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   I want to share some tips on some Traxxas Rustler Upgrades. These Upgrades make the Traxxas Rustler a seriously durable RC. If you are into the RC hobby like me and you own an RC Car that you run just about every chance you get, then you should do some upgrades.

This is a great RC Stadium Truck that can be run on and off-road, however, As you may have noticed this RC stock is a bit fragile if your backyard bashing. The Traxxas Rustler Upgrades that you will read about here will keep your car running with a lot less broken parts.

Upgrading your Rustler – The Starting Point

“If” you use you’re Car to do backyard bashing with, you really are going to want to do these upgrades. Most people will tell you just run it and upgrade just as it breaks, which that is fine I guess. The downfall with that is unless you buy all the upgrade parts you will need right away your RC will be sitting broken until you can get the parts and get it back up and running.

Believe me, I know. I didn’t have anyone tell me any of this when I started out, and I drive my RC hard and beat them up pretty good. Because of that, I have had a lot of downtime waiting for the chance to get parts. I’m not saying don’t go out and have some fun with your RC, by all means, I wouldn’t wait! I would just start planning on getting upgrades now before it breaks.

Start Upgrading

The first upgrades you want to do is, get rid of the stock shocks. The top shock caps(mounts) will pop off after a crash or two or a couple of jumps, not to mention if your bashing and jumping with it the stock shocks are not able to handle that very well. They are designed more for a stadium and flat track. I personally use:

Traxxas Big Bore all aluminum heavy-duty shocks. Or Traxxas piggyback shocks! These shocks are adjustable to set spring tension, which helps with ride height and keeps from bottoming out when landing jumps.

Now that the shocks are taking care of, we want to replace the stock control arms (suspension a-arms) with RPM A-arms. These new A-arms are more durable and do not break as easy due to the fact that they are made of a flexible plastic, so they flex when crashing or hard landings to absorb the impact.

You can see the difference between the stock ones and rpm ones, the stock ones you can’t flex with your hands. They are made of hard plastic, which is why they break kinda easily. The rpm ones you can flex with your hands and that is what you want on an off-road RC vehicle.

Traxxas Rustler Upgrades – The Next Step

After you have upgraded the shocks and control arms, you want to upgrade the caster blocks. The stock caster blocks will break fairly easily if you hit a curb or crash and flip landing on the front end. “So” we fix this by upgrading them to RPM caster blocks.

Once you got your shock, control arms and caster blocks replaced with the upgraded parts your Rustler is on its way to being really durable and will handle jumping and bashing really decently.

Now you want to think about some decent tires and axles.

There are so many tires that you can get and all are good, some better for certain vehicles than others. For off-road bashing, I like the duratrax c2 tires. I like to have a few sets of tires my self.

A set for street running(street tires), a set for off-road dirt running and a set I use for mud and bashing, but that is me. I don’t like to ruin my off-road tires by running them on the road.

The rear axles are pretty durable, however, they do break, have I broken any? You bet I have! Several in fact. The stock ones do hold up well and if you’re not jumping all the time and racing top speed all the time you will probably be OK with keeping the stock axles. But if you plan on doing a lot of jumping and high-speed driving than I would recommend upgraded axles.

The MIP axles are a great choice to consider. They are all steel axles and do require some assembly but are really durable and well worth it.

RC Upgrading – the third step!

At this point, your RC car needs a new bumper to replace the stock bumper that is small and little too hard for bashing. I would recommend replacing it with the RPM front bumper, which is a much better bumper. You can also get an RPM rear bumper to put on also, which you will need if your plan to put on a wheelie bar, “As” the wheelie bar mounts to rear bumper assembly. The Traxxas Slash front bumper also (looks big on the Rustler), But works great for bashing.

Then the front and rear shock towers should be replaced with RPM shock towers, this will provide more flex and less breakage.

Final Upgrade – Optional

Last but not least. The front bulkhead can be upgraded to an RPM bulk head. (This is an optional upgrade). The stock bulkhead does hold up fine, however upgrading the bulkhead to an RPM bulkhead will make the front end of your RC very durable and ready to handle just about anything.

There are a lot of people that will say to replace parts with aluminum ones. That’s OK if that’s what you want, but in my experience, the aluminum is not that great for bashing.

The aluminum doesn’t break, it bends. Then when it’s bent you can’t get the screws out to replace it, so you end up replacing more than just that part.” If” you are just running on the road or puttering around not hard running or bashing, the aluminum is fine! More so for show cars. This video I included shows you just some things that can be done with the Rustler.

Go Run, Have Fun – No Worries

“OK” Now got our Upgrades taking care of, “it’s” time to have some serious fun. The RC now will be able to run higher speed, race around and bash without the worries of breaking your car each time you are out running. I’m not saying that the upgraded parts will never break, but the chance that they break is by far less. Now go have some fun.

For information on building a fast street car, check out my Traxxas Rustler VXL build.

If you have any questions or comments you’d like to share you can leave them in the comments below and I will answer any and all comments.