Project Barfight

After about a 20 year hiatus, I got back into the Radio Control hobby with an early Christmas present I got back in early December. I had already been given a drone, which is the subject for another article. I got an ECX Ruckus 2wd monster truck.

Stock Ruckus image from ECX website.

It's a great inexpensive basher, and comes as a ready-to-run version with everything you need to get going. Electronics, transmitter, batteries, the works. Just charge the battery, pop it in and go bash the hell out of it. Great little truck, especially for the price, and pretty damn durable in stock form. It's also a ton of fun right out of the box, and does fairly well for such a cheap little rig. Right up until the stock motor puked on about the 5th battery charge. Got that replaced under warranty at my local hobby shop same day, and was back home with a new motor in an hour.

I saw a great upgrade video series from RC Overload on the sister truck, the Torment. They share everything but wheels/tires and the body, so I knew the upgrades would work on my truck. So that got the upgrade bug started. After a few runs beating the thing around, I started to actually need to upgrade due to parts breaking, wearing out, or coming lose and falling off the truck in the yard, never to be seen again. As frustrating as that is, it gives the excuse to beef the truck up and wrench on it some.

Between watching the videos and breaking stuff on the truck left and right, Project Barfight was born, and I decided to overhaul the truck in stages. Unfortunately, I didn't think to document the process in the beginning with pictures or video, but I'm trying to keep up with it now. I had already done the front end, which I'll get into in a bit, upgraded the drive train, and pretty much only had the rear end phase left for the last little while. Phase I was the front suspension and steering. Phase II was rear end and drive train. Phase III was assorted upgrades that weren't part of the others initially. So now I get to play catch up and try to remember what order I went in and get photos of things I forgot to document the first time. Bear with me. I'll also add a picture of the truck to this article later on, I don't have one with me right this second. I'm lazy.

-Owen