Have vehicle, will modify. It doesn’t matter if it’s a road-going car, a truck, an SUV, or one that’s scaled down to hobby-grade radio-controlled size. Anything with wheels and a motor is fair game when it comes to upgrades, and the RC rock crawler world is blossoming with endless opportunities to customize, accessorize, and modify these scaled-down 4x4s to every owner’s own liking. I’ve been working with RC4WD to make a fantastically upgraded variant of their C2X in which scale details meet outright performance, and this newest round of changes makes it the best it’s been yet. Here’s what we’ve done to get there.
A rock crawler is only as good as the tires that put the traction to the ground. We were running BFGoodrich’s All-Terrain KO2 on the C2X (and our daily driver), but they leave a bit to be desired on the traction front in the all-out off-road category. Time to level up: RC4WD sent us the Mud-Terrain T/A KM2 tires to run on a set of glorious Rally 1.9″ Beadlock Wheels. The setup not only adds some weight (which in turn helps keep the corners planted), but it also looks properly badass in our humble and admittedly biased opinion.
King is a familiar name in the fullsize off-road community. RC4WD has even been making fully-licensed scale Kings for a while now, but the company has revamped the units with their new X-ring gaskets, which as per the company “provide double the oil seals in the shock cartridge.” We’ll take their word for it, and after marveling over the craftsmanship we added our go-to 35-weight shock oil and mounted them up on the C2X.
I’ll admit that I was skeptical of the Kings when they arrived. At first glance they appear to have less travel and be shorter overall than the stock shocks. Thankfully first impressions aren’t always right, and the Kings are absolutely incredible on uneven terrain, keeping tires planted in ways the stockers could only dream of. The way the C2X moves now is remarkable, and shows just how much of an improvement upgraded suspension can provide over stock.
Who in the off-road community doesn’t like additional lights? We’re guilty of such, so it was only natural that the scaled-down Toyota gets the same treatment. The ARB Intensity lights definitely look the part, and while they do more for aesthetics than actual light output, that’s fine by us. Frankly, too much light from an RC (in any form) makes night driving difficult as you’re staring into the sun instead of carefully picking lines based on your sight. Since you don’t have to be behind the wheel of the R/C, you don’t want (or need) a ton of extra forward-facing visibility. This is a good medium.
Other tidbits
RC4WD kindly sent us a scale Warn winch that is incredibly detailed and can actually be operational when the correct remote and controller are paired with it. Thing is, our eyes are bigger than our, well, truck, and it’s one size too big for the C2X. It just doesn’t fit on the C2X’s front bumper, but we still dig it sitting on the shelf.
- Rock sliders
- In an effort to make the truck look more scale, we pulled off the body-hugging tube sliders in favor of wider, double-tube units that more accurately reflect what people in the Toyota community run in the real (fullsize) world.
- Maintenance
- Just like a real truck, a scale RC rock crawler requires maintenance. We gave the vehicle a once-over and tightened everything down for good measure, then realized one of the set screws that hold the main spur gear in place had gone rogue. Some replacements from RC4WD did just the job.
- Servo
- Stock steering servos are notoriously weak, and while we’ve had zero issues with the RC4WD stock servo thus far, we’re preparing for the inevitable. After adding bigger, heavier tires and weightier wheels, there’s a bunch more stress on the front end of the vehicle. That plus the rocky terrain on which the C2X spends most of its time means the servo is being stressed in a way it never has been before, and a few times when the truck was bound up between a literal rock and hard place, we noticed extra strain on the steering. Ahead of the tariffs affecting pricing, we picked up a replacement, heavier-duty servo “just in case.”
The Result
Measuring performance in the enthusiast rock crawler community, and especially that of the radio controlled nature, is very subjective in that it depends heavily on the experience of the user and not on data or statistics (as would be the case in measuring things like 0-60 MPH times). As such, we have to rely on our opinion and the before-and-after first hand experience to deduce whether these upgrades made a difference or not on the performance and aesthetic fronts.
Obviously we’re biased here as we helped select this slew of kit that helped modify the C2X, but we think that the resulting rock crawling ability and visual changes are, as a whole, very successful and show big improvements over what the truck stood as prior. The heavier wheels and grippier tires are unquestionably the star of the show, but it’s the King suspension that’s the quiet hero here. As a package, this is a round of upgrades we can absolutely stand behind; our C2X not only looks better now, but it does everything in the rock crawling sense better, too. That’s a win-win in our book.