Vanquish Ripper Project

The Vanquish Ripper is not like any other R/C kit.  In fact, it is not really a kit and was not even intended to be a product.  As the story goes, the Vanquish machining department just wanted to do an experiment to prove to themselves how awesome they were.  So they went and bought some giant blocks of aluminum weighing on the order of 100 pounds and machined a roll cage out of them.  Logically, no one would ever make a cage this way.  Cages are welded up out of tube stock for good reason.  There is almost no waste and you can make them strong and light.  This machined cage, on the other hand, probably has 95% of the original aluminum block converted to chips.  And milling the cross sections into round shapes is hard.  It would have been much easier to make everything rectangular, but they went all out and made them round.  Then there is the body.  The body is clearly intended to mimic a Jeep JK although they can't officially say that since it is not licensed.  The two side panels, the grille, and the hood are also machined out of solid blocks.  All of these parts, and in particular the side panels, could have been made with stamped sheet metal with almost no waste.  But again 95% was turned to chips.  Why would anyone do this?  To see if they can.

The final result is an unbelievably light but sturdy chassis.  The cage is made up of 5 individual sections bolted together and the body is another 5.  The whole thing weighs less than a single wheel from a conventional crawler.  Vanquish then combined this prototype proof of concept with some of their SCX10 II upgrade parts such as their F9 Currie axles and their metal AX10 transmission and voila, a crazy drivable experiment was born.  It was probably a shock to the folks at Vanquish Products that, when they showed off their creation at Axial Fest, there were actually consumers out there equally crazy enough to want to buy one.  Not many, mind you.  I was rather late to the party and I got Serial Number 80.

This is not the kind of product that is sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting for you to buy.  You make a deposit and then they go out and buy the aluminum and machine your product to order.  You get to choose the anodizing color of all the machined parts.  The process takes several months.  The result is far from cheap.  In fact, if this were the total cost it would already be my most expensive R/C, but the kit only comes with the body, links, and lighting.  You need to add your own chassis rails, axles, transmission, wheels, tires, and power system among other miscellaneous parts.  If you choose to go with Vanquish parts to complete your Ripper, you get a nice discount on those which helps, but this is still guaranteed to set your wallet back more than you can imagine.  I made it even worse by choosing to utilize the new Vanquish portal axles and a dig.  I wanted my Ripper to be as pure VP as it could be, so I also went with Incision shocks and an all metal AX10 transmission.  I'll be using VP Bully wheels and RC4WD Goodyear Wrangler M/T tires.  I powered it with a Castle Mamba brushless system and run the whole thing on 3s.

So how did it come out?  Is it worth it?  It is hard to say that any R/C is worth what this thing costs (which is why it was never intended to be a real product).  To own one you need to love engineering and machining or at least be mentally unstable.  I fit both criteria.  The truck is certainly very capable.  I have many trail trucks and it is easily among the most capable of all, though not by as much as you might think.  However, it is hard to bring myself to push it too hard because I don't want to roll it over or destroy anything.  That takes a lot away from a crawler.  As time goes on, we'll see how often I use it compared to its brethren.  As a showpiece, it is nearly without equal.  The only thing which compares is the Capo JK Max, another piece of insanity.

Update:  This model was destroyed in the 2022 fire.  It has not been replaced.