Setup help

[calcagno45]

Not much crawling experience here.. yet. Always been more of a basher in the past but looking to getting my feet wet trailing/crawling with my Bomber. I want to start hitting some local trails to start exploring what's out there in ever so rocky South Louisiana. So I found the biggest rocks I could find to start testing on and gave it a shot at lunch. Yes, landscaping boulders at a local gas station...

My question here is, should a stock kit Bomber be able to climb up the face of this rock? I spent a good half hour trying to get her up the rock with different angles and speeds but the rear tires end up digging under the lower ledge of the rock causing the front end to get light, teeter up and end up flipping over.

What should I look to change to get up on this rock or is this just a limitation of the truck and a challenging rock? If I can keep weight on the front tires, it should be able to pull the back up. I got close a couple times with some speed and bouncing it up.

Stock kit built Bomber, MMP, CC BEC, HH PP3500kv, 3s, HV500. Stock king shocks setup per Axial instructions, 30wt oil and included springs. CI Deuces Wild standard foams in the kit R35 tires.

[sabo308]

I would try getting the front wheels up first, and then stabbing the throttle to give it some momentum to pop the rear wheels up onto the rock.
Or, you could try approaching the rock at say a 45 degree angle, getting one front wheel up and either attempt to continue crawling up at an angle slowly, or stab the throttle to try and get up.
Either way though, that is a pretty sizeable hole that the rear wheels need to try and traverse, not to mention that the Deuces Wild foams aren't really the best for slow crawling where tyre to ground conformation is required, due to their firm, closed cell design.
Maybe try a set of Double Deuce foams with the closed cell inner and soft, open cell outer?

[mikebecher]

Yeah, it'll get up there without gunning it. You need to come at an angle so that one back wheel starts up that lip before the other one.

This is a good demonstration of why different diff gearing works so well. If the rears have under-driven diffs they'll spin slower giving the front a better chance to bite and pull up the rock.

Remember this spot - tweak your driving style and/or the rig until you can make it every time. Then find another one you can't climb and repeat.

[shiftauto]

Definitely more angle on the approach. Look into some beef tubes for the front axle also. My rig is in stock kit form with the only addition being the tubes and can make that climb. I have a very similar setup with the monster X, PP 2700 and HV500 but with stock foams

[durok]

One thing to remember is that a very specific obstacle may have something about it that makes it very difficult or practically impossible to climb.

If it wasn't relatively soft or loose dirt before the rock, it wouldn't try do dig under the rock as much, and if your tires were larger diameter they wouldn't try to wedge down there, either.

(That's why crawling with 1.9" tires requires more skill than 2.2" or XL-sized 2.2" tires)

But, as was mentioned by the other posters - if you hit it at a certain angle, or with a bit of of a wheelie to get a bounce when the rear tires first touch rock, you can probably clear it even so!

[NitritedCarbide]

Try to add weight down low
just a little crawl..

[calcagno45]

Thanks for the advice gents. I'm going back at lunch today to give it another go and try all the different approach angles.

All my weight is pretty low in the chassis already.

[calcagno45]

Tried multiple approach angles and I'm thinking the rear sway bar isn't allowing the rear to flex completely as needed to keep the wheels in contact. However, I was able to power through and bounce it up a couple times. Not as fluid as I was expecting but better than not making it. I plan on taking the swaybar off and giving it another go to see if it helps.




After making it a few times, decided to bounce on some rocks and ended up taking a quick swim.

[durok]

That hop up the rock and brief "pose" on top cracked me up, awesome!

Not just a swim, after - but what looked like a completely unexpected one...