Gladiator Tracked Chassis (Black)

The chassis components are good quality, and there are extra fastenings for future development. My main criticisms are as follows: 1. The holes for the non-powered wheels are too large - it would be better if bushes were provided for these holes, so that the non powered wheels are secured and entered more efficiently. 2. As other people have mentioned, the tracks are provided pre-assmbled, and are too large. It is possible to remove portions of track, but this is neither obvious or easy, and to do this you have to tap the connection pins with a small pin/rod with a hammer to get them to move initially - once you've done that they can be removed quite easily. Better instructions on how to do tis would be a good thing. Once assembled, the chassis is quite sturdy, and efficient. Another possible improvement would be to have the track sections coated with some kind of foam material on the edge that has contact with the 'floor'. The plastic of the tracks is quite slippery, so they don't grip very well, particularly on an incline.

We found the chassis okay. It does have a few problems though. Firstly the idler wheels for the tracks are difficult to set right, given the hole for them is too big and there's only a few nuts, washers and a bolt to get them working correctly. We also found that the tracks were too long. We tried to split them, but to no avail. We ended up over engineering two more, sprung idler wheels for it to compensate for the unwanted extra length; which in the long run looked cooler anyway. Other than that, the chassis is sturdy and will be good to build on and the fasteners for the motors and gearbox are solid. Bit of an odd design having drive at opposite ends, but it'll work.