My Experience with TorqueRCTrailers.com...

[Gimpdiggity]

Hi everyone. I'm going to start out by mentioning that I am NOT in any way affiliated with Torque RC Trailers. I simply wanted a trailer for my trucks and stumbled across a guy that was building and selling them. I wanted to post my impressions of the trailer for others to read, as I feel that it's a pretty good product from a pretty good guy.

I'm sure that some of you have already viewed my pictures of my Bronco pulling my Trophy Truck. If so, you'll know that I mentioned that I would be posting more thoughts and impressions of the trailer, and that's what I'm doing here!!

First, a bit of a back story.

A while back I got hooked on scalers. I liked them so much that I sold all of my "faster" RC trucks in order to fund the new addiction. However, I soon wanted something to appeal to my need for speed, but I still wanted it to LOOK very real.

I ended up coming home with an HPI Mini Trophy Truck. When I got it, I started looking into it's scale. I found out that it scales out to literally a couple of millimeters away from perfect 1/10th scale, which is exactly the same for my CC-01 Bronco. Basically, the Bronco and the Trophy were the exact same scale. That gave me a perfect opportunity to look into a trailer for the Bronco to pull the Trophy truck, for some perfect scale awesomeness.

I had remembered reading a signature on another message board that mentioned trailers. I found the user, his name is Aaron, so I shot him a message to see if he was building the trailers or if he was just promoting them. He actually is the builder, so we had some discussions and set on a product and a price.

The discussions were very pleasant. Aaron listened to what I was interested in and offered his opinions on what he thought I should go with. He gave me some options regarding the build. I didn't ever feel pressured into paying more for things I didn't need. The entire buying process was very easy and laid back. Now, don't get me wrong, it was still very professional...but it was very nice to do business with Aaron.

The build process went very well, with constant communications from him about where he was in the process, all the way up to the point of him sending me the tracking number the day before shipping. Great communications.

The turn around time was fantastic. It was just a hair over a week after first contacting Cubic that my trailer arrived on my doorstep. It arrived via FedEx and was packaged extremely well. I don't think that there's any chance that there would have been any damage to the trailer during shipping.

Now that we've got all of those details out of the way, let's get down to the business of the trailer itself.

I opted to go with natural wood for the bed instead of having it painted any other colors. I was going for a trailer that looked like a small team of friends would have built it to haul around their garage built race truck. I figured a natural wood look would be more suited for something like that. The trailer that I purchased would be considered a "basic" model. Cubic offers a bunch of optional upgrades and parts, but I was just looking for something fairly basic, so that's what I went with.



The wood flatbed looks great. It's put together well and fits into the frame of the trailer really well. I'm glad I went with the natural look, as I feel it turned out perfectly for what I was going for.

The overall dimensions for the trailer are as follows:
13" width overall, including fenders
26.5" length overall, including tongue
20" length by 10" width usable flatbed space



I went with yellow wheels for the trailer. I had originally planned on painting them black, but leaving the lip yellow, however, the yellow has grown on me quite a bit. There were several options for design and color for the wheels. They are 1/10th scale road car wheels, so they are true RC wheels which means that they should be fairly durable.



Here is another shot of the wheels and fenders. In this shot, you can see that the fenders are attached with hardware, instead of glue. This is nice for a couple of reasons. First, it's more realistic. Second, it allows me to remove them and customize them if I wanted to at a later date. The fenders are made of ABS plastic and they have a bit of a texture to them. They look good. One thing to note is the bends. They are all very similar, and look really nice. What I mean is that the angles at the front and rear of the fenders on each side of the trailer are almost perfect. There aren't any spots where one is bent at a much steeper angle than any of the others.



Now we move on to the front of the trailer, the tongue. It's welded onto the frame very solidly. The welds look a bit large to me, for scale, but I'm not sure if there is anything that can be done to make them "smaller." It doesn't detract at all from the look of the trailer, and in fact I don't think anyone would even notice them. I'm just pointing it out because I noticed it when closely inspecting the trailer. I do really like the way the front of the trailer looks. The angles of all of the pieces of the tongue are perfect, and it fits together really well. Included with the trailer was the rod end that allows for a bolt to pass through it to attach it to your truck.



The bottom of the trailer shows you how the axles are mounted and how the bed is supported. You can see the two threaded rod axles and the two rods that hold the bed in place. Also, you can see how the wooden flatbed is put together so that it stays together. It's not just wood glued end to end, it's also glued to some cross braces that help support the weight of whatever is put on the trailer.



Here's a bit closer shot of the axles. In this, it LOOKS like they aren't straight, but they are. The wooden cross brace is slightly angled, and it makes the axles look like they aren't straight...but trust me, they are perfectly straight. In fact, the angle that the wood is off is actually so small that without those axles there, I don't know if you would be able to tell that the wood isn't straight itself.



I now have a close up shot of how the axles mount to the trailer. The threaded rod passes through the supports on the trailer frame and mount into the wheels. The threaded rod is perfect for this as it allows the axle to be adjusted perfectly. The wheels are held in place by two nuts, one on the outside of the wheel and one on the inside of the hex. The axle is then held in place by two more nuts on the inside of the frame that stop it from shifting side to side. The nuts are all held in place with one of two things...a good amount of thread locker or an actual hit of the welder. Either way, they are all mounted very well and after a good bit of driving I've had no amount of movement of the nuts. This system is very simple, no bearings or bushings, but it seems to work really well. In fact, I'm not sure that I would want bushings or bearings, as it may overcomplicate the entire build and raise the cost to a point where it's not worth the cost.



Next up is a shot of the trailer frame with the flatbed removed. The flatbed comes out of the frame very easily, which I like. It allows me to take it out to change it if I ever wanted to, with different wood, or to add parts and such to the flatbed. The flatbed is still held in place very solidly, even though it remains easily removed.



Now that I've gone over all the basics of the trailer, let me post some of my own personal thoughts.

First, I would like to see the trailer offered with ball cups instead of the rod ends that came with it. I have talked to Cubic about this, and I believe he is going to be offering those as an option in the future. I feel that these types of rod ends look a bit more realistic for a trailer, and they work well with ball studs, which look like real trailer hitch balls. I have put an RPM ball cup on my trailer, and I think it looks better this way.



Second, I would like to see a slightly different set of supports for the bed on the bottom of the trailer. It seems that there is a possibility that the bed might shift a bit during use if there was an abnormal amount of weight on the far front of the trailer.

I would like to see some supports added in the spots that I have drawn in red on this photo.

In fact, there may not need to be two added cross members, one might suffice, but then space the other two out a little differently.

I will preface this by saying that with my Trophy Truck mounted, I experienced ZERO issues with this, it was just something that I noticed while examining the trailer.



Other than these two issues, I haven't been able to come up with any real downsides to the trailer, especially considering that I purchased the basic model. In strictly wishful thinking mode, I would like to see a couple of holes on the frame pre-drilled so that if I chose I could add some rings to the sides of the frame for tie downs and such, but again these are probably things that are options that I could have purchased and chose not to.

Overall, I'm really happy with the trailer. It looks good, is constructed well, came to me fast, and most importantly was built by hand by someone that loves the hobby. To me, you can't undersell that point. When someone puts their hard work into a product that they are making by hand, I find that to be more appealing than buying something from a major company. I look forward to using the trailer more, and I will mention this in closing...

...my neighbors have seen me driving my trucks for weeks, and never said anything at all. When I was driving the Bronco with the Trophy on the trailer?? They came out to the road to talk to me about it.

If that doesn't speak for itself, I don't know what else could...



Here's a quick video of the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSPlJ5ToL6E

Thanks for reading.
Jeff

[makaveliks]

Nice write up!

[Gimpdiggity]

Thanks makaveliks.

I've got some plans for the trailer, too. I'm going to get some of those screws with eyelets on the end and put those through the flatbed so that I have some spots to "mount" the bungees instead of just hooking them around the frame. I also have some light buckets that I will be putting on the back for some tail lights, and a battery holder that will look like a luggage pod type thing that I will be mounting to the tongue of the trailer so that the lights don't need to connect to the truck doing the driving for power.

[epic_username]

I like the trailer, when I get my Bronco I want something similar to tow my vintage buggy. I would add a little winch to the trailer and ramps, just for laughs :P

[makaveliks]

Well I finally got home and got some time to take a quick video of this trailer that was delivered about 3 - 4 months ago. It's a 1/10 20 x 8 ft flatbed car hauler Looks great. I plan to add some details later like d-rings and probably lights, but for now looks pretty cool!

R/C Trailer - YouTube

[taco08jk]

Looks good but I agree it could use some ramps.

[schmaged88]

I really like the look and feel of the trailer, could you link a web site? Great video!!