needing build help

[crawler105]

I sold my learning/budget crawler to fund yeti upgrades and now going to do my 1st complete build from parts ive bought and not used or upgraded and I think I've got a pretty good plan for it. List of parts I have are
- ar60 axles with hd gears and unis in front
- sidewinder v3
- integy 35t lathe motor
- unknown shocks
- wildboar shafts
- integy ax10 chassis and skid
- ax10 trans with hot racing dig
- sanded white dot hb rovers with ci foams
- axial beadlocks
- cc bec
There may be more I'm missing but that's what I can think of right now. I plan to start with this to see how it's going but will get new motor, ud and od gears in axles, slw wheels. Anyway I'm needing help on a chassis, the one I have is a pig and just dont work for decent crawling and I'm looking to shave as much weight as possible. I've looked at what everybodys using for sportys but still quite a few. I'm leaning towards the fastback II for the price and being bodiless. Whats the weight and pros and cons for the fastback? How hard is it to shove all the electronics in? Suggestions? I dont wanna spend 200 on a chassis alone. Also where is the next best place to shave weight? And this is not going to be a comp rig but want close to comp performance while keeping durability in mind.
Thanks for any help

[Solitaire]

The problem with NOT building a comp rig, but wanting comp capabilities is a bit of an argument by itself.

Weight as low as you can get it without suffering durability. CG as low as you can physically get it without suffering break-over ability. Proper tires, wheels and foams make a big difference. Titanium links and alum hardware as well as a small ESC all help in the weight dept.

Although the FBII works OK, I found it to be a bit cramped for the electronics layout I wanted. I did use one last comp season and did fairly well with it, but have switched to a SuckerPunch (bodied) chassis and I'm extremely happy I changed.

[hoghead5150]

on the FB chassis i found that mine liked weight. i know it's not the "in thing" but it worked for me. cons of my chassis was front link placement. made it hard to fit battery, made it hard to fit shocks and links without binding. not alot of room in the "cab" to fit electronics. now that said, with a little thinking and positioning the chassis worked very well.

i'm going to use round numbers but when i got my FB down to the 4 pound range it worked well but was sorta unpredictable. it would work great one minute, not so much the next. also it would sidehill ok but any small change would cause it to roll. i spent several months working on settings, foams, tires and such and while things helped, it never was what i would call "stable".

now i went back up to the 5 pound range and everything clicked. it was predictable, sidehill capabilities came back, it just worked well.

what i ended up with was ALOT of knuckle weight on the front, and also axle weights on the rear. i probably ran as much weight on the rear axle as most run on their front knuckle weights. i lightened everything EXCEPT for weight on the axles.

are there better chassis's, yes. do the FB and FBII work, yes.

i would suggest that IF your trying to build a comp "style" rig make it as light as you can, and use weight in the places you need to make it work. i prefer using a bodiless designed chassis and then adding a body to it. this has worked great for me in the past as it makes the rig more durable, gives better options for mounting electronics, and such.

[crawler105]

Thanks for the input guys since winter is already starting to coming around here this will probably be a season long build so I'm going to do more research and try to get some understanding around some link geometry before getting a chassis it'll give me time to save for some other upgrades