Top 10 TLR 22 character flaws

I’m a big fan of my 22T 2.0.  It’s a fantastic truck, and one of the most fun vehicles I’ve had the pleasure to drive.  I also had a 22SCT 2.0 that never was hooked up for me in mid-motor, but I’ve got probably 100+ packs through these cars, and so feel I have a pretty good handle on their positive and negative attributes.

While every series of RC cars has their flaws, the 22 has its own uniqueness.  You can call it “character” or whatever, but these are the things that I’m not particularly fond of with the 22 series.  They’re good cars, and if these things were fixed, I’d say they’re damn near flawless.  While none of them are dealbreakers, they are the little things that get to me.

1. Weak slipper:  the slipper isn’t too bad with 17.5 or 13.5t motors, but on the SCT with its big tires, and heavy chassis and a mod motor, the stock slipper really isn’t up to the task.  I find the slipper spring weak, and the pads glaze pretty easily and don’t provide the bite you need for a short course truck.
   
2. Ballcups:  the HD ballcups are actually super smooth and fit nicely to the ballstuds, but they are not drilled from the top, so to remove a ballstud you have to pop them every single time.  They also are not the most durable, so if you pop them off a lot, they tend to stretch out a bit and come loose in collisions.  And then you have to replace them.
   
3. 2-piece topshaft:  the topshaft is aluminum with a thin threaded steel rod that can come unthreaded.  It also tends to bend if you tighten the slipper down super tight.  The topshaft also uses a 5mm nut instead of a standard 7mm nut.  I mean, why?
   
4. Mostly metric:  the 22 series is almost completely metric, but not quite.  There is a 0.05″ screw holding the rear pivot block in place, and there’s a 4-40 screw/nut in the bellcranks.  If it’s metric, just make it metric!  Which brings us to our next dislike:
   
5. Bellcranks:  the steering bellcranks are an afterthought on the 22.  The original 1.0 cars came with a sliding steering rack, which was quite frankly, stupid, and they later retrofit a bellcrank system that barely fits.  But the plastic bellcranks get super sloppy.  The steering posts are also threaded aluminum that you have to thread in screws from the top and bottom, which means you have to somehow get loctite in there and they tend to rotate while you’re trying to screw them from one side or the other.  There are also these tiny little shims you need to get in there which tend to get bent or lost.  Could be better.
   
6. Painted springs:  the springs are color coded with little dabs of paint that wear off.  And then you have no idea what springs are on there.  I ended up using colored 1/16″ heat shrink tubing to identify them.
7. Plastics:  the plastics are good…  for about 15 packs.  Then they develop slop.  Now, the Associated 5-series also got sloppy fast, but the new B6 has amazing plastics that don’t develop slop.  So while it was OK the last few years, the other manufacturers have upped their game and left TLR in this regard.
   
8. ESC on the battery:  I mean, come on!  the 22 (1.0, 2.0) and 22T were designed for you to mount the ESC above the battery?!?
9. Anti-squat shims:  the 22 uses a bunch of little plastic shims to set the anti-squat, and a tiny little screw (that’s easy to break or lose) to hold them in place.  It’s pretty primitive – inserts/pills or different blocks are much nicer.
10. CVDs:  this is kind of a nitpick, but the 22 uses grub screws to hold in the axles on the CVDs.  They can back out and tear up your hubs…  ask me how I know.  Other manufacturers use a captured system.
    

Honorable mention:  the E-clips in the shocks.  This is kind of a wash, because I hate E-clips, but I have to admit they’ve never come off (like the nuts on the Associated shocks).  So what are you gonna do?

Don’t get me wrong, I consider myself a Losi fan and I always root for the underdog.  I just thought this would help out those who want to know what flaws the 22 cars and trucks have.