Gelande II .. vs .. SCX10 (G6) .. vs .. Vaterra Ascender

[Rodrigo360]

I´m new to crawler scene, just want it to slow crawl, no speed, no bashing.
Like the realism in a crawler doing some good upgrades adding scale stuff and aluminum pieces.

Thanks for your opinions to take a good decision.

PS. I´m an experienced 1/8 buggy racer, know how to build, maintain and install upgrades.

[Alpha Male]

Gelande II 100%. It is a beautiful kit and has almost all metal parts. The details for the body leave something to be desired, but you can find really nice upgrade parts to make it extremely nice. I love this truck and I would trade an SCX10 or Ascender for one any day.

If you buy one add grease to the transfer case and diffs. I added a shim to my pinion on both diffs too. That's it though.

[new2rocks]

I'm going to disagree with Alpha Male just because it's fun jerking his chain. In all seriousness, the Gelande is a really sweet kit. Pros are a really sweet body, a highly detailed interior, and a very stout stock drivetrain. The only mechanical upgrades that you'd really need out of the gate would be shocks (I use Proline Scalers), wheels and tires (lots of choices, but need to stay relatively small unless you trim the fenders out). There are also endless ways to customize the look with scale accessories. The biggest downside is that body with interior makes it a heavy rig with high COG, which limits its handling. It also doesn't have much aftermarket support for mechanical stuff, though you don't really need it given the quality of the materials and fit/finish. Overall, it works very well as a trailer, but you're not going to want to do much on the rocks, if at all. So as much as I love my Gelande, I wouldn't dare take it to a lot of the places where I regularly run my other rigs.



The SCX10 is an incredibly versatile platform that allows you to achieve very scale looks with impressive capabilities. Pros are that it can be made extremely capable with some relatively basic upgrades, tons of aftermarket support for mechanical/performance parts, tons of options for bodies, and overall highly customizable to whatever you want to make of it. You can even put a hardbody on it (quite a few people have put D90 and Hilux bodies on theirs). My heavily modded G6 can hang with my heavily modded Wraith all day long. The biggest con is that even the kits need a few mods for durability (esp. plastic links, a couple of the tranny gears, and plastic servo horn). The other biggest con, if you're the type to care, is that everyone has one (though there are good reasons).



The Ascender is the only one of the 3 I don't have, and I plan to get one fairly soon. It's a very promising kit with some neat features out of the box. By all accounts, box stock, it looks to be more capable than a stock SCX10 and has some features (e.g., metal links, CVDs, CMS/panhard, etc) that don't come standard on the SCX10. The biggest downsides are some early production glitches (e.g., issues with ring/pinion gears) and limited aftermarket support at the moment. Both of those are likely to change fairly soon, so waiting another month or two (or making it your second scaler) could make a big difference.



There really isn't a right or wrong answer among them, as long as your eyes are open. Good luck and have fun!

[Alpha Male]

I'm going to disagree with Alpha Male just because it's fun jerking his chain.