Axial at Off Road EXPO 2014

Posted on October 21, 2014 by AR

Off Road EXPO at the Pamona Fairplex is an event that you must attend if you live in the So Cal area. This is the big off road show where you get to see all the latest and greatest off road equipment. We were on the scene checking out some of the awesome rigs on site and snapping photos of the Axial rigs we could find at the show.

This year was different for Axial as we had quite a lot going on. We had demos going in the Poison Spyder booth, the Icon Vehicle Dynamics booth, and the Yeti XL was attracting eyeballs in the BFG booth for its first public appearance.

Many of the Axial marketing partners were also on site showing off their latest goodies…. Check it out!

Icon Vehicle Dynamics just picked up a big rig to take their products and show on the road. This beautiful rig grabbed tons of attention. Those that ventured over to see them got to try their hand wheeling some SCX10s. You would have the option of running the Ram Power Wagon, the Honcho or the JK.

Have we mentioned we Love the ICON JK?

and check out this awesome machine!!! I want this body for an SCX10!

Camping anyone?

Walker Evans Racing on site with this super clean JK!

and of course Walker’s beautiful pre-runner buggy

Rebel Off-Road always brings a crowd of people, and they should with their awesome selection of JK’s and other fun toys

Does anyone else want 20 minutes alone in the desert with Method’s TT?

Speaking of Method Wheels, check out this Shannon Campbell Replica Rock racer using Wraith and EXO parts that is almost completed. We found this in the Magnaflow booth

Also cruising around the Magnaflow booth was this little desert package, ready for the dirt this winter season!

They even had a Yeti on site!

Our friends over at Rock Krawler made the trek from New York

The Poison Spyder booth was a hit as always, completely jam packed with Jeep enthusiasts all day long!

Crispy was out attracting people to the booth complete with a G6 mini Crispy

Still one of our favorite JKs

The Demo at Poison Spyder was fun all around.

We stopped in to visit the Currie Family and check out their goodies. They had all their latest equipment on display along with their very high end Axial JKs

Only Casey Currie would do this……

and then do this 20 mins later….

The infamous Jerry from U4RC made an appearance

The BFG booth had a steady flow of people all day, most to see the new KO2 tire, and a few to check out the Yeti XL!

BFG has an awesome 2 door, we want this one too….

We bumped into sPOD in the main hall. They are using their SCX10 as part of their display system. So9 cool to hit the buttons on the sPOD, and the lights on the SCX10 light up!

Our buddies at Nitro Gear getting ready for the crowds…

Holy Billet Batman!

Alex at AOE has been busy, his JK is looking ready for action!

Here are a few parting shots for you, these kids have no idea how cool they are!

Oh and did you want any Jeep with your tires?

Axial “SCX10JK” tested – Moab, Utah for Easter Jeep Safari 2012

Posted on April 26, 2012 by AR

As we continue to build up our 2012 Jeep Rubicon we couldn’t help but notice the online buzz about Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, UT. The entire Rebel Off Road group were preparing their Jeeps for the event whilst putting time into our SCX10JK project. We decided that there was no better place to test our Jeep’s ability than to hit the world famous Moab rock trails. Moab has long been considered a Jeeper’s paradise, with roads that stretch hundreds of miles allowing people to enjoy some of the most beautiful scenery in the USA. Our “SCX10JK” wasn’t completely finished (is any rig ever really finished?), but we figured it was in a state of completion that would suit traveling the world famous Moab trails, hopefully without drama.

We requested some time from our internal graphics master Scott Roberts to whip up some art for the JK. He was extremely busy with Axial day to day operations, so we requested that he keep it simple and clean. We wanted to make sure our partners had a little exposure on the side of the Jeep as well as adding a little character to our rig. Scott whipped up some nice simple graphics for us and took the time to install them over at Rebel Off Road. Thank you Scott!

The first spot we hit was Hell’s Revenge. This particular trail is strange in that you drive your vehicle on a literal sea of rock. You simply follow the rubber marks from past travelers and negotiate a rollercoaster of winding trails. This place has a surface unlike anything I have ever seen. They call it slick rock, but the reality is… it is anything but slick. Instead it is like sandpaper and offers a tremendous amount of grip. It is possible to walk up near vertical faces in your plain old skate shoes!

There are some very cool breaks in the rock sea where there are winding sand trails

There are also a few ledges you must climb up

Bond from Rebel Off Road was our fearless leader on this run, he and his entire group of Jeepers are all awesome people to roll the trail with.

Bond’s Jeep

My ride for the trip was with Jason from Rebel, this Jeep is so awesome!!!

Here we are stopped for lunch!

To learn more about Hell’s revenge,click here

The next adventure we went on was on a trail called Metal Masher, this has to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever been! This trail winds up the side of a mountain and eventually takes you to a plateau overlooking Beautiful Moab, Ut.

Bond always makes the rounds to discuss what the trail has to offer and makes sure everyone is fully prepared for adventure, Thanks Bond!

Bond and his extremely well prepared JK always takes the bonus lines!

Some of the dry waterfalls and steps you get to drive up on this trail are absolutely amazing!!

This trail is loaded with optional more challenging lines; this was one of those advanced lines, amazing what these Jeeps are capable of!

Bond needed a little help getting over this one, so Jason stepped up to lend a hand

The Jeep experience is really cool. When the group reaches an obstacle, they all gather around and watch each other give it a shot. It is awesome to see so many people work together to make sure everyone enjoys their experience!

The terrain of this place is mind blowing!!

Rolling through beautiful Moab with a group of likeminded enthusiasts is surreal, as is the capabilities of this rig, JR… You have a sick Jeep my friend!!

Every time we would stop for an obstacle, the Axial RC rigs would come out and offer the youngsters a chance to get some of their own crawling done!

To learn more about Metal Masher click here.

We have successfully put the Axial “SCX10JK” through its paces, and as projected, it performed flawlessly! The combination of parts we selected to arm this JK for battle, were absolutely perfect! The body protection from Poison Spyder did its job, only experiencing minor scrapes, the wheel and tire combo from Walker Evans Racing and Maxxis offered tons of strength and traction, the Suspension system from Icon flexed when needed and offered excellent ride quality both on road and off road. The Spicer equipped drive shafts propelled us to incredible places, the crew at Rebel Off Road did a tremendous job preparing the JK and guiding us through some of the most incredible terrain on earth! You will have to wait to get a report on the TJM winch and recovery equipment, as of yet, we haven’t had to use it!

To get the history on the Axial “SCX10JK”, please check out the following links! Be sure to check back often, as we will continue to build up the SCX10JK and fine tune it for maximum performance!

The Full Size Connection

Axial 2012 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited

Axial Visits Rebel Off Road

Axial “SCX10JK” – Icon Suspension

Axial “SCX10JK” Armor – Poison Spyder Crusher Flares and Crusher Corners

Axial “SCX10JK” Armor – Poison Spyder Rocker Armor and Rocker Knockers

Axial “SCX10JK” Armor – Skid Plates from Rebel Off Road

Axial “SCX10JK” Walker Evans Wheels – Maxxis Tires – Rebel Roof Rack

Axial “SCX10JK” Armor – Poison Spyder Front and Rear Bumpers – TJM Winch

Axial “SCX10JK” Walker Evans Wheels – Maxxis Tires – Rebel Roof Rack

Posted on April 3, 2012 by AR

At last, the time has come to install the wheels and tires. We have been waiting for this moment, we just received the call that the wheels and tires have been mounted up over at Rebel Off Road. We selected the Walker Evans Racing bead lock wheels for the awesome design and ridiculous strength. Walker Evans has been beating on wheels for years out in the desert, so if he is willing to put his name on them, you know they are up to the task! We decided to run the 17 X 8.5 standard finish with a polished bead lock ring in a 5 on 5.5 pattern. To keep us planted to the rocks, we elected to run some Maxxis Trepador 37 X 12.50 X 17 Radials. These tires wrapped around the Walker wheels should look as good as they perform! Maxxis also makes a Bias ply tire that is for competition use (Called Stickies) that we were eyeballing pretty hard, but they would wear way to fast for our style of trail driving. We like to drive to the trail, enjoy the challenges, then drive home, so the radials were more realistic for us. While at Rebel we noticed the guys had one of their Roof Racks coated in silver and mounted up as well, this rack should work perfect for our extra storage needs. To have a look at these components, check them out here…..

Walker Evans Racing Wheels

Maxxis Trepador Tires

Rebel Off Road Halo Jeep JK Roof Rack

A few days ago we went to the Maxxis tires Warehouse to pick up the tires.

This warehouse is huge!!

I want these tires so bad! They work extremely well on the trail.

We have something up our sleeve for the near future with this rig, that is why we went with the 5 on 5.5 bolt pattern. For the time being we used adapters to use the Walker Evans wheels on the 5 on 5 standard JK pattern. These adapters also widen the overall stance by 3 inches, which should really help with stability.

This wheel and tire combination will offer a ton of ground clearance, good looks, strength and the traction we will need to tackle the toughest of trails! Here is a photo of the stock wheel and tire with the new Walker Evans wheel wrapped in the Maxxis Trepador….

We gained about 5″ in tire height and about 2.5″ in width, this will also give us an extra 2.5″+ of ground clearance to the axle housing.

The tires and wheels look perfect on the SCX10JK. The size of the tire is exactly what the kit calls for, and should clear during complete articulation at all steering angles

The Front….

The Rear…

Rebel Off Road fabricated one of their Halo Jeep JK roof racks, and had it coated in the same silver color as the Jeep. This rack is nice and low profile, yet offers a ton of extra storage space for those extra long trips Jeff takes with the family. Check it out

The rack is constructed of 1.75″ DOM tubing for the outer ring, and the center section is a wire grid that is welded at every intersection, so it is very strong and ready for Battle! Thank you Rebel!!

As you can see, the bumpers are already in progress, so stay tuned for the next blog post showing the installation of the front and rear Poison Spyder bumpers and TJM winch. If you are new to this blog and project, please take a few minutes to look at the past blog posts to see the history of how this rig came about…
The Full Size Connection

Axial 2012 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited

Axial Visits Rebel Off Road

Axial “SCX10JK” – Icon Suspension

Axial “SCX10JK” Armor – Poison Spyder Crusher Flares and Crusher Corners

Axial “SCX10JK” Armor – Poison Spyder Rocker Armor and Rocker Knockers

Axial “SCX10JK” Armor – Skid Plates from Rebel Off Road

To learn more about our friends at Rebel Off Road, please visit their site here

Off-Road EXPO 2011 Pomona, Ca

Posted on October 19, 2011 by AR

The Off-Road EXPO is held each year at the Pomona Fairplex located in sunny Southern California and has been the def-facto event for the off-road community for twelve years now. The “desert season” as we call it is upon us and everyone is getting restless and ready to enjoy the wide open desert! The Expo was started by Dirt Sports Magazine and recently acquired by Family Events, with this years show contining to deliver with yet another successful gathering, even in the “bubba-scrubb” of a “turn-down” economy. Even with the temperament of economy, aspirations and dreams are what fuel the off-road industry guided along with history and tradition. Maybe it’s just the reality of us wanting to escape into the far corners of the desert.. but before we do, people want to mingle and talk shop and shops want us talking shop and so do the manufactures! So, we talk shop and then we hit the deserts and mountains with the Halloween weekend being the first “big” weekend for the south-western portion of the United States.

I too have my dreams and for the last couple of years I personally have had my eyes out for anything relating to the “overland adventure” scene. Some say this is an emerging scene, and while I am a big campaigner for it, I just say I’m just getting old enough for it to be on my radar. I have been labeled a Chameleon as I have gone from Ivan Stewart fan with a Toyota desert pre-runner with wide front end and fenders, to rally cars, to adventure bikes and now overland style with a 80-Series Toyota Land Cruiser. Again, age… yes, I have actually seen Ivan Stewart race both in the stadium and in the desert for age identification.

What dreams are made of:

Camburg builds awesome rigs and putting it on display in this stripped to the bones fashion was super cool!

The opposite of baller is BUDGET and all of my projects have had a heavy emphasis on .99 cents and under portion of the budget spectrum! “What can we get for sixty three cents!?” So I fit right in there with the nominal mainstream of budget of most fender lizards, but we all have a dream! The EXPO is a great place to “dream” for a day or two about your next project while studying in detail the big guns. The off-road scene or industry, how ever you look at it, is unique. The people will dream for a day… then go home and start cutting, notching, bending, shaping and welding dreams together into what reality is… far from what was just seen at the show. BUT, its a learning process that everyone has to go through! Well, not everyone, just those on budgetary confinement. I did my learning process! Everyone has that first truck and passing tech inspection usually requires tow-straps and flat bed trucks with a few trips back and forth to the garage for a bit of re-sketching exercise on the cardboard, napkin, notepad, wall or just get after it and cut and jig some new drawn over mandrel.
CCB’s – Credit Card Ballers just buy it and wad it up within two miles as they have never driven thirty-two inches of travel at 21% interest rate.

This year with the rising interest of overlanding, Off-Road Expo hosted the guys from Overland Journal and friends to come out and display. So, RTT’s – Roof Top Tents abound and I was in heaven! Yes, I have dreams of preparing my 80-Series Toyota Land Cruiser into an overland adventure machine, not a rock crawler and not a desert race support rig shod with 37″ leftover Projects. Yes, overlanding has a whole “other” set of principles.

On another “adventure front,” we posted on our Axial FaceBook page for our fans attending OffRoad EXPO to track the official Axial rigs on display in various booths. [see original post – link] We had specific placement and we knew others would have rigs as well, but we wanted to see if someone would list the correct companies. These chosen companies came about as a buddy of ours put some time together to make some custom graphics for Axial Wraiths and SCX10. Our buddy Cody Waggoner of Laser Cutting IPE made these cools stands for as well, so check these out!

Wilwood Brakes

Raceline Wheels

Area-BFE

Walker Evans Racing

AOE: American Overland Expedition

ICON Vehicle Dynamics

And last but not least – OVERLAND JOURNAL!
While we only got five examples done, there are a few more to come with another notable show around the corner.

Winner of the FaceBook Expo Adventure: Daniel T. Noda
We sent him a nice little package for his time and efforts and just for having a little fun with us!

I also got to meet John Herrick, editor/publisher of CRAWL Magazine as well!

Also on the highlights list was meeting Del Albright of the BlueRibbon Coalition.

Del is on the right and left is Chris Collard of Overland Journal.

Everyday Del is out there spreading the word about land use and this is a major topic for those of us – ANYONE who enjoys the great outdoors of off-roading! I am not going to preach to you nor ask you to join a cult or political party. BUT, what I will ask you to do is – DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH and form your OWN OPINION about what is really going on!

What you need to know about Del Albright is that while he is of wise nature “age,” he has gone to great lengths to communicate at the speed youth, to the younger folks with 1:1 steering wheels in hands. Albright has made a full adoption of the digital & social medium’s of communication. While the age-old ink on paper is still a staple, Del has also adopted the use of electronic blogging and FaceBook connectivity to spread the message about “Land Use, Access, Rubicon Trail and Volunteer Training!” So please visit his site www.delalbright.com and also like him on his FaceBook page too.

If all you do for now is “like” stay in touch with Del on his Facebook page and just start thinking…

All of the images from 2011 Off-Road EXPO Viewed in a SLIDESHOW::

The previous Off-Road Expo’s I have attended:
2010 EXPO

2009 EXPO

2007 Impact EXPO – Vegas

2006 EXPO

While your out there in cyberspace; stay in tune with us via our FB page. http://www.facebook.com/axialinc

Wraith Maintenance and Cleaning Tips

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Axial Staff

It’s inevitable, if you drive your R/C’s like they should be driven they are going to get dirty. Like everything else worth having, they will need to be cleaned/maintained. Especially if you drive your rigs in mud and water. While some people view this as a chore, it must be done to get the most life and best performance out of your rig and it’s inner workings. Here’s a short list of tips to help you clean/maintain your R/C’s in less time.

Hose

If your vehicle is waterproof, then a hose can be the best way to wash your vehicle off when it is really dirty/muddy. But, be aware that rust will set in on any steel surface eventually. WD40 can work great for keeping rust at bay, if you spray your metal parts down after being submersed in water, or hosed off. Another thing to keep in mind is WD40 will break grease down over time. So, re-greasing the gears and bearings is recommended regularly. You don’t need to re-grease everything after every cleaning. But, it may be a good habit to get into in order for your inner metal components to last as long as possible.

Compressed air

This is the method I use the most. If you own, or have access to, an air compressor. This is one of the best methods to clean an R/C car in my opinion. You should be able to remove any dust, or clumps of dried mud without much drama. I would like to stress that safety glasses are a must for this method. Last thing you want to happen is to start blowing off your rig, only to get blasted in the eyes with dirt and debris. Not fun! After you blow off the bulk of any stuck on dirt and mud, you can use a brush to finish the clean-up. I went to the local hardware store and bought a pack of 3 assorted sized paint brushes. It is nice to have an assortment of sizes, the small brushes work extremely well in tight areas.

Pledge

This is another method I have seen used by some nitro racers. The Pledge actually shines your whole car up nicely, similar to using Armor All on your 1:1 vehicle. The oils in the Pledge will actually help keep rust at bay as well. Basically, you spray your whole car down with Pledge, and wipe everything off with a shop rag. Try not to saturate your electronics either, if they are not protected by a box or balloons. If the electronics aren’t protected, spray the cleaner on your rag, then wipe your vehicle down.

Motul

Motul “Shine & Go” is another spray on cleaner that can be used to clean your rigs after a hard day on the trails. It is originally designed for cleaning plastic fairings on motorcycles, and interiors on 1:1 vehicles. But, it also works really well for cleaning RC cars and trucks, especially lexan bodies and panels. Just spray a light coat on and wipe down with a clean rag, for that shiny “new” look. Use in a well ventilated area, and avoid soaking your electronics.

Following these tips should help keep your rig clean and in good working order, without taking you away from your next adventure for too long.

Axial Racing Blog

Axial Racing Blog

Tag Archives: Walker Evans Racing

Axial at Off Road EXPO 2014

Axial “SCX10JK” tested – Moab, Utah for Easter Jeep Safari 2012

Axial “SCX10JK” Walker Evans Wheels – Maxxis Tires – Rebel Roof Rack

Off-Road EXPO 2011 Pomona, Ca

Wraith Maintenance and Cleaning Tips