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SAWTOOTH RC ALUMINUM KNOCKOFF HUBS - For those of you who think you have every imaginable piece of bling on your RC monster truck, think again. There is one area that you may have missed. Take a look at your wheel nuts. Are they still stock? Well, we just found another place for you to spend some more money!

We ordered a set of the Trispokes knockoffs (AKA wheel nuts) for our Savage and a set of the Sawtooth's for one of our T-Maxx's. Sawtooth RC is located in Canada (beauty eh?) and we were pleasantly surprised at how fast the parts arrived. We received them in 4 days which is pretty darn good for an over-the-border shipment. The package contained two plastic bags, one set of knockoffs in each bag. We would have liked to seen some additional packing around the individual pieces to keep them from banging into each other in transit. Our pieces arrived in great shape! It is just a small area that could be improved.

The machining on the knockoffs is very nice. No rough edges to be found anywhere, even in the thread area. They are machined from solid billet aluminum. The points are SUPER sharp on the Sawtooth hubs and you will want to use a rag when tightening them down. Carter at Sawtooth RC told us that they are supposed to be sharp..."otherwise I would have named them Blunttooth!". Heck the Sawtooth hubs even have reverse patterns. That way the pattern is going the same direction on both sides.

The guys at Sawtooth RC also told us that the hubs should be hand tightened; that is what they are designed for, no wrench required. Sawtooth RC includes some o-rings to use between the wheel and the hub. They switched from a nylon washer to the rubber o-ring quite awhile ago as it holds a lot better. And just in case it does happen to spin off; the rubber will jam in the threads so the wheel does not come entirely off and cause a major crash.

FINISH: They look awesome right out of the package however we did notice that one set had a slightly nicer finish. The Sawtooth RC guys informed us that they have started using a new polishing process and it shows! If you are looking for more of a chrome like finish, a couple of minutes with some polishing compound and you are there.

INSTALLATION: We started with the Trispoke hubs for the Savage and installed them on our SS. Simply install the wheel, slide the o-ring on and thread on the hub. Sawtooth RC was kind enough to mark the left hand threaded hubs with a groove on the inside mounting surface (see picture to the right - LH thread hub is on the left side of the picture), This is a smart and convenient feature. We did as we were told and tightened them by hand. The threads are great and the hubs spin into place beautifully. The Sawtooth design hubs for the T-Maxx install even easier as you do not have to worry about two LH threaded hubs; the T-Maxx uses standard RH threads on all four wheels.

FIELD TEST: Our biggest worry with using a wheel nut like this was having them fly off. Not only would you lose control and crash, you might loose your hub! We bashed both our SS and our T-Maxx with these hubs and found no loosening at all. We checked them after ever other tank of run time and were never able to tighten them down any further. All in all, we burned about 7-8 tanks of fuel through each (guess what we did for an entire morning...hey it's tough work but someone has to do it). At the end of our test run, our worries about hubs loosening were dispelled.

VERDICT: These are some sweet looking hop-ups and will take your truck to the next level of "bling". Not only that, they make for tool-less tire changes and that is one less wrench to carry in your pocket. Also being a natural finish (versus an anodized finished), it will be easier to polish out any scratches and keep them looking their best.

The price is right at $15.99 per set of four. That includes the o-rings. They offer them for a wide range of trucks including: HPI RS4, Tamiya Trucks, OFNA Pirate, HPI Savage, Traxxas T-Maxx, E-Maxx, SportMaxx and the REVO. SawtoothRC also has some other goodies available on their site worth checking out.

Visit the Sawtooth RC web site and get some on order! Tell them the guys at BYT sent you!