We headed out for a short crawl at Calico Basin with a newly setup Vanquish VRD Carbon kit. This is our 3rd VRD kit in the fleet.

The only changes we've made from the factory kit is to install Incision drive shafts and an in-house designed rear-link riser. The body is an Element Zuul and the sliders are just folded aluminum sliders from the kit ( we still need to design sliders to fit this body ). Under the hood is a Hobbywing Fustion pro 2300 with an NSDRC 800 V2 servo. We installed overdrive gears in the front portals.

The VRD is properly sprung and not running in a "droop" setting. Our intention was to have it feel more like a crawler / trail truck rather than a full-droop dedicated crawler. We give up a little vertical line ability, but gain a relatively plush feel to the truck. All in all, the VRD is probably the best kit crawler on the market today. They might like to watch themselves on video a bit much for our liking, but the design work is solid and their trucks perform.

Tires are the 1.9" Megalithic tires from JConcepts, stuffed with Ottsix racing UL foams. I find that the rounded tires work very well with the Ottsix foams, where as square tires like the Tusks respond better with the CI foams.

The crawler is quiet, so the buzzing in the background is from small planes flying over.

This crawler does rather well right out of the box, with nice, predictable movement on tricky surfaces. It's no problem to carry a front tire or hang a rear tire as you search for the correct line; the VRD is highly stable.

Today the sandstone was a bit slick, and it would be nice to have some rain to wash off the fine dust and sand from the rocks. Until then, we gotta deal with this slippery surface.

-MVRCA