Last Year we hooked the emaxx up to our wagon We gave the summit a try at pulling the wagon and here’s a snippet of how it went.
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The 2.4 ghz Traxxas radio systems are easy to pair, you just need to have some directions. So here they are:
Press and hold the transmitter’s SET button as you turn it on. Press and hold the receiver’s LINK button as you power up your model, then wait for the transmitter’s and receiver’s status LEDs to turn solid green—which only takes a second or two.
Traxxas’ 22 mb manual contains much more complicated and much less reliable instructions. Stick to this and you can’t go wrong pairing or binding your Traxxas link receiver and transmitter.

One of the first questions you’ll probably be asked when driving your electric RC cars and trucks around someone new is, “Is that gas powered?” You should exclaim proudly that electric RC cars and trucks are the best RC’s! And here is why:

• Electric RCs are just as powerful with brushless power and lipos.
• Traxxas electrics run better in the snow and cold than gas RCs
• Electric is more quiet, resulting in more neighbors being your friend.
• Reverse- electric RCs have it, gas doesn’t
• maintenance is so much easier on a brushless motor which results in
• Lower maintenance costs
• Sensored brushless motors are very smooth at both low and high speeds.

This is a general list, there a are a lot of models out there. If you are looking for electric RC cars and trucks I would highly recommend Traxxas. The waterproof systems that come standard on their electric RCs make RC a much more fun experience.

I just got the watts up meter the other day and it’s a very helpful tool. For RC it an electric gas tank of sorts, keeping you aware of the lowest your battery voltage has gotten and how many amp and watt hours you’ve used. The watts up meter is fairly large so you probably wouldn’t want to use it in 1/16 scale and smaller vehicles.
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It’s really not hard to go green with your rc cars and trucks and it’s not much more of an expense. Plus you know you can charge wherever you are at. Chances are that you have a 12 volt charger, rather than pouring $60 on a 12 volt power supply, think about buying a 12 volt battery. You’ll want to get a deep cycle battery as they are designed to be charged and discharged frequently.

To keep your batteries charged with green power and become a green rc guy, you’ll need a solar panel. Depending on how much sun you get around your workshop and how often you use your truck you’ll probably just need a panel between 15 & 50 watts.

That panel will cost you between 60 & $200, but it’s convenient to have the portability and it will pay itself off within a decade.

RC guys can’t leave things how they come stock, so when I researched powerwheels for Christmas, I was entertained to see the possibles that come after modifying a powerwheels car.

The most common modification seems to be doubling the power with two batteries in series: delivering 24 volts rather than 12. Here are some of the results from this easy mod:

And here it’s taken a little further with a gas motor:

• 50 MPH
• Standing Backflips
• Very Tough
• Weather Proof
• Low maintenance Cost @ 1/16 Scale
• Takes 1/10 Scale Tires and Wheels

Every time I drive the 1/16 scale E-Revo VXL it becomes my favorite RC car again. It’s power to size ratio is unequaled to any car I’ve every driven. So much that it can do standing backflips. It’s still tough enough to take it when you don’t quite make it when you’re trying to do double backflips and slide 20 ft across the pavement.

The smaller parts means a smaller cost so I can beat up the car without worrying about having to save up for new parts, and lipos along with other upgrades take a lot less rationalizing.

I probably use it most in the worst weather conditions like in the video below.

The fact that it takes 1/10 scale tires makes it easy to get oversized tires such as snow plow tires that really make it a blast. Although it soaks in water for about a day I’ve only had one servo ever fail on me and Traxxas was great about charging only around $20 to ship out a new one along with another one that had failed me.

If I was to recommend only one RC this would probably be the one. I don’t think I ever would recommend only one, but theoretically this would be it.

This is what’s been going on in our yard every Saturday since Christmas Vacation…. We’ve been trying to build the ultimate RC Snow Course

The min E-Revo Flipping around on our ultimate Snow Course.

And a Single VXL Summit…

And A Summit…

Two Summits Racing

And an Emaxx…

Single VXL Summit Airtime

Single VXL Summit

I got tired of waiting for Traxxas to make a waterproof brushless system for their monster trucks so I tried doing just a single VXL setup. Here’s the specs:

2 cell 5000 Mah Lipo 1 VXL motor
18 T Pinon Stock spur- taken strait off of my E-Maxx

That’s all that is driving it. It was below zero so I didn’t have any overheating. To make sure I didn’t over work the motor I would to about three loops in high and 3 in low. You can hear the difference in the video.

Single VXL Summit Motor & ESC

A few of the Traxxas Summit’s features:

• Locking differentials
• Large 7″ Tires
• Two Speed Transmission
• Crawls & Jumps whatever you throw at it

The Traxxas Summit is probably the best waterproof RC Truck for the money. It comes with more features than any other truck in the price range.

Tested against the E-Maxx it’s all the truck and more until it comes to pulling wagons where the E-Maxx shines a little better.

Check out the full E-maxx Vs. Summit Comparison.