RC Rock Crawling With the RC4WD C2X: As Fun as Full-size Off-roading?

Most automotive enthusiasts have played with-- or still do play with-- radio-controlled (RC) vehicles. A beautiful niche has been carved out in the place where rock crawling and RC overlap, and it’s a booming subset of a resurging hobby. Self-admitted off-roading nerds like myself want to explore every nook and cranny of the space, so it was only a matter of time before I-- and countless others-- took advantage of emulating the full-size thing on a small scale. I’ve been dipping my toes in the RC world a bit, and the full-size world a lot, so the kind folks at RC4WD sent over a C2X 1/10 scale crawler to see how the hobbies stack up.

The radio-controlled hobby is huge. Planes, trains, and automobiles; everything from boats to drones to construction vehicles are available for your enjoyment. Like the full-size world, brands’ offerings come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of capability. RC4WD might not be as big of a name or player in the RC field as companies like Traxxas, Axial, Tamiya, and others, but its niche products are special in their own right. After iterations of its Trail Finder rock crawler model and a foray into replicating the iconic Marlin Crawler Toyota pickup, the company went all-in and brought out the C2X, a dedicated competition crawler with a flair of ‘Yota styling. Consider it the equivalent of Jeep launching the Rubicon trim in 2003. Here, it’s just the thing we were looking for.

It felt like Christmas morning when the C2X arrived on my doorstep. RC4WD’s 1/10 scale Class 2 competition-level rig comes with a Toyota-esque “Mojave” body. It’s equipped with “D44” axles (emulating the famous Dana 44s), a 35T brushed motor, stamped steel beadlock wheels on 1.9” Mickey Thompson-branded tires, and a waterproof ESC. This all works in conjunction with a 3mm aluminum chassis that has a delrin skid plate (and bed). It touts a 1.47:1 crawl ratio through a real transfer case. The truck is 19.6” long, 9.4” wide, 9.3” tall, and weighs 7.6 pounds. The $399.99 (Sale price as of this writing; regular MSRP is $499.99) ready-to-run (RTR) kit comes with a radio, battery, and charger.

It’s remarkable how realistic scale crawlers are, and the C2X is no exception. The details truly do look like those of a vehicle you’d want to spend a weekend wheeling. The body motion, too, is super realistic, down to the flex of the suspension and how the axles and body work together.

And so is the driving of the C2X itself. Aside from the obvious differences, like lower consequences to a rollover than in a daily driver, manipulating a four-wheel-drive rig over obstacles happens just like with the real thing. Traction limitations, limits of flex, and hitting the limits of approach, breakover, and departure angles all determine whether you make it down a (made-up) trail or not. After a few runs over rocks, wood piles, and even stairs, we found ourselves getting eerily intense about things; it’s not that it perfectly mimics the reality of sitting behind the wheel, but it evokes a kind of fun that is totally its own.

Sure, some of that fun spills over from the full-size thing to the scale hobby, but it really is a joy all its own. RC crawling lets you enjoy the childhood carelessness meshed with the satisfaction of the technicality, physics, and limit-pushing that makes off-roading so amusing as an adult. It’s a bit of the satisfaction of driving over and through obstacles combined with the absence of worrying whether you’ll be able to drive the vehicle you arrived in back home after a trail run, or whether a broken axle could mean days and hundreds of dollars to fix. Yet it’s simply a different means to a similar end; at the end of the day, RC rock crawling is just another iteration of the off-roading hobby that so many of us call the center of our automotive universe, and it has depths the likes of which are similar to that of the real thing. Consider us enamored.

And so, we’re starting a pseudo-build series with the C2X as well. It’s easy to see how scale rock crawling can quickly become an obsessive hobby, especially with the depth of and degree to which modifying, tuning, tinkering, and testing can all be done, and even more so considering it can happen in your living room instead of after a drive to a trailhead. Case in point: If I want to modify my full-size truck, it takes hours, countless tools, and sometimes multiple people worth of manpower to do so. When I had to replace the motor in my 1/18 scale Traxxas TRX4M Land Rover Defender, I did it on my desk in a half hour with two handheld hex wrenches.

You know the saying: Just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you have to grow up. RC cars and trucks help keep that feeling alive, at least initially. Does the fun and obsessiveness hold up? Check back soon for an update.

Special shout-out to Luke and Mike at RC4WD for their participation, help, and support with this. Cheers, guys!

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