More iHobby News and Pix

[schmenzer]

iHobby Report 2008

I hit the iHobby show on Friday to look for some new crawling related items for the Mini Speedway shop and found a few items as well as several crawlers to look at but there were not a large amount of crawler related items overall. Here is most of what I found/learned.

I spent 15 minutes or so talking to Rich from Losi about the Mini Rock Crawler and what is coming up for it. In addition to the tires, shocks, servo plate and wheels, Rich had his little rig decked out with some prototype aluminum bits as well as CVD style axles. More goodies on the way and he is pushing hard for timely release dates. Battery tray should go out very soon. Tires, wheels and shocks mod to late November, hopefully.

Pro-Line confirmed that they are working on comp tires for the Losi MRC but didn't have any on hand.

Axial had their new Scaler chassis, the Bender Customs SWX Chassis Kit as well as some cool prototype Link-N-Rocks from RCP. Didn't see an MRC competitor and NO was the answer I got but I've seen pix that may hint otherwise. Hmmmm???

The Axial SWX chassis kit looks sweet in grey anodizing along with the black chassis and Delrin skid plate. This is the 4th generation of the chassis and is a narrow design along with being the originator of the open sided motor plate style.

The Link-N Rocks have potential. The surface seems good. I want see them in steeper and SICKER variants.

The 1.9 Scaler showed some very Axial traits in the design. I'm sure they will sell a lot of these.

The Traxxas Summit is quite a bit bigger than a 2.2 rig even though Traxxas is calling it a 1/10th scale truck. Seems more of a basher than a true crawler but has some interesting technology on it.

The word from Novak is that they are working on revamping the Rooster Crawler and Goat ESCs with a lot more emphasis on listening to what comp crawlers want in an ESC. Cool!

Tekin had 35T, 45T and 55T combo packs with the FX-R and FX-R Pro. They are serious about this and sourced their own motors and, if I understood correctly, are having the windings hand done here.

XTreme Racing had a Carbon Replacement Chassis for the Losi MRC as well as a front Servo/Battery plate. Should be available in a couple of days on their web site xtremercracing.com. They also have a full compliment of Carbon goodies for the AX-10.

No crawlers at Associated!

The Hitec HS-7950TG looks like it will find its way on to a lot of comp rigs. 403 oz/in torque at 6 volts! In addition Hitec have revamped the board to sense overload on the servo and added more cooling area to keep your high-buck servo healthy.

That's about it!

Oh, there's one more thing... Check out the spot I crawled after iHobby!