castle OEM. The torq and blur (ESC and motor) on the savage flux ARE castle OEM. If you look at the savage flux page on HPI it says "Powered by Castle" under the photos. This is absent in the trophy.

x2 what he said.

I thought it was Castle at first but reading more into it I found out they were not.

Nick

[Thirdgen89GTA]

Originally Posted by nastety92

x2 what he said.

I thought it was Castle at first but reading more into it I found out they were not.

Nick

That is disappointing. But I guess at $500 its a great way to get into a 1/8th eTruggy. But if the ESC and motor don't have any room to grow then your in for another $300 just for a decent setup if you want to push the limits. At least with the Castle stuff you know you can stuff 6S and and have a truggy that hauls major ass.

That reminds me. I need to buy a 22t Pinion for the truggy. I want to do a speed run with it but can't find a tire that doesn't seem to explode on me as soon as I pass the 60mph point. The VTR tires have a 5.57" OD and would hold together, but i spent $100 on those tires/rims and have no desire to ruin that investment by running an perfectly good off-road tire on pavement. I do however hve a set of GRP Grandini tires for my on-road rally game. Their OD is 3.8" so I'll have to step the pinion up to keep Motor RPM near the same as it is now.

I hit 71mph once, then a front tire exploded and i barely saved the truck. I had my old iPhone 3G strapped in with the battery using its GPS function to record speed and acceleration figures.

[Thirdgen89GTA]

Ahh, finally bought all of the replacement diff parts. After driving the Mini8 and the Hyper 10TT for so long I had forgotten just how much FUN the truggy was.

The other cars you can feel it. The Mini8 hates grass with a passion, its truly too small even for short grass. The 10TT is okay, but you can feel the drag on the car. Its just too much. And it overheats much easier in the grass than it does on a track.

The Jammin truggy? Blows through the grass like its riding on glass. I stuck a set of my Proline badlands on it from the buggy and stepped up the gearing to compensate. It was tearing up grass left and right, leaving ruts in every bit of dirt it found. Flooring it on dirt would send a cloud of dust about 10ft back from the starting point while it dug half inch trenches in where the badlands scrabbled to lay the power down. I broke the glue bead on the front tire. Gonna have to clean it up and reglue it. Hopefully it'll last longer this time.

I need to get a 22t pinion so I shove my GRP Grandini slicks on the truck and see just how fast it can go in a straight line. Calculated the pinion to keep its existing gearing at roughly the same RPM/MPH. But I don't think a 22t will fit.

Had a guy come over and ask how much it would be to buy one, and I had to tell him he couldn't buy one like that. I did point him to the HPI Trophy Flux though. Figure if someone wants a brushless truggy thats the only one on the market. One of the guys at work asked me if building a eTruggy would be better, or if he should buy a Revo BL. I told him go for the Revo. He is much more of a basher, and not so much as a hobbiest. Enough grease hasn't gotten into his veins yet for him to start hungering to convert a car.

[magman]

I had a Revo....built it from the ground up with the best parts I could get....ran it a few times and sold it shortly after. Hated working on it. The 1/8 class is soooooo easy to work on and well laid out. A few of my friends want Revo's due to seeing them in the hobby shop a few miles away. Once they saw my MBX5T, all of them have purchased truggies instead.

All, like your friend, had concerns about BL conversions...I directed all to here at RCM and showed them how easy it was with Mike's kits to convert and the rest is history.