eletrick
Posts: 431
Joined: 12/10/2001
From: Covington,
LA, USA
Status: offline
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I want to point out, I have no ties to Traxxas, most people here know of me, or someone who does fly r/c with me, I in no way get anything out of this! This review, is my opinion, take it at face value, its also the opinion of Dennis Smith the owner of the second Tmax we ran today.
Okay, here goes:
Yesterday after tracking the package from Hobby Center, I called UPS here where I live and had them hold the package, so I could go get it nice and early! The counter person had a bad start to her day and was anything but helpful, but........ the REALLY NICE lady that sorts out the packages, understood, and after a few minutes, I had the goods! A good thing!
We got them home (opened them in the parking lot), and checked it out, all I can say is AWESOME. As Traxxas site shows the changes, they are good ones. The engine is impressive, as soon as you lay your eyes on it! After gluing the tires (we used Zap gap filling ca), and changing the on board batteries to a rechargeable flight packs, which were charged overnight, we were ready to go!
First run Dennis had, he flooded the engine. The instructions tell you if this happens to pull the plug, hold it upside down and run the starter, I can tell you first hand, DO THIS twice. After she fired off, we went through tank one with no problems. I richen the engine so it smoked as instructed, and she ran fine, no bad habit's. Tanks two, three, four and five, ditto. OKAY problem: Traxxas should break these in for you, do you have any idea how hard it is to hold back??? With the power it showed, out the gate during break in was a killer to just not nail it full throttle!
Tank six (yeah baby, yeah!!!!), unreal power full throttle, high speed, and yes......wheelie's at will! Dennis broke his in before it started to rain, and it was most impressive. I would say he was getting very close to 40 mph, but again, thats a guess. On a side note, we had just put a 12cvx on his old Tmax, and it was also really fast, not as good as this but it was quick. So we kinda have a bench mark for speed and torque. This was better than the 12, by a long shot!
We then got mine ready to go, the easy start module did not function, its bad from the factory, but you can't expect everything to go as planned. We then got one tank through it, and the rain came. After a while it stopped raining, and we took it out on the concrete to get tank two knocked out, let me say, wet concrete, even with out being broken in, was killer! Only 2 seconds half throttle, and stop (slide, donut....fun), then again till the tank was gone! Then it started raining again, so we quit for the day.
The buck stops here: The engine, at this point is ROCK SOLID, wider is a great improvement, as well as the easy start system. Other than what there website told you was improved, I didn't see anything they missed.
In my opinion these are the draw backs: the easy start clip, could be way better, I don't see where plastic is that expensive to make it really well built, the clip could be better. If your clip breaks, its going to land on the contacts that start your engine, and could make you unable to start it. Also its a drag to install the battery for it, that to could show improvement. The wider A arms, upper and lower, are going to take a beating when you hit something (this is the price for wider!). And thats it.
Advice: read the manual (who reads those), its important to follow
everything in the manual on the engine break in, after that, run the tar out of it! Today, we used 20% top fuel, I would say the top end needle was between 2 1/2 turns out plus. We use Snake oil, in our fuel, not required, but its a nice thing in case of a lean run. We have not tuned the engine out, like we will Saturday, so all the runs we made today, even on tank six, was way on the rich side, a good thing in my opinion. We did not burn out a plug on either truck, awesome!!!!!!
On a scale of one to ten 9.50 Highly recommended!!!!
Oh, mods (yeah we did the nicads, with rechargeable jacks right out of the box), other than that stock! The engine, even if you plan to race, I don't see any needed.
Any questions?
Richard Newman
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