masterhacker1989

I posted this review on Urc the other day and Ithought I would throw it up here as well so that its easier to find, I searched for many hours to find a unbiased review of a kimg motor baja And I couldmt find one

So i bought a king motor baja the other day and before i bought it i looked up reviews on it and alot of people were complaining about them. my thought is they are hpi fanboys and people who have never owned rc's before.

So i figure Ill do a review of it and go through any problems that arise.

the first thing you need to understand while reading this review is im reviewing a Chinese clone that costs 1/2 as much as the real thing, im approaching this like i did my 150cc chinese knock off scooter i bought, which is I expect it to break, and when it does ill upgrade whatever breaks.

I originally was in the market for a used baja and i found i could buy a brand new km/rovan buggy for around $350-500.

the one I bought is a ksrc-002

First thing off the i have to say about it is the front hubs seem to have excess play in them, in all fairness though when i bought my tmaxx the front end on that had damn near 1/4" of slop in it. from what ive read on the internet people say that the hpi's have slop in the front hub right out the box

Ive read that the aluminum is weak on them, on the one i ordered the aluminum is thicker than I remeber it being on the hpi's when i worked at a hobby store. As of right now im just posting what ive heard

Ive also heard that the stock clutches are worthless. ive heard the same about the hpi though.

as far as the plastics ive heard complaints about hpi and king motor/rovan So im just going to say that they both probably suck

the pipe that comes on it seems to be better than hpi's offerings

I like that they include some extra shock towers, control arms and a whole bag of extra eclips, screws, snap pins, and also 2 extra wheel nuts

the instruction manual is worthless, it was translated by someone who had a vague idea of how to speak english, the parts explosions are way too small, and it mentions nothing about tuning, and the radio instructions are for the wrong radio

masterhacker1989

masterhacker1989

masterhacker1989

I ran it for about 1/2 hour in a icy parking lot last night, all went well, so Ive drove it about 2 1/2 hours so far with no problems

mooman007uk

dude....there is already a 330 page king motors review here on rcu [X(]...the largest thread ever i believe...everything km been said and done a while back [link]http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_7249314/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm[/link]

masterhacker1989

And out of those 330 pages 300 were people saying how bad they are, I looked up many, many reviews and Icouldn'tfind a decent long term one, I found plenty of hpi fanoys buying them, breaking them and saying how bad they, i worked in a hobby store and I saw lots oh hpi Bajas break.

The_Shark

thing to remember, when something that weighs 20-30 pounds and collides with a immovible object at 30mph something is bound to break.

I have a kyosho ZX-5, its a great race car, but one little mistake and something will break, brush a tube, tumble, get run over by a short course (happens often) that doesn't mean its junk with junk plastic or crap manufacturing, its made to be light and fast, skinny parts are usually easy to break. but its no weaker than any other 4wd 1/10 buggy.

hpi plastic is... meh, so its true it may be about the same as that rovan, but one thing to remember, quality control is going to be better on a $1200 car than a $400 car, so keep that in mind.

but in all honesty, I would rather fix up a $400 car than buy a $1200 one, i'm sure the hpi isn't 3X better.

jungle_josh

Great news i have also been looking at these so please keep us posted with reviews.

MiamizFinest

I came here here to say this very thing.

hawaiiysr

im going back and forth with the idea of KM or Rovan. iv read many reviews but like the OP stated many reviews are biased. HPI bandwagon folk. everything breaks no matter the brand.

im looking forward to more of what you have to say...

MiamizFinest

Ive seen a few of those KM motor one's in person and i don't think they have anything to envy real HPI version. The only thing I've read people *****ing about the KM is the plastics used in the arms break easily. Everyone just replace's them with the HPI one OR the RPM ones that will last for ever. Not really a big deal honestly, cheap fix. Do some more digging there is tons of info on the KM one and a lot of people liked them. Its one clone id recommend to a fellow RC hobbist on a budget.

phmaximus

the thing that im interested in.... what are all these people comparing them to????
my bet is over 1/2 of the people its there first 1/5.....so they think its the best thing ever. me personally would be more interested to hear from the guys that own a few and race them.

From what I seen and read, most of the guys racing them get sick of replacing parts and move to a 4x4 losi or MCD

hawaiiysr

Rookie RC peeps. I remember my 1st RC was a 4wd truck from sears. I loved that thing more then my 1st tmaxx.

xsthomas

I just got a Buggy from King Motors. The ones now are waaay better then when they first came out. Better plastics and hardware. One thing they do is sell them without a motor, or radio. Put in your motor, a real motor, like a Zen, and your radio. No more engine problems or servo problems HPi and clones seems to have. Plastic A arms are going to break when you hit something, HPI or a clone. Not a big deal, you want cheap things like that to break away. Build something too sturdy and hitting things will tweak things bigtime.

robwiljas

I just recently got a used HPI Baja in a trade but I was always interested in the King Motor buggy. The negative reviews made me very leery of them though so good job posting this review. It does look nice in the pics.