Dorkstar Unlimited - A Championship Tuber Text by Jay Kopycinski Photos by Ryan Gerrish

The recent 2007 Axial West Coast Championship event hosted 2.2 and Super class entries pitted against some gnarly courses. Of the 34 class entries that summer weekend, Ryan Gerrish from Beaverton, Oregon walked away with the top honors in the Supers class. His weapon of choice? It was a homebrew tube rig of his own design. Ryan had been running a TXT for the past year. But, he had been watching another competitor’s modified Hustler and decided it was time to build a new comp rig to step up his performance. He had spotted the 4Locked Films 1:1 Moon Buggy and liked the look. He took some basic design elements from it and created his own Clod based tuber using a droop suspension design.

The creation started with 6 to 7 hours of concentrated fabrication at the workbench. When the sparks quit flying, he had built up a chassis using a combination of 3/16” steel brakeline, ¼” solid square stock, and some scrap sheet metal. All the components are melded (and somewhat melted) together using a MIG welder. With the metal work complete, the tubing and lexan body panels were complimented with orange and green Dorkstar colors. Clod Buster axles were linked to the chassis to make a 17” wheelbase. The gearboxes were geared low using 8T pinions in combination with Integy 65 turn lathe motors. Extra strength and locker duty was left to a set of Hot Racing aluminum gear sets in each gearbox.

As we mentioned above, Ryan designed the chassis as a droop suspension setup to keep the profile of the rig low and stable. To do this, he used Traxxas XXL big bore shocks upgraded with Ti-nitride shafts. All were filled with heavy 1000 weight Mugen diff oil to keep the axle movement steady and controlled. Choice of tires are the relatively tall Proline Moab XL’s mounted on custom narrowed Proline 40 Series black dish wheels. These have been drilled and faux lug nuts added for a little eye appeal. Tire foams have been cut slightly to allow the tire to flex a bit more on the rocks.

Ryan runs stock Tamiya knuckles but they have been shaved to accommodate battery mounting on the knuckles. For maximum approach clearance, a New Era behind-the-axle steering setup is used but has been reinforced with a tubing brace and a custom servo mounting plate. The added fab work greatly reduces front steering flex. A pair of JR 8711 digital servos steer all four tires.

Source of power for this crawler comes from a total of eight Elite 4500 Nimh sub-C cells from Cheapbatterypacks.com. Three batteries ride on each front knuckle and two others are mounted to the front gearbox. Finally, a Novak Super Rooster controls the motors and provides BEC function, and the rig is controlled using a Futaba 4VWD AM Attack stick radio. This rig was built to be hard core competitive, but is not without some nice extra touches. A Recaro seat sits inside the chassis and blue LEDs have been mounted in Kyosho housings and attached to the top of the cage.

This rig is a relatively fresh build and had little seat time on it when Ryan attended the Axial Championship. Nevertheless, he proved he built a great performing crawler with this build and knows how to drive it. He’s pleased with its climbing abilities and comments that it feels extremely planted and stable on radical terrain.

He’s got a few ideas for improvements and tweaks, which include trying different shocks, foam and weight combinations, some axle upgrades and maybe trying other ESCs/motors. He says he’s looking forward to tweaking it to its fullest potential. We’d say he’s done plenty right so far!

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