RC rock crawlers?

[josh0]

Which is better and why?

petrol or battery powered?

[4runner8]

used to own a couple of crawlers and found that electric were the better performer for crawling, you have more control over the speed, easier to reverse without having a gearbox(petty), on extreme angles the tank can suck dry if not set up properly on a petty crawler. finally petty ones take alot more knowledge on tuning them, reqire more maintenance and you'll always be replacing clutches,glow plugs, brake discs and drive cogs or belts depending on the set up and buying fuel, its amazing how much the buggers drink. oh and you don't have to start the bastards and they never stall

[Muckinhell]

check this you tube video out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMv8M8s0f88

its a rock crawling champs in usa with some awsome stuff these little monsters get up too.

[ice_spy]

4runnerv8 sums it up perfect, couldnt agree more, only 1 good thing about a petty car.... the smell of nitro in the air, the sound of an engine reving up to 28,000 rpm + , and the smoke coming out the tail pipe. Adds a little more realism, but yeah electric is just plug and play with heaps less maintanence. Petty You can keep filling up the tank all day (although you should let them cool down) but with electric you will evently run out of battery packs!. gas cars are mad fun for drifting, but i think elctric is the way to go for crawling.

[josh0]

How much would it set me back for a proper crawler?

[ice_spy]

My advice would be to build one. you can pay around $1000 for these suckers, and just for the alloy chassie with 4 links. (no diffs no electronics) hence why i built mine. I just looked on the net and copied some designs,looked at what works best for near 90' articulation. drew one up on a 2D cad program (downloaded for free) traced onto alloy and put my jigsaw and drill to use. I had spare electronics and parts so it was cheaper for me. I did have to sacrifice my shelf queen monsta truck but for its diffs. (the Tamiya clod buster) The chassie is the cheap part because you can make it yourself from scrap materials, the diffs would be around $100, body $50, wheels and tires $80 , electronic speed contol $100, radio transmitter (comes with steering servo's (motors) ) and reciever $100, 2 540 size motors $40. ball cups and rod ends nuts and bolts $20. all prices are approx. so total to go out buy from scratch= around $500. for that much or a lot less you can try to find a second hand one on ebay, second hand electronics or buy a kit new and transmitter and slowly modify it. I think you can get a Tamiya F350 high lift new in box for about $400 from ebay, a Tamiya super clod buster (most common used crawler diffs) for about $350. This would be my advice to start then you can strip it of its parts and put onto your custom rockcrawler chassie. I landed a tamiya TLT-1 for $170(overseas from ebay). you can mod these trucks easy too. they are the best 4link set up out of the box ive seen.they are 1/18th scale not 1/10th but easy to convert. Try Stellamodels on ebay for cheapest prices on Tamiya kits and parts.