Outlaw Ultima truck purchase – my very first ST

[XLR8]

Well, it has taken some time but I’m finally here. After over 40 years in the surface RC hobby this will be my first venture into Stadium Trucks and I’m very much looking forward to it. I’ve been looking for a project truck to pop-up for sale for some time and it finally happened yesterday morning.

The truck I've purchased is a missing the MSC and upper deck but otherwise appears to be complete. It’s extremely well used; rear tires are nearly bald, body is badly beat up, etc. and will need to be replaced at some point. I’ll post a few pics when it arrives late next week.

The plan is to make a daily runner. I’ll do a complete rebuild, replace the bushings with bearings and fabricate a replacement top deck that will accommodate a longitudinally mounted battery. I have plenty of spare Ultima parts, both vintage and re-re, so I should have everything on hand. I’ll need to replace those rear tires however -- they are currently AE branded (vintage RC10T perhaps?) and the fronts are ribbed and should be fine for my purposes. This leads me to my first question. What’s a good all-purpose and economical (sub $20) replacement tire that will work well on loose dirt and fit the stock wheels? I have good luck running Pro-line Bowties on my buggies but I don’t know if an equivalent truck tire exists.

As mentioned, the original body is in very bad condition. It appears to have been painted with common rattle can paint and most has fallen off over the years. I'll want to refurbish the original body and make it suitable for daily use. This will almost certainly require dry-wall tape and Shoe-goo to reinforce the cracks and fill the numerous extra body post holes (apparently, the body has been fitted to other trucks over the years). Rather than strip the remaining paint, I’ll just mask the decals and repaint the body on the outside. This should hide some of the road rash – good enough for a runner. For when the truck sets on the shelf, I was planning to order a re-pop Outlaw body and box-art decals from TBG/MCI but I was wondering if there are other options. Are there other ST bodies available that will fit this truck?

Also, if you have one of these trucks, please post a photo and/or a link here – there are only a couple Outlaw Ultima build threads on this forum (and they look awesome!) so I’m curious what other members have built.

I’m new to this segment of the hobby so I’m open to all suggestions. If this truck handles anything like my Ultima, it should be a lot of fun to bash around in the back yard.
Anyway, please post a comment. Thanks y’all!

[juicedcoupe]

This leads me to my first question. What’s a good all-purpose and economical (sub $20) replacement tire that will work well on loose dirt and fit the stock wheels? I have good luck running Pro-line Bowties on my buggies but I don’t know if an equivalent truck tire exists.

They should be 2.2 truck sized wheels. Several places still make them. For more aggressive treads, I think that Schumacher has some of the better offerings. I just put these Vee-2's on my Stadium Blitzer.

They have some mini spikes as well, that would probably suit your needs.

[XLR8]

This leads me to my first question. What’s a good all-purpose and economical (sub $20) replacement tire that will work well on loose dirt and fit the stock wheels? I have good luck running Pro-line Bowties on my buggies but I don’t know if an equivalent truck tire exists.

They should be 2.2 truck sized wheels. Several places still make them. For more aggressive treads, I think that Schumacher has some of the better offerings. I just put these Vee-2's on my Stadium Blitzer.

20210724_210335.jpg

They have some mini spikes as well, that would probably suit your needs.

As it happens, I've just returned from browsing through tires online and hit upon the tires that are on your truck. They sorta remind me of Losi X pattern buggy tires from bitd. I'm thinking those "Vees" should provide good side grip. Thanks for the advice.

[juicedcoupe]

Looking at sandkil's truck, it looks like the body sits really high on these. So your options are probably pretty open for bodies.

https://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?t=31302



It looks like Team Bluegroove has replacement bodies and MCI has the decals and window masks. You can also do a combined shipping deal with them.

[XLR8]

Looking at sandkil's truck, it looks like the body sits really high on these. So your options are probably pretty open for bodies.

https://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?t=31302



It looks like Team Bluegroove has replacement bodies and MCI has the decals and window masks. You can also do a combined shipping deal with them.

Yeah, I think you’re right about that. Just about any brand ST body will probably set atop those shock towers and look okay.

As you know from my posts on your Stadium Blitzer build, I was considering that truck’s body for this build however I’ve found the issue with it and other ST brands is the wheelbase. I hadn’t noticed this before but most, if not all of Tamiya’s ST’s are around 250mm wheelbase while this version of the Ultima is 270mm. Sometimes when mounting the body, you can fudge a little each way and disguise a mismatched wb but 20mm’s is probably too much to hide. I could fabricate a shorter chassis for the Ultima to match the Tamiya body but I think we’re drifting too far away from the original truck. Also, reducing the wb will affect handling and I just don’t want to go there. It’s a Kyosho Outlaw Ultima after all, and I should be content with that – and I am.

So, the plan now is to rebuild the chassis, refurbish the body to make it acceptable and then just go out and have fun with the truck. That’s what they’re for, right? I really don’t want this truck to become another shelfer so I probably won’t order a new body – at least not anytime soon. Meanwhile, I’ll be looking for a suitable Stadium Blitzer project to buy and that will become my second stadium truck.

Regarding the TBG/MCI combo shipping. I have two Optima Mid bodies and decal sets currently in the post coming from TBG/MCI and I did take advantage of their new combined shipping. In the end, I think it saved me around 70 cents in total. The reason the savings were so little is they charged me sales tax for the decal order going from MCI to TBG and ultimately this was around 70 cents less than if MCI had sent the decals direct to me. After placing the order, I tried entering the same order except without combo shipping and noted that apparently, they don’t charge sales tax for orders shipped to the US. I hadn’t noticed this before. Also, TBG charges one dollar for the combo shipping service. Anyway, I’m not sure if I will use the combo shipping again but I very much appreciate that they are trying to save their customers money and I hope others will take advantage of this feature if it does in fact save them some coin.

[XLR8]

This leads me to my first question. What’s a good all-purpose and economical (sub $20) replacement tire that will work well on loose dirt and fit the stock wheels? I have good luck running Pro-line Bowties on my buggies but I don’t know if an equivalent truck tire exists.

They should be 2.2 truck sized wheels. Several places still make them. For more aggressive treads, I think that Schumacher has some of the better offerings. I just put these Vee-2's on my Stadium Blitzer.

20210724_210335.jpg

They have some mini spikes as well, that would probably suit your needs.

Thanks again for the tire recommendation.
I've found these tires for the best price at Dollar Hobbyz so I have a pair on order.
Curiously, Schumacher and their retailers list this tire (U6502) as a "front tire" but I reckon it's the same dimensions as other rear tires so it should work just fine on the back.
Anyway, they should arrive in a few days.

[juicedcoupe]

https://www.amainhobbies.com/schumacher-vee-2-2.2-1-10-truck-rear-carpet-tires-2-yellow-schu6707/p-qtqkt2wabc2xactz?v=238497

These are the ones on my truck, listed as a rear tire.

I suspect that the compound is the only difference.

[XLR8]

https://www.amainhobbies.com/schumacher-vee-2-2.2-1-10-truck-rear-carpet-tires-2-yellow-schu6707/p-qtqkt2wabc2xactz?v=238497

These are the ones on my truck, listed as a rear tire.

I suspect that the compound is the only difference.

Oh yeah, I think you're right about that. Yours are yellow and I got blues (hard compound) so maybe I won't wear them out in a week.
Schumacher probably figures hard compound is best for the front.
I would have gotten tempered steel or diamond but they don't offer those compounds.

[juicedcoupe]

None of my cars get run a lot, so I'm not concerned with wear. I would have probably been fine with original Blitzer tires, which are known for wearing fast.

But I've been buying lots of Schumacher tires lately, and have been more than satisfied with them. I like that they still make aggressive treaded tires, despite the fact that most others have nearly stopped. So, I'll probably continue to buy them.

[TRX-1-3]

As a kid, I enjoyed watching/monitoring the stadium truck "arms race" of the late 80's and early 90's in the pages of RCCA.
I remember (not specifically the exact dates) all the trucks trickling out from the manufacturers......I had a 1901 Eagle....I was an underdog kinda kid...it was just fun times. I thought the Outlaw was a good looking truck. The Shotgun had a belt drive? Wow. That damned RC10T with it's illegal narrow fronts and all that success. And my damned cousin in my ear about the Losi truck and it's LRM trans. I remember pouring over the race reports looking for a Traxxas presence at the big races....

But that Outlaw is a handsome truck. The body, the stance, etc.

[XLR8]

As a kid, I enjoyed watching/monitoring the stadium truck "arms race" of the late 80's and early 90's in the pages of RCCA.
I remember (not specifically the exact dates) all the trucks trickling out from the manufacturers......I had a 1901 Eagle....I was an underdog kinda kid...it was just fun times. I thought the Outlaw was a good looking truck. The Shotgun had a belt drive? Wow. That damned RC10T with it's illegal narrow fronts and all that success. And my damned cousin in my ear about the Losi truck and it's LRM trans. I remember pouring over the race reports looking for a Traxxas presence at the big races....

But that Outlaw is a handsome truck. The body, the stance, etc.

Those are some great reflections on a time that many of us fondly remember - I certainly do anyway. Thank you for posting!
As for stadium trucks however, I totally missed all of it. At the time, my head was wrapped around off-road buggies and oval racing - I had blinders on and didn't see what was happening elsewhere. I guess I'm trying to catchup.

Speaking of which, I've found this little beauty while browsing through TBG's catalog of Tamiya bodies. Lower the stance a bit and it's essentially a stadium truck. Either way, I like it!!!

[XLR8]

The truck just arrived and here are some photos straight out of the box.
Believe it or not, in these photos, the truck appears to be in better shape than it actually is.

I guess we'll start with the body - it's very bad. I'll use drywall tape and shoe-goo to reinforce the breaks and patch the holes, then mask most of the decals before repainting it on the outside. Many of the decals with text will need to be removed before painting and I won't be replacing those. Some might be happy to learn that I'm not going back to purple.

[XLR8]

The chassis is missing the top deck but I would have replace it anyway since I prefer to run the battery longitudinally and the stock part is designed for saddle packs. Springs on the front shocks appear to be RC10 golds. Anyway, they're wrong for the truck and will be replaced.

Drive cups are shot but I have spares.

Gears look okay. I'm surprised since it has an aluminum pinion and there is a gaping hole in the gear cover.

I'll check the servo - I hope it works.

Front tires are okay, back ones are obviously bald.

Speaking of tires, the new ones arrived today as well with no inserts!
Granted, it's been many years since I bought Schumacher tires but shouldn't they include inserts??

Other brands I've gotten always package inserts with the tires.

[Frankentruck]

All the Schumacher tires I've recently ordered came without inserts. The off-road seem like there ok without, but the on-road I have are less likely to hold shape and definitely need them. Not sure about truck tires.

My local hobby shop guy was showing off all the coolness of his Arrma collection and he had this Pro-Line basher armor body on one of them. Not meant for painting, just to take repeated punishment. They aren't cheap and probably not a good fit on an AE truck with the tall rear shock tower, but might be worth considering on something like this.

https://www.prolineracing.com/bodies/pre-cut-brute-bash-armor-body-white-4x4.asp

[juicedcoupe]

All the Schumacher tires I've recently ordered came without inserts. The off-road seem like there ok without, but the on-road I have are less likely to hold shape and definitely need them. Not sure about truck tires.

They say that they will require inserts, allowing you to select the kind that you want instead of whatever they gave you. And their basic foam inserts are cheap, if thats what you want.