New Ascender and a few questions

[andymac0035]

I just got the 68' F-100 Ascender. I've got and/or built many crawlers now, but this is my first vaterra. It's a cool looking truck, but I've got some questions. I'll start with the easy one:

-I see that the esc is only rated for 2S and that's not gonna' fly. I plugged in a 3S and tried it, and it seems to take it okay. I was surprised when I heard the esc count off 3 beeps for the cell-count (since it's not rated for it), and am wondering if the LVC will kick off correctly for a 3-cell, or will I need to use a voltage alarm?

Now here's the harder question (and I did some searching/reading before posting).

-The driver's side front tire rubs REALLY badly on the front inner edge of the wheel opening. I even tried putting some comically small (under 4") tires on it and it still rubbed a few times under full articulation. It doesn't help that the front wheel openings (on both sides) look like the should be a few mm's more forward than they are. I suppose trimming the fenders would ease that, (but jeez, it should not be a problem right out of the box). Looking at things closer I could see the whole axle seems to be shifted more to the driver's side. I tried to offset this by making the panhard longer. This helped some as far as centering it to the chassis, but not clearing the body. I'm thinking I need to keep playing around with shims and spacers till I get it "right", but not really sure.

 

[Yeti.stealth]

The RTR Ascender ESC has always been rated for 2S and 3S, you will have no problems running it on 3S.

The wheel openings on most Ascender bodies don’t seem big enough and rub like crazy, maybe they did this to suit guys who wanna run small wheels and tires and lower the body and shocks for that stock scale look. Everyone else can just cut away at the body, I did, no tire rub even with 4.75 tyres!

 

[Yeti.stealth]

 

[andymac0035]

View attachment 389202

Nice!

For whatever reason it says 2S (no mention of 3S) in my manual. (thank you!)

 

[andymac0035]

So here's another question:

Rock slider options? My truck didn't come with any.

So I'm that oddball that likes to keep metal parts to a minimum. I prefer plastic bumpers and rock sliders. Other than 3D printed stuff (which I doubt will hold up), I don't really see too many options out there, but maybe I'm not looking in the right spot?

I thought about the ones that came on the K-5, but I really like the one's on my OG SCX10's and thought about getting a set of those. (or are axial parts on an ascender blasphemy?) LOL

I've got a bunch of buggy/SCT chassis in a part bin and I thought about using those as scrap material to fashion some boat-side type sliders... but figured I'd ask here as well.

 

[Natedog]

Great answers Dean!

Andymac0035, welcome to RCC and congrats on your new Ascender! Use whatever parts work, Axial, Vaterra, etc. I've adapted many different brands parts to rigs over the years. My OG Ascender Blaszer still has the first set of Ernie's Codyboy made brazed tubing/solid rod sliders that work great, BPC makes some laser cut and bent sliders that I'm using on my latest build, Dean (Yeti.stealth) made some of his own as have others here.

 

[andymac0035]

Thanks! Your build thread was one of the one's I researched when I started looking into these trucks. I ended up putting OG SCX10 sliders on there. I'll be posting some updates in my main topic soon.

 

[Natedog]

You're welcome, glad you got your sliders worked out too! Looking forward to your updates!