Vaterra Ascender Ford F-100 Project

Vaterra is one of the house brands of Horizon Hobby.  Their Ascender truck platform was intriguing to me technically, but I was not interested in buying one since you couldn't get one as a kit.  However, once my daughter started to show some interest in going trailing with me this seemed like a perfect way for her to get started, especially with the excellent 1968 Ford F-100 body.  Despite being an RTR, this is a real hobby grade crawler with a steel ladder frame, solid axles, 4-link suspension, oil shocks, and huge tires.  The plastic wheels are not beadlock, but the tires are licensed Super Swampers.  The stock power system uses a 35T brushed motor which is totally fine for a model like this.  The body even has LEDs and a full size, usable spare tire in the rear cage.

This truck proved to be incredibly capable, far more so than I expected from an RTR.  It seemed to be able to handle any terrain as well as the type of abuse that a younger driver can impose.  It almost never got stuck and I never had to replace a single part.  It just kept going and going.  The only complaint I had about it was the need to use a shorty battery pack which forced me to buy a unique battery specifically for this model.  I don't see why it couldn't have used a standard size.

A couple of years later my daughter grew out of interest in R/C and this truck moved on to a new home, still with all the original parts and electronics in good working condition.

Here are a couple of photos of the chassis taken just before I sold the model.  Considering that the photos were taken after years of abuse, the model looks really good.  The Spektrum chassis mounted steering servo sits up front and the electronics are in the faux fuel cell in the back.  If I remember right, the model originally used an EC3 connector but I changed it to an XT60 which I like better and use on almost all my models.  The model originally had a Spektrum radio as well but I repurposed that for something else and put an RTR Tactic system in here instead.  Note that this model is 4-link front and back so does not have a panhard bar.