traxxas mini e revo any good?
 

I was just wondering if the e revo 1/16 is any good for me to buy compared to any other minis. if there is a better one please mention it.
cheers

Just depends what you want to do with it. 1/16 e-revo and others are fine on the road, and smooth offroad areas and tracks, but they do get out of shape easily during a backyard bashing romp due to low ground clearance, light weight and limited travel and they won't do the best in grass. 1/16 E-Revo is as good as any 1/16 if that's what you are looking for.

Other option would be Vaterra Kemorrah, or Kalahari just got the Kalahari today that I ordered off ebay
Its about 2mm longer then the merv, and the tires are a tad thinner. Looks built pretty damn good, 2 things one its brushed, but costs $120 shipped so you could easily snag a Brushless setup and still be under $200, other is it was recently discontinued, but from what I read(and was told by a few owners that had em awhile) its shares 95-99% of the parts with the Losi Mini 8ight so parts will be fine to get.


The Merv I own one, and honestly I don't really know what to say about it. It is a decent vehicle, that can be durable, BUT that is after you get a pile of aftermarket parts which jack up its cost quite a bit.

Things that IMO should be included in the box for its price, but aren't : Center diff, metal chassis brace(the chassis is almost paper thin at points), better shock springs, better oil in shocks, RPM Arms all around, aluminum knuckles(my stock ones fell apart on the 2nd run...), Steel/aluminum rods, and steel balls for the rods to name what I can remember off the top of my head. Also I found it ran better on a 540 sized brushed tamiya silver can then a brushless setup as on the brushless setup the thing only wanted to wheelie no matter how lightly I feathered the throttle.

The shock oil, and springs though need to be changed pretty much out of the box as the ones on it are insanely terrible. I mean if you turn one wheel will go up in the air terrible, and that is with the pre-load nut to the max its so under dampened. The rest could wait(wouldn't wait long on the chassis brace though) till the parts fail. Like for me my 3rd time driving the damn o-ring that holds the knuckle on the ball end fell out, put it back together 3 mins later fell out again(its a common issue) so I had to buy aluminum ones for $15 a pair. While I was replacing them I figured HEY might as well replace the arms as they are so thin its not funny with RPM ones as it was $15 for the set of 4.

Honestly I've only driven my merv a handful of times and have put over $130 in parts into it to make it act right. So honestly I can't really recommend it. Its also one of those RC's I regretted buying as reading posts by fans of it made it sound way better then it was. I found it funny when I got it and listed my issuesthey started ohh yea you need this part, this part, and this part and that will be fixed... If I knew that prior to jumping in I wouldn't have bothered.

I will say one thing about both the 2 I said their battery size is small.

Other option you have is a 1/10th scale buggy there are some 4wd ones that are not that expensive, and honestly are about the size of both the vaterra and merv (seriously my DF-02 is like 4mm longer then the merv, and its tires are the same diameter)

yer but them cars you suggested wont jump very good and they wont do back flips ect. what upgrades for the merv would you recommend out of the box? so I can buy them with the car.
cheers

merv won't backflip as the wing will stop it
and they should jump just as well

as for upgrades read my last post I listed what I recommend. Will say as you are dead set on backflips skip the center diff
Even with what I recommended in the last post I wouldn't do any insane air jumps as even with the upgrades it won't last.

Yes indeed, the Merv is good out of the box, but not very reliable. It needs significant investment to be made exceptional, however, it can be made 'exceptional', you can't say that about a lot of RCs, many will always be 'bad' no matter how much you spend.

The MERV is way fun in North Dakota hard packed snow. That's about the only time I use mine. The Traxxas 1/16 vehicles are not exactly awesome. But they are fun if you drive them in the right conditions. My MERV is actually a slash that I convert from Slash-MERV-rally, depending on what I want to do with it and how much time I actually want to spend tinkering around with it.