JoeMaxx

I know this is not the Best Buggy on the market and I am just a serious basher who runs onrace tracks. I got it for $80.00 bucks off full retail price with a sale they were having so I only paid $269.00 for the buggy. It will be here on Monday so I can inspect what I will need to make it basher ready. I have looked at many buggies over the years and just wanted to add one to my collection R/Cs. Love the way 1/8 Scale buggies fly over jumps and this hasa decent SuperTigre G-27CX .27 cu in (4.4 cc) with recoil starter, polished tuned pipe, glow plug, air filter and 3-year limitedwarranty.

Quality of Duratrax has gotten better over the years since I first bought a Duratrax 1/10 scale MaximumBX buggy back in 1999. I have theOnyx 245 Dual Chargerand a 10 year old ICE charger.I expect the steering servo to be weakand linkage to be a little sloppy. I can also seeme adjusting the suspension on it so it tracks straight. Seems like a good basher on a Race Track.

mattster1971

Jang on Ultimate RC on youtube said it was a good vehicle. He had some issues with his during the review but seemed like a pretty tough rc. I would watch that to get some ideas of weak points he identified. One was his receiver switch which would turn itself off after a big jump. I am guessing that was an isolated issue with just that one.

JoeMaxx

I pulled it out the box this evening and put my Chamber Gauge on the front and rear than much to my surprise it was pretty well dialed in right out of the box. I did have to adjust it a little to even it up all the way around. Toe in on the front itis a little extreme andwill have to adjust it a bit to closer to0 Degrees toe in.

Right out of the box I could have taken it out and started the break in process if I was a beginner without the tools to check that it was only about 0.5 degrees off front and rear on the Chamber settings to itbeing equal on both front and rear than right and left. This would notaffect much unless I was a racer.

So far I am impressed with the quality. It came with a 1300Mah NiMH hump pack where as my HPI Trophy 4.6 Buggy only had a 4 Cell alkaline battery pack and the HPI front suspension settings were so far off it took me the better part of 2 hours to get the front and rear suspension dialed in andthe steering linkageto turn equal on each side. Toe settings on the HPI were so far off on the right side it took me a while to dial it back in. First upgrade I did on my Trophy was to replace the battery pack with a 1600 MaH NiMHhump pack and it took some soldering to install a BECconnector inline with the Futaba Style connector which I hung out of the battery box for a charge jack.On theDuratrax it will require me to cut the leads and install/solder in a Futaba Style Plug for a charge jack so I do not have to open the battery box each time I recharge it.

I am more impressed with my inexpensive Duratrax 835B then I was with my HPI Trophy 4.6 Truggy right out of the box.Acually I was disappointed with the HPIbecause I had to spend so much time to dial it in before Iran it the first time. I expected to perform more settingson the Duratraxto dial it in and only needed to make minor adjustments.

The Duratrax out of the box is compared to my Traxxas and Team Associated RTRvehicles when I bought themthenonly needing a few minor adjustments to the suspension before I ran them the first time.

It will be aboutanother month before I can break in the engine since we will not hit many 70 degree days on the weekends till late April or early May.I think this Buggy will be a good track basher.

Foxy

Indeed, you're starting to see what a complete ripoff the HPI is (sorry I know you like it, I just can;t help expressing my disgust at HPI's trophy series).

The Duratrax is a decent buggy, you can't really go wrong with 1/8th unless its an HPI. lol.

JohnP2

Congrats on your new buggy. Post some pics and let us know how you are liking it!

bigblock454XXL

My Feedback: (-1)

Yes pics please. And check out my awesome find.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_11437029/tm.htm

JoeMaxx

Yes indeed I did Foxy. I am not impressed with the Quality of the HPITrophy Series Truggy.I have barely broke in the Trophy before the weather got too cold and had to spend money on it to get to steer. The HPI factory servo was plastic geared than did not even turn the wheels while sitting on the ground and it took a lot of work to get it to track striaght. The first HiTec Servo I bought was also weak following Hobby store guys advice but at least it would turn the wheels while sitting on the ground. You suggested a higher torque servo and followed your advice.

Thinking I should of bought an Ofna when Iwas shopping them but the Ofna Nexx 8T were not on the market yet. This looks like a qualityRTRTruggy from everything I have read so far. Hmmm too bad it was not out yet or I would have bought it.


.

JoeMaxx

Looks like a great buggy !! I have always like Ofna but have never bought one because all parts are on line but so are the HPIs and should have researched it more before I bought one. People with HPISavage Trucks boast them so much I decided to give the Trophy a try. Not impressed

JoeMaxx

Johnp It will a few months before I can hit thetrack here in Colorado. Might be able to break in the engine in April if we have some warm weekends. But it be May before I can really run it.

Igenerally take theDigital Camara to the trackwhenmy buddies and I go out to play. We are seriousbashers and like to see how far and howhigh we can jump on the track with out wrecking.

JohnP2

I came real close to getting a Trophy 3.5 about a year ago. In hindsight I guess I'm glad I did not, as I know two people that have one and they have not been happy with it. Instead I opted for a Losi 810....which has turned out to be my favorite vehicle in our fleet.

JoeMaxx

Well it was 68 Degrees out today so I called up my Bashing Buddy Brian since he has new nitros to break in also. He showed up with a Savage 4.6 and an Associated MGT 8.0. The Monster GT with the 8.0 engine is a true monster truck. Man that engine is huge. He also showed up with no fuel because I caught himoff gaurd when I called him at noon today. I warned him early in the week that if it was nice out this weekend we would break in our2 new engines.I taught him thebreak in procedure that I like to use which is a 5 to6 tank break in.

So between the 2 of us we used up a little over 1/2 gallon of Losi NitroTane 20%. I really like this fuel and this was the first time I have used it. Kept the engines cool around 200 degrees without a lot of oil all over the frames since I perform break ins with the bodies off. It took about 3 hrs to break in both my engines this afternoon. Alternating between both of them to let them cool down in between tanks.

I got the Duratrax 835B fully broke in and finished the break in on the Trophy Truggy 4.6. Ran fairly rich on 6 tanks and I got 7 tanks of fuel thru both of them this afternoon. Dialed them both in on the 7 Tank for full throttle runs. Cannot wait to take the 835B over to the track on the next nice weekend.

We will still need to run 3 more tanks on Brian's Trucks since he showed up an hourlate and we got to run 3 tanks on each of his. So on his it was a good start.

Took the Trophy over to a baseball field and ran the heck out of it after I dialed it in on the 7th tank of fuel. Broke the front axle like a dry twigg when I hit a small bed of rockswhen I went to climb a hill near the field. Front wheel popped right off and lost the Hex than snapped it off right at the C-Hub.Personally I do not think it should havebroke the front axle so easily even thou it was a hard hit. My Tmaxx and Revo have seen worse and did not break. Looks like I will be buying some new parts to fix it.

flatpickhippster

I've had my 835B for about 2months.

No problems breaking in engine.
I use a heat gun to get engine up to about 150 and it has started right up.
Glow igniter included with buggy is POS. I recommend getting a reliable glow igniter

I've ran about 2/3 of a gallon of 20% nitro fuel thru it and no problems.

I did have a small pebble lodge itself on/off between flywheel and chasis. I thought engine had siezed at TDC, but I was able to turn it over
and saw sparks coming of the flywheel and finally found the pebble.

Steering servo died at about tanks 10-12.

Suspension is a lil mushy. I'll probably go up on the shock oil weights and springs

I like the Ackerman fwd setting for tight turning.

A good solid nitro buggy at a great price. You're not gonna dominate at the track, but its a lot fun to bash with.

Zonked

My Feedback: (6)

Here is a pic of mine and could not be more happy with it.

MastuhWaffles

I just bought one a few days ago, I had nitro originally, went to electric and didn't like it, so I went back to nitro. I won't get mine in until Wednesday, break it in that day hopefully. I saw reviews on this, including Jang's. and it seems really good. I don't bash around my buggies a lot, so I don't think I'll break as many things as most people do. But if something does, that 1 year stress warranty replaces it for free. How long of runtimes are you getting out of the reciever battery pack?

Zonked

My Feedback: (6)

Its a good buggy but would recommend you loctite a few things before you start.

engine mount screws
set gear mesh and loctite the screws
clutch bell screw, mine backed off killing a few bearings.

Can't really say how long the battery last's but I have ran it 6-7 tanks without a recharge.

MastuhWaffles

That's not that bad, I might buy another battery to run it longer, because I don't want to wait 8 hours to recharge it again. But yeah, I got some red loctite that I'll use to keep them in place. When I take the engine off to threadlock the clutch bell, i can to the engine mount screws too. Has the gear mesh had problems? Also, setting them the manual says to use a piece of paper, is that a good idea?
I need to find some hex screwdrivers, alan keys are not as fun.

Zonked

My Feedback: (6)

Would mix some red and blue loctite together otherwise you may never get it apart,that red stuff is nasty strong especially in aluminum lol. I charge rx batteries at 1amp but I did change the plug to a futaba style on the battery.

MastuhWaffles

Yeah, I use it in my motorcross stuff, I'd rather be safe than sorry. Is there an adaptor to a tamiya plug? I have the Indi 16x4 Pro, but it has the tamiya plug on it.

Zonked

My Feedback: (6)

never seen a adapter but would imagine tower has something like it.

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...tor+&search=Go

MastuhWaffles

I'll snoop around, it's just when I use all the battery up at the race track I don't want to spend 8 hours charging it with the one that comes with it, so i want an adaptor to use my pro charger so I can have it done it an hour or less.

flatpickhippster

I bought a couple extra RX batteries.......charge all three up and if all goes well......and worry not about charging for 3-5 hours. YMMV.

MastuhWaffles

Picked it up today, got some more glow plugs, I'm going to just threadlock the clutch bell screw, instead of taking the engine off I'll just take the gas tank off, I dont want to redo the gear mesh. I'll charge the battery overnight and break it in tommorow.

Zonked

My Feedback: (6)

Sounding good

MastuhWaffles

I think they may have fixed the threadlock issue, I took the tank off tried to hold the flywheel and get the screw off, and I couldnt hold the flywheel hard enough for it to come off. Its on there pretty good.

MastuhWaffles

So I decided to give it another go, and I took the tank off, held the flywheel with pliers and wala! It came off, I gave it a generous amount of blue threadlock and stuck it back on. My hands hurt now lol. But its tightly secure, and threadlocked so it was worth it. Are the noises when you operate the steering and stuff normal?