I Made the Traxxas TRX 4 Sport How It Should Be

I know those weights up front are really helping this truck settle in. So here's one of the tricky parts here is figuring out the wiring harnesses. I don't know if this hill climb here is going to turn into like this mud sling fest or... This is the Traxxas lineup. Absolutely love these trucks and among all of them probably these two over here are the ones that I recommend the most. The TRX4 Sport and the Sport Hightrail because well actually the Sport I recommend mostly because it's the cheapest of the Traxxas TRX4s and it's the one that you could go build up the way you want to. I mean you know a lot of these others you could of course go ahead build them up but this is kind of bare bones and you get to throw all the stuff on you want. But this one here has the body clips and well I want one without body clips and I saw the new gray version that came out. It looked absolutely sick. Had to have one and let's go over why I recommend this thing a lot to people getting into the hobby looking for a fun truck to bash around with or build up. The TRX4 Sport I mean it's a really good truck right out of the box. So this is how the ready to run comes. You get the radio system. You get the truck. You get some decals. You go throw the fender decals on if you want. Even an easy to start guide and pretty simple basic tools. But look at the truck. I love this new color. They also have the blue but the gray with the green accents on there. Very killer and then this one obviously does not have body clips. So you got the clips right underneath the body here. Just pop it up. That gray color is sick. Yeah I know no clear windows but this one's just gonna get bashed around. There's the clip system under it and there is the popular TRX4 chassis. So steel frame rails. We've got inner fender wells like the sliders on the side. Really strong platform. Cool looking front bumper. There's the green accents again with the the d-rings and any on the back. We got them on the back too. Check out the axles on this. So big draw to this truck are the portal axles. These things are solid metal gears on the inside. I like the new green accent diff covers and then this one has the robust transmission in the center. However it doesn't have a two-speed setup and this doesn't have the lockers or anything like that. Kind of your bare bones drivetrain but a solid drivetrain. The suspension on this works really well. There are aluminum body shocks on this so it's nice and smooth right. Plush right out of the box. You got metal links with heavy duty rod ends. So this suspension setup holds up really well. I mean I've bombed this thing through rocks before. Haven't ripped any ball ends off or anything like that and the transmission holds up. Got the basic Traxxas electronics setup in it as well. The 21 turn Titan motor that's actually got pretty decent torque and you know I've gotten those things wet so many times never had a problem with it. XL5 HV speed controller that allows you to go run a 3s battery pack. You know there's your TQ radio. I showed you that before and then it does have the 2075x servo which is a metal gear servo. So fairly strong among the basic Traxxas electronics that they normally give in their trucks. On all four corners you've got the Canyon Trail 1.9s and these are pretty grippy as well for just bombing around trails and stuff like that. Those work out really well. I actually did a little rock climbing with my original sport and it works just fine guys. It's a great truck. Fun truck and it's a solid truck and you get parts anywhere for these things. And speaking of parts I've got something else to show you. All of these parts. These are some option parts that are available from Traxxas and this is an RC modeling hobby. So you get to go and build up your truck with whatever gear you like and Traxxas stuff just bolts right on nice and easily. It's why I go and do a lot of Traxxas only builds because it's really simple stuff guys. There's a lot of cool parts out there from a bunch of different manufacturers but Traxxas makes some cool stuff too. I want to show you what we're going to throw on today. So yeah I did just mention it's got some good tires. I've got the Canyon Trail tires that are unmounted and that's because I've got the beadlock wheels to go along with it with green rings so it matches all the green accents. Speaking of green I also got the green battery strap for it. It's aluminum. It just looks cool. That's why I'm throwing it on there. Again it's an RC modeling hobby. Make your rig as cool as you want. I am going to go swap out that servo. I did mention that was one of the better servos that they have for their TRX-4s for ready to run but I'm going to go throw in the new 600 that they have. This came out recently and to power it properly so I get the most torque out of it I have their BEC and a couple of other goodies. I've got the winch and a green fairlead plate to go along with it. Got the lights to throw on there. Gotta have LED lights and then just to you know improve the performance a little bit more I've got some weights so I'm going to throw the weights in the front and these are the portal covers necessary to throw these on. All right let's get this stuff bolted up. We're going to start things off by upgrading the steering servo. I know I said that this is a decent steering servo and it is if you're just trailing and stuff but once you start crawling through rocks you're going to notice that it's going to stall out and that's when you're going to want a better servo and Traxxas has this 2280 which has 600 ounce inches of torque but it requires the BEC to properly power it. So starting off I went and removed the four screws that hold down the servo and the screw from the steering link so this is just going to pop right out. Then I went and unscrewed the top of the receiver box and then the little back cap here that pinches down on the wires. Also took the screws out of the battery tray because we're going to wire some of the stuff down through here just to make it nice and neat and there was a zip tie over here that I had to go and cut off. All right now I'm just going to go throw in the new servo. It's pretty much just going to go right in and the BEC right here is going to get the two-side tape down to the receiver and you're going to have to swap out the plugs. The servo is back in. Always make sure to power up your electronics. Plug this into the number one port and center it before you go and throw your steering horn on. Then I went ahead here and moved on to the BEC. Just stuck that down with the provided two-sided tape. You're going to go and unplug your speed controller wire from the receiver and then plug the BEC wire into the number two port. Then you're going to take your ESC wire and plug it into the port up top here. You're going to run your power wire through the new receiver box top. Make sure you put your little foam pads on the base here and then you're going to run this under the battery tray over to the ESC and plug it into this other JST pigtail. The steering upgrade is complete. Got the receiver box cap back on. Everything is nicely wired. Just used the supplied zip tie to secure those wires there. Ran the wires here under the speed controller. Plugged in that JST plug and now we get to see the steering power guys. There we go. You can just hear it. Going to add some weight to the front end next. This is going to help settle the truck in when it's crawling over obstacles. These are brass weights weighing in at 34 grams and to install those you're going to need these aluminum portal housings because they have the and they have these available in a couple different colors. Pretty easy to swap these out. Pull off the wheels in the portal housings. You're going to swap the outer cap and then the brass weights will screw right onto it. There's the portal covers and the weights installed. Probably took about 20 minutes for the swap with the right tools and again this is going to add some weight to the front end. They give you the hardware to go and attach the brass weight and you just reuse the hardware from the portal covers. Now the four parts I installed so far, the servo, the BEC, the portal covers, and the knuckle weights are pretty much what I recommend for your first upgrades. I'd go out and rock this truck right now as is and wouldn't upgrade anything else until stuff started to break or I really wanted another option part. Of course I've got some more option parts. Let's get to the next one. The next option part is going to be the battery strap. This is purely cosmetic. It looks really cool and let's do a little challenge here. Can I swap this out just one-handed and I already cut open the package. I cheated a little bit. Switch hands here. Got my power tool with my two millimeter bit in there. Just unscrew this shoulder screw. Slide that out. It's more like a screw pin actually. Pop that out. Slide this back in. I think like this will probably be the easiest and look at this. It's going to happen. This is the tricky part here. There we go. Oh I think I installed it backwards. I installed that backwards. Let me see. Oh yep there's the thread side. I messed up. All right we got this. Easy fix. Slide that in here. Should have looked for the threads. There we go. Still one-handed and got it. Look at that. Very cool. This is going to be a fun little addition that'll add some scale realism to the truck. A winch and this is pretty easy to install. I've installed them in a few trucks before. This one is pretty heavy duty. It will pull up to 10 pounds. It's got this little button here so you could freewheel the spool and then of course you've got this remote to go and control it. They give you the wiring harnesses that you need right here in the bag along with the hardware. Some zip ties and then I've got the fairlead here in green to go along with the truck. Easiest way to swap this out is to pull off the bumper, remove the fake winch up front here and then just drop the new one in. They give you a little guide pin to help along with the alignment and then just the screws will hold it back in. Run the wiring back to the speed controller and again plug in that harness. Installing this was a little bit easier than I remembered. This thing looks awesome in here. I just ran the wires along the chassis, zip tied them down in a couple spots and there is my wiring harness all plugged in and now we go and test it out. Check that out guys. Remote operated winch. I want to tackle the Pro Scale light set next. This is a complete set. It's going to give us headlights, taillights, brake lights, reverse lights, turn signals and hazards and here are all the parts that we're going to have to install. So there's the lighting module, distribution block and then we're actually going to have to cut some holes in the body for these molded parts here. The front grill, the rear tail panel. It's just a little time consuming. You're going to need more than just your allen wrenches to install this. You're also going to need a reamer and I think a hobby knife. It just takes a little time to do it and the instructions are actually really good for this setup. So here's one of the tricky parts here is figuring out the wiring harness. Since this is a sport kit, it uses the standard harness not the the TQi harness for the max link. So I plugged it into the module here, ran it over through my new receiver box cover. I like the little extra space in this. Then I had to plug the wiring harness into the speed controller so it picks up the signal and since I have this BEC in here, what I did was is I took that new harness, plugged the speed controller into that and then into the BEC and then I have the extra signal wire here going into the extra channel one port. The headlights and taillights are installed in the sport and it looks really good. The kit is a little bit time consuming especially since you have to cut out the Lexan body to fit the headlight bracket in the front. Same with the rear assembly and you have to go wire stuff through the chassis and everything. So yeah, I plan to spend you know some time at the workbench but when it's done it's nice and tidy. They give you a zip tie so just keep everything nice and neat. Really like the kit and now it's set up with that distribution block to where if I want to go and add the bumper light bar or the the roof rack light bar I'll be able to do that and now it's time to move on to the wheels and tires and I actually started this process but ran into a problem. So here's my tire and rim assembly and I went to throw the green bead locks on and these are for 2.2s. They don't have the green bead lock for a 1.9 which is what this wheel diameter is. So I went and got the silver because I think that's going to look pretty cool with this sport. Now to finish mounting these up. There's the finished project. Greg the RC driver is really happy with how it turned out. Even love the silver rings on the wheels. Now it's just time to see this thing hit the rocks. Let's go! And here we go guys on the start rock. It's supposed to be 56 degrees today but I think it's about 36 right now. Not lucking out in the weather department but that's not going to stop me. We got to get the tires dirty. We're going to go right into the hill climb like I usually do. Again brand new tires, brand new everything. Look at that. Champ got right up there. Nice. Not too muddy up top today. Let's see how it comes out on the other side. Yeah that's good. No mud on the tires yet. Want to keep some traction right now. That'll give me a little bit of slip but loving the suspension working on the sport. Looking good. A little tire clicking here and there. Drop it down through here. It's muddy down here. I plenty of steering power too. Brought it back up to the start rock because I want to see how it does with this hill climb right here. And yeah we got some tires but I kind of thought we would but with that weight up front I thought it might be able to handle it. Let me bring it back down and just change my line up. A little bit of an angle. There's a little bit of a piece of rock over there to catch on. Yeah nice. All right guys I got to show you the winch working so I'm going to set this little scenario here. Hopefully I got enough line actually. Get it up this hill. Nothing ever gets up this hill. Always want to. And actually I could have just hit the freewheel button there on the winch but tighten this up. You hear it motoring down. Look at it sucking down the front end and I'll just give it a little throttle. Pulling that winch. Look at that guys. It's fun. This truck is so much fun. Awesome. Did it. Very cool. Keep motoring. So I got the lights on. The blinkers are flashing. There's a couple different modes that you could access through that power module. There's a couple buttons on top you just press but I'm just going to leave it as is right now. Drop it down through here. With this system it's just going to want to roll on you. So you just got to learn the system. Learn how it works and you get away with it. I got a 3s pack in here so I'm definitely got plenty of power. You know it's one thing I see people mention online is oh you got to replace the electronics right away. No you don't. You should use the stock electronics. It's got to make you a better driver. You're going to learn you know when you can manipulate the throttle. When to use the brakes. And yeah when you upgrade to a higher end system it'll just make you that much better of a driver once you do get it. Love using factory electronics because it really challenges me when I'm out on the trail. And yeah I know I swapped out the steering servo but it was just part of the the fun of building this particular project. So now that I'm done with my words of wisdom here let's get back to the fun. We'll drop it down through here. It's a little off camber. Suspension twisting up. Plenty of clearance with those portals for that ledge right there. I mean just right over it no problem. Truck looks good guys. Really happy with this. This is really off camber right here. Add some more throttle. Place those tires where I could grab a little bit of traction. Oh we're sliding. There we go. I know those weights up front are really helping this truck settle in. I like to throw some softer inserts in the tires. They got some pretty good traction. I don't know if this hill climb here is going to turn into like this mud sling fest or... No it looks like I can take it nice and slow. Motor up the hill. So this is a nice easy project to tackle. The you know the hardest part again was just cutting out the Lexan for the lights. It's got to look pretty good at dusk on the trail. Whoa look at the angle that's on. That was pretty awesome. Tire tracks on the rocks. This thing is just a lot of fun. Super capable and yeah definitely like the servo upgrade and the weight upgrade and the rest is just cool stuff. Let me know what you think about the project in the comment section below. I'll have links for everything. We'll see you guys back for some more RC driver videos.