Should A Wheely King W/Widow Climb Stairs?

[Maggster]

Hey guys. My WK has been slowly evolving since I got it. It was originally going to be a trail basher. Now it is more of a rock racer if I understand the term. Anyway, it has a widow chassis, heavily modified stock tires, T600 Great Planes motor, ProBoat esc, 1500 mah 11.1v Lipo, stock shocks, and locked diffs. Should a rig like this climb stairs? My shop is in the basement, so naturally the stairs are a handy test spot. I am still pretty new to crawling so maybe I am just asking to much of a 2.2.

Any comments welcome, I would like any feedback I can get.

Thanks

[phase10]

my widow can climb curbs easy, but stairs are a different story. i think its cuz the rear wheels and front wheel need to climb straight up at the same time. iuno if everyone is the same way tho. good luck man post some pics!

[crawler king 17]

mine can but it has to go side ways back and forth to do so

[LST022752]

Originally Posted by Maggster

Hey guys. My WK has been slowly evolving since I got it. It was originally going to be a trail basher. Now it is more of a rock racer if I understand the term. Anyway, it has a widow chassis, heavily modified stock tires, T600 Great Planes motor, ProBoat esc, 1500 mah 11.1v Lipo, stock shocks, and locked diffs. Should a rig like this climb stairs? My shop is in the basement, so naturally the stairs are a handy test spot. I am still pretty new to crawling so maybe I am just asking to much of a 2.2.

Any comments welcome, I would like any feedback I can get.

Thanks

I would probabily depend on the size of the stairs. On my stairs my truck cant. You would have to have a pretty dialed 2.2 truck to do it on decent sized steps.

[Nasher]

i don't have a widow but from what i've seen 2 steps might be possible, my Hellcat chassis can do 2 crawling from garage to inside the house(on rainy days)

[rambuller84]

Good tires will help a lot. Obviously stair height is gonna play a huge role in how well it can climb them. Stairs aren't really a good judge of crawlability. You could build a stair crawling monster and it could be a big floppy pile of crap out on the rocks.

[smcurry83]

I've always done the stairs test on my rig, and it NEVER works. Even on carpeted stairs. I think most average stairs are too large for a 2.2.

[Offroader5]

Mine can do stairs straight up. It takes some coaxing and steering back and forth to get it to climb front and rear simultaneously, but eventually it gets there. It certainly doesn't go about it easily. As said though, stairs differ alot and tires, gearing, voltage, suspension setup/type, weight distribution, and overall ground clearance will play a huge part. Not only will it of course depend on the rise of each step, but also the width of the step.

The stairs I have tried it on a couple times are concrete and all the angles from the tread to the rise of each step is 90 degrees. None of the steps have lips on the leading edge making an undercut situation when trying to climb. If the step has little lips over the edge, it would be very tough to get a 2.2 to climb them since by the time the rear tire has come into contact with the vertical part of the step, the lip has caused the belly of the rig to be either directly vertical from that rear tire or already beyond vertical of it causing it to roll backward.

[rebman]

Originally Posted by Offroader5

Mine can do stairs straight up. It takes some coaxing and steering back and forth to get it to climb front and rear simultaneously, but eventually it gets there. It certainly doesn't go about it easily. As said though, stairs differ alot and tires, gearing, voltage, suspension setup/type, weight distribution, and overall ground clearance will play a huge part. Not only will it of course depend on the rise of each step, but also the width of the step.

Agreed!

[Maggster]

Thanks for the replies guys. The stairs aren't really very tall, but they are somewhat narrow. They are concrete, no lip.

After posting this topic and then reading the replies, I thought of something else. It always happens that the rear tires will push right up to the next step which pushes the front tires up in the air. If I keep going, the rear tires grab on the vertical part of the step and the truck flips over backwards. Would weight in the front tires help this? How much weight?

Edit: The battery I am using is a 3s lipo which doesn't weigh very much. Would a 6 cell nimh mounted on the front axle and upper mounts help too?

[smcurry83]

I had the same thing go through my mind. "How much weight would it take on the front axle to get this thing to BITE and climb stairs?"

I tried stacking everything heavy I could find that would stay on the axle. I tried 4 5200 series pad locks, a bunch of 1/4" thick rolled steel taped together. It got rediculous! And I never got enough weight on the axle to make it work.

A front dig set-up my help, but I dunno.