In my opinion, the second best micro rock crawler to date (or at least the date of this post). It started the micro rock crawlers. The best thing about it is that it is small. You can setup one heck of an indoor course with even the modest size of rooms. What was best was that it was truly a ready to run. Everything was included in the box, including batteries for the Tx. Charge up the truck battery, put in the Tx batteries, and once charged up you were ready to crawl. Another plus was that it was one of the first miro RTR's to a have Spektrum 2.4gHz radio system. (On a side note, Losi should have converted all of their micro's over to Spektrum after this was released.) Another great feature on this truck is the worm gear diffs on the axles. This allows you to run an ESC without the need for drag break.
In stock setup, it wasn't terrible. I think the worst thing about it was the shocks. They were not oil filled, so it had serious rebound. And the stock setup gave the truck a bit of a high center of gravity. One of the first free mods to do was to remove the springs from the shocks. This gave it more a droop setup, and drastically lowered the COG.
The other issue initially was with the transmission. The internal gears didn't mesh right, and you would get some binding.
Luckily it was popular enough to get quite a bit of aftermarket support. And one of the first things was a new transmission case from Hot Racing. This did seem to help the gears. Other items available were wheel weights, bead lock wheels, different TVP's, different tires, front axle battery mount, etc. I ended up picking up a few of these parts for it.
Performance is pretty decent. It's not a shrunken down comp crawler for sure, but still lots of fun to drive.
I did end up upgrading the electronics on this one. I replaced the front servo with a Hitec MS-65MG. The battery is an old Losi Xcelorin 7.4v 180mAh 2-cell LiPo. I also threw in a Losi Xcelorin micro brushless ESC+8750KV motor combo. For control I went to Futaba with a R204GF-E Rx which has an internal antenna, and a 4PL Tx. I chose this 4 channel radio as I decided to also give this little monster 4WS with an additional MS-65MG servo on the back. With this setup the truck does have better performance than stock, but I do get some motor cogging since it is a sensorless brushless motor. I do wish the differnet/better electronics was one of the things the aftermarket would have come out with.
Overall a very good micro crawler. If it was still in production, it would be in my top recommendations and I would pick up a 2nd one. I do wish Losi and Horizon Hobby had kept this one around instead of what Horizon Hobby now has available. But that is another review for another blog entry.
Happy crawling!
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