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Welcome to
Stampede Project
How it all started...
On night my wife and I were at a friend's house for a party and after a
few glasses of wine we grabbed his Nyko style RC sport car spent the
next hour terrorizing the neighborhood burning up set after set of
replaceable batteries. Being a previous RC car
fan as a kid, this was just the thing to fill the void of time in my
evenings which I usually spent watching TV or in general "driving
my wife nuts", but I wanted an RC a little better quality, more
durable, faster, and a little more all terrain-ish than my friend John's
car.
Yes, like you, I spent the
better part of three months figuring out the best brand and, in my case,
truck that would fit my needs and goals. Goals? Yes, I
wanted something that was durable as hell, had some hop-up and project
potential (read - lots of ways to waste my time and money) and was high
end enough that it would hold my attention for more than a week and was
even potentially track worthy.
After reading everything I could find online, I decided that I wanted
something that fell in between a 4X4 and a stadium truck - that truck
was the Traxxas Stampede.
Lucky for me in December of
2003, my wife allowed
me to buy the Traxxas Stampede with XL-1 ESC ready to go with the MRC Superbrain charger, (3)
6-cell 3000mh batteries, (8) AA batteries... and the adventure/expenditure
began.
My RC racing Buddy - MO
He has been clocked at over 35 MPH and he turns on a dime and as you can
see he works cheap.
We usually draw quite the crowd and he has a blast.
Good thing he thinks the Pede is a sibling and not a chew toy. See
him is some of the videos.
Part Due (Rustler-Project - AKA
Ultra-Rusty)
Soooo... now that the Stampede Project Ultra-Pede is
complete (more or less), I am in need of another challenge. Now
Traxxas got me all aflutter with the Jato and into complete nerd/dork-topia
with the 3.3 Jato, but were oh were is the electric version. Sigh,
I guess the closest thing I can hope for is a electric Rustler to
experiment and upgrade with. Alas, Ebay to the rescue, a used
Rustler for $60. I of course
already have a bucket full of upgrades left over and waiting from the
Ultra-Pede, no since wasting all those great parts. I am not
really sure who owned this before other than an Ebay account name, but I
assure you I will never be the same again.
Will I change the name of the site?
No, the Stampede started this whole thing and my forum handles are all
stampedeproject anyway, so the Rusty stuff gets tacked on in the
appropriate areas of the site as they fit and I will run a blog'esk list
of my upgrades. Let's be honest aside
from what goes on in the mid-section of the Rustler it is identical to the
Stampede, so it is reasonable to assume 99.9% of the modifications I made
on the Stampede will work, so no need to re-create the content on another
site. What do I have planned for the
Rustler-Project?
High durability with an emphasis on weight reduction ...
See the Project
Stampede
Ultra-Rusty
Part Tre' (Tri-Pede)
Now that just about perfect isn't it, part three, the
Tri-Pede - couldn't have planned it better. This is the part where
everyone goes, "seriously I think you have a problem now". My wife's
quote was that I "should really use my powers for good rather than evil"
and further mumbled something about people are starving and you are
creating a Tri-Pede. My take is that if I can get this to perform, I can scare the
hell out of everyone at the track - [insert evil laugh].
The Innovation of the Tri-Pede -
7/4/06
This was an accidental project that was spawned while sitting amongst mounds of
parts at my project table all while working on the
Ultra-Rusty.
It seemed everything I needed to upgrade the Ultra-Rusty still didn't
put a dent in my parts box and I still had a mound of parts left over.
You see, my
goal of purchasing the Rustler was to use up all my extra upgrade parts from my
Ultra-Pede. This disappointed me in that I thought I was, in some sad way, financially
getting ahead from all the "investment" I had laying around in parts.
I still had more ground to cover and plenty of parts still to use before I was back in the black.
See this wacky Tri-Pede project come to life. |
