Meatball Racing

Radio Control Blog

2WD “Backslash” Wing

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What’s a Backslash, besides this: “\”? It’s a nickname for a RC buggy made from the chassis of a Traxxas Slash. Some people call it a Backslash, some people call it a Sluggy (Slash + Buggy). Whatever you call it, the original 4WD variation is the most popular because it’s extremely simple to mount an 1/8 scale wing to the shock tower and change the body to a 1/8 scale buggy one.

I wanted to do one for my 2WD Slash. There are a couple of extra hurdles on the 2WD, like the gearbox being behind the shock tower, but it still seemed do-able. So here is what I did to mount an 1/8 scale wing to my 2WD Slash.

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Slash 4×4 Crawler (Part 5) Fenders and Bumpers

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With the Jeep body painted, I just needed to add a couple more details…

Fenders

With the tires slightly wider than the TRX-4 249mm width, I wanted to make sure the Jeep body didn’t look too skinny. I found these rubber fender flares on eBay which were originally designed for a Cherokee XJ body, but would likely fit the JK Rubicon Unlimited just as well.

I left some of the lexan overhang on the fenders purposefully to attach these fenders.

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Off-Road Racing in Houston

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Every year my family travels out of the frozen wasteland of Minnesota to Texas, usually around Thanksgiving. If flights are cheap, we’ll fly down. If not, the road-trip is on! I personally like the road trip because it means I can bring some extras along which usually means my bicycle and a couple of RC cars.

Since we’d be driving through Dallas on US-75, we stopped at Traxxas HQ in McKinney.

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Spec Slash Parts & Settings

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After a full year of my son and I racing our 2wd Slashes in the “Spec Slash” class, I wanted to record everything we’ve broken, fixed, upgraded, and replaced. I’ll also include a setup sheet of what we landed on being a fairly consistent indoor off-road carpet track setup.

Spec Slash rules differ by track, so check with your local track(s) before you buy anything. Some allow replacing stock plastic parts  with RPM brand replacements, some do not. If you race at multiple tracks, better to error on the side of caution and stick with stock parts. I’ve included both parts here for reference.

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Slash 4×4 Crawler (Part 3) Powertrain & Tires

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With the width of the vehicle worked out, it is time to make it drive like a crawler.

To slow the Slash down to believable crawler speed I actually kept the stock gearing in place (19.23 Final Drive Ratio for the brushed 4×4). Then I added a RC4WD 1:3 Gear Reducer, which would change the final drive ratio to almost 60:1 – a popular ratio amongst crawlers and close to the TRX-4 low-speed setting.

The gear reducer is normally a bolt on part, but there were some tweaks I had to do to get it to fit the Titan 550 motor. First the receiver hole in the gear reducer is too small fo the 550’s standard 13mm bearing enclosure (the part that sticks out right before the motor shaft). Which is strange because the age-old Tamiya 540 motor also specifies 13mm for this part of the motor.

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