Axial Ryft First Run Impressions And Review

My name is mundo. Ayala creator of crawler innovations. Gavin is filming uh, we i’m discussing our first. We have four battery packs through our axial rift. Today is our first day to drive it. I did change the dean’s plug. We already talked about that earlier and i appreciate all the commenters that have been educating me or enlightening me on the use of the better connectors you know and that upgrading the connectors or leaving the factory connector that came on this truck on it reduces any uh. Initial cogging, if you’re really trying to get a an off throttle – or you know, from a dead from a dead, stop and trying to be real smooth because it will cog a little bit. But that’s got more to do with the gear ratio than it does. The uh, the electric connector, quite frankly so we’ve driven four 4s 2200 packs 60c and jamie from our local crawling club. He came over and he drove it for a little bit too and i think jamie’s experience sums it up the best he stopped by on his way home after work. He probably drove it – maybe five to ten minutes and then just handed the controller back and said. Yeah it’s uncontrollable it’s more than i want to drive and uh. I don’t want to break it, and that was that, and that was that’s that’s that’s about what i would have to say about it, because one of the things that is in looking through the parts manual the ring gear inside of here is a 38 tooth, and The pinion is a 13 tooth which yields you with a 292 gear ratio for those people that don’t know much about gear ratios.

A 292 gear ratio is something that’s typically seen in a car that sees a lot of highway use and it’s, not something that’s ever seen, that’s rock bouncing or off road. I mean to give you a better idea: vanquish products offers an underdrive gear set that has a 33 ring gear and an 8 tooth pinion, and that yields a 411 gear ratio, and so not only do the trucks perform better the engines, i mean it it if You really want to understand your crawler start. Messing with your gear ratios. Understand this stuff because the lower you can get these. You can get the top speed back by the voltage in your battery packs by running a 3s or 4s or 5s or 6s pack, because again, if you gear this thing all the way down, a 6s is not going to make. It run crazy, but again you’ve got to change the gearing and, however, this is just ridiculous, considering that this is the exact same gear ratio now that’s different parts but i’m talking about the numerical teeth that are on the ring gear and on the actual pinion in The axle these are the same thing that was on the ax10 scorpion that was released back in 2009. You would have thought that a decade later, this company would have learned something about crawling and off road racing and made this change, because just changing the gear ratio here would have changed the entire experience from this car and we didn’t do anything but change one connector And run the factory battery pack, everything else is stock.

Everything else is stock, so yeah if i’m a little perturbed. I am, i think i think this is ridiculous, especially when you we move on to the uh. When we move on to the spur gear and the pinion, the spur gear, it’s a 53 tooth spear gear and it’s a 17 17 tooth pinion. Well, when you do when you divide that you get a 311 gear ratio, that’s ridiculous, it’s ridiculous! If you would have asked me if i would have been consulted, i would have preferred to see a 60 tooth spur and a 10 tooth pinion, which would have yielded a 6.0 gear ratio double, and the experience on the car with the 4s pack would have been Very enjoyable because what you would have had is basically the way this car is set up. It’S like a drag car point and shoot. You just want to line it up and go because it doesn’t have a lot of throttle, control or usable rpm bands. So to speak in the in the mid range to where you really have a lot of control to be able to do it, i mean yeah. If you’re a pro driver and you’ve got a lot of time, you’re going to do it, but if you’re someone – and this is your first rig axial’s fooling themselves – to think that this is this was the way to go because gearing it down would have made a Big difference, it would have made this much much more enjoyable and which leads me to my point.

What do you want us to do with this thing seriously? I would like to know your comments. You can even call the shop send an email i don’t care, but thing is, is what do you do with it when you already know that the gear ratio, because it’s not like there’s aftermarket parts available for this thing, it’s not like you, can change these parts That i’ve mentioned easily yeah the spur and pinion could be changed. Maybe because the thing is, is that axial fixed the motor placement, so i don’t know what’s possible on this, like how big and how low we can go. We got ta play around on it. So maybe they’ve already thought about that. I don’t know but it’s still kind of interesting, because i just feel like there’s a lot better design that they could have done here and and they didn’t and the cage is cool. I mean there’s. No doubt one of the main reasons i wanted this is because of the orange i’m not going to lie, but now that it’s here now that i’ve already put the skins on it. Now that i’ve driven it in stock form for four battery packs you’re total. My son and and jamie i’m good, so let’s, step over to this car. This car here i built many years ago, there’s some videos on our youtube channel it’s, a water crossing car. The chassis itself is aluminum. It was made by jerry justice, death, metal garage in missouri, great person, great guy, in terms of his his builds his quality that sort of thing and it’s.

So i then these are vanquish axles, so they’re vanquish uh. These are version two ar 60s. So these have the big bearings in the pinion and granted they’re, not perfect, but they have a, they have underdrive gears in them, and so they are uh their 330 gear ratio and again, when going back to this, this is 292 and at least this is 330. And the reason by under driving it front and rear, is to try and get the wheel speed up as much as possible, so that because this was built for crossing water, so i’m trying to get this paddle to make sure that it’s it’s right. On top of the water at all times, and so the actual transmission that’s in this truck is an ssd high speed deal, and i don’t know that the numbers and the ratios on all of this at the moment, because we just pulled it off the shelf because, Frankly, in the last snowstorm that we had in february here in in texas that really unusual one uh, i got to play with this thing. I and i was running it on 6s and i finally burned up the esc. So the thing is is that these axles could fit under this truck pretty easily, especially with dinky uh dinky links these dinky. These are made for the ar 60s and what it does is it mounts the steering servo right on the axle tube, just like how this is and by running these front and rear.

Well, of course, we’re going to make a four wheel steer buggy if we go this route, because that only makes sense in terms of the transmission, though i would prefer to go to an we’ve got an axial or, i should say vanquish three gear. So it’s got all the vanquish gears inside it’s got a 60 tooth robinson racing spur on it, and then these are the crawler innovations lightened and extended transmission, outputs and the whole purpose of extending these guys is that it moves your your drive, shaft away from the Spur gear so that you can run a bigger spur guy spur gear, thereby gearing down which is going to just give you maximum torque it you’ll notice. Trust me gear down gear down, volt up you’ll notice, a big difference in how your cars perform, how the batteries last just the whole experience, gets a whole lot better uh. I think that covers most of it. We’Ve covered the gear ratios. We’Ve covered this other vehicle. So uh i mean other than i’m grateful that axial built this thing. I mean it’s it’s. It is what it is, but i guess the main point is is: do you really want to go out and spend 500 bucks on it, and is it going to be a 500 experience? Is it worth doing because no for me, no, you know yeah. I got this for a little over dealer cost, so i didn’t pay full retail for it and i’m still telling you you know yeah.

It is what it is, but it, but it is a platform that could be built from, but not everybody has that kind of budget, or that kind of mindset like they want to buy something and put a bunch of other parts or different platforms in it. So you’ve kind of got to consider that which is the whole purpose of making a you know just an honest review. You know there’s no hate here because again, i i benefit from this. In terms of the tires honestly, the rubber feels like wheelbarrow tires. You know, but it’s a firm enough rubber, that it works really well with with these uh factory foams, because uh, yes, the it pizza cuts. I mean the tires really balloon, but at the same time, overall, that it holds itself up well, it doesn’t just go over and immediately fall over. It does need a sway bar, so it it it got pretty annoying to jamie how much it was turning over. But again that kind of comes with drive time and experience too so everybody’s experience and level is going to vary, it’s just life so but we’re going to have some videos, because we you can put some crawler innovation foams in these, which would make a difference in In terms of how they perform and cut down on the ballooning, so you definitely notice a difference there um another thing. Gavin pointed this out real one of those. You know they put two shock mounts here, but you can’t actually run the shock here because it hits the sway bar.

If you had a sway bar and oh well, it hits the mount anyway too, so it’s fixed. So, to think that you can run dual shocks here or some other thing without changing it yeah, you know, because it’s not possible, not really possible, and the reality is, is the sway bar is going to do more than a second set of shocks. Would so like kind of where is that when’s that going to be available, and the same goes like with the gear ratios in here like what? What are they really going to offer? Because it to me, if they’re, starting out with 38 13s, just like they did in 2009, that pretty much tells me we’re only going to have overdrive, standard and under drive, and you don’t want overdrive gears, especially in a situation like this, because they have the worst Gear mesh, the 36 14 pinion don’t mesh well because they cut the ring gear down and then the pinion gets bigger it just it doesn’t work, so the 330s are what’s going to have the maximum amount of strength, especially if it starts to strip out in this Area so kind of got to wonder you know what what are they going to do? How’S, that and in terms of the transmission and looking through the manual it’s, just essentially a three gear trans, so it’s not like there’s a lot of reduction in that um and i’m, not necessarily saying that’s a criticism it just these kind of it is what it Is but with this flat, skid you’ve got a lot of options, but one thing that that can has to be considered.

Oh yeah, gavin’s pointing this out here is uh. This is the one thing i mean: it’s, not very batteries in the length four batteries stretched, but it happened before the fourth one. Okay, so i mean there you go it popped back in, but you know i guess these are some things you can expect. It was kind of odd to pull it out and not see the the uh rod ends seated down so to speak. You know, there’s some gap between the rod end on in the you can see some threads. I don’t know if that’s an issue by any means, but it was just, but we didn’t have anything else bend or break on us. The servos seem to be like when it when it when it was taken. When this car was on the rocks or when it experienced any other rocks on the hill climbs, this guy was exposed. The servo was getting hit, so i don’t know how how durable that location is going to be or if just a guard alone is all that’s needed. But you know in this and if you, depending on the transmission that could be installed, this is kind of included with the skid. So if anything, that’s going to be center, diff, at least with this skid and trying to use this chassis – and this compromises – your your strength, if you take it out so ar 60s – would definitely fit because they’re already in alignment, so i don’t know let us know What you guys want to see keep because the if we keep it in stock form at this point i’m thinking jb weld in the uh in all three dips.

Just lock this thing all the way up like a real bouncer would be locked up from the get go and change the gear ratio as best we can and then go, try see what it does, but uh i mean. Then we could do that lock. It all up see what it does: change the gear ratio as best we can do video on that and then i guess go from there or we just scrap it. Pull it out, put the ar 60 stuff in with the dinky links the axial vp three gear trans and go see how we put some better rims and tires on and go from there because it looks like it would be set up to handle some of some Of these other axles, so yeah, let us know what you think, thanks for watching.