ADVANTAGE RACING PRODUCTS
Tires, Wheels and Majestic Mugen MBX5 Body

In the exciting world of 1/8 scale buggy racing, there are two items that are pretty much taken for granted by racers—without them our racing day can be very frustrating! Of course, I’m referring to a proper choice of tires and a body that stays in one piece and doesn’t do the “alligator” down the straight!

ADVANTAGE RACING PRODUCTS' WHEELS AND SPLINTER TIRES

One of the items that we are featuring in this installment is the Advantage Racing Products’ Splinter Tires in soft compound and their spoke wheels. No racing day is a fun day if you don’t have the “right” tire for the track that you’re running on. The Advantage Splinter is a fairly aggressive round knobby type of tire and should work really well on tracks where there is a lot of loam or fluff. Certainly conditions that many of us run on weekly.

All Advantage tires are sold with a molded foam liner that fits and works well with their tires and wheels. With molded foam liners, no trimming is necessary because they are molded to the contour of the inside of the tire.

Another nice feature of the Advantage tires is the molded ridges on the inside of the tread that will reduce any tendency for the tire to balloon at high speed. After my usual preparation for mounting (which involves roughing of the mounting bead of the tire and a thorough cleaning of the tire and wheel with acetone), I was ready to mount our test set. Fit of the tire against the wheel is critical and the Advantage wheels and tires work very well together—lining up as a perfect fit. As a result, gluing was quickly accomplished without any muss or fuss.

I might add that Advantage Racing Products’ wheels are known to be a tight fit on most 1/8 scale hex mounts, and this certainly was the case with our test set, which I mounted on my “daily driver” Mayhem Pro. But, with a bit of care and a firm hand, they mounted right up. And the tight fit translates to true running and resistance to stripping so the little bit of extra work is certainly worth it.

MAJESTIC BODIES MUGEN MBX5 BODY WITH PAINT BY NEMO

Custom painting and the durability of bodies are certainly hot topics among racers—you pay good money to have a killer paint job applied and you certainly would like to get some life out of the body and its visual investment. The folks at Majestic Bodies have addressed this issue with the molding of their original designs in .060 Lexan. Because of the more rounded shape of the Majestic bodies, the Lexan is stretched less and the resulting body is formed more evenly with fewer opportunities for “thin spots” that more complex designs frequently have. From my hands-on experience, Majestic bodies last a long time, and as a result, the money invested in custom paint seems certainly more worthwhile.

The Majestic Mugen MBX5 body works well with my “test bed” Sportwerks’ Mayhem Pro. Only two changes were made to accommodate this body on the Mayhem—a set of Mugen MBX5 mud/splash guards were fitted and a fabricated rear body mount was attached. The body mount was nothing more complicated than a piece of aluminum round bar (about 3/8 in. in diameter) bent 90 degrees and drilled with a mounting hole and some cross pin holes for a body pin.

What more can be said about paint by Sean “Nemo” Oliver? Sean has done several bodies that have been featured in RC Driver before and his paint is not only high quality and bleed-free, but his designs are original and often imitated. Sean offers good turnaround times and always lives up to his word.

Products mentioned:

Advantage Racing Products, (866) 774-3299, www.advantageracingproducts.com

Majestic R/C Products, www.majesticrc.com

Team Nemo, www.worldofozz.com/nemo

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