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Tamiya 2WD
HPI RS4 MT
           

RC Car Stuff

It all started with these.

My wife and I bought them to bash around in the backyard. They're 2WD, reasonably fast, and fairly cheap (< $100). Other than the bodies, they're also virtually identical, which keeps things on an even footing.

Soon after I finished the cars, Berkeley, an associate from work, came over for dinner with his wife and kids. Figuring I would keep his son entertained, I brought out the cars. Like me, Berkeley had owned a Tamiya Rough Rider when he was a kid. I'm embarrassed to say that his son didn't get to do much driving.

I guess he was hooked. He talked to a couple of people at work and soon after published a web page, "taunting" other people at work to buy Wild Daggers. His rationale for buying a Dagger instead of one of the two that I did? Here's what he said: "This is the least expensive, best equipped two-motor, four-wheel-drive available. The Wild Dagger has many of the features of the more expensive models, without all the unnecessary extras. Even better, the cost is not much more than Skip's wimpy 2WD Stadium Thunder."

I wasn't worried. I knew that the second motor would both be heavier and drain the motor faster, so things would be about even. D'oh! On a reasonably smooth surface, I was definitely faster. But that was about my only advantage. Bummer #1: the 1500mAh Duratrax Piranha batteries I bought were terrible (or maybe it was the Duratrax Blast ESC?), and drained noticeably faster than an equivalently rated Sanyo powering two motors. Bummer #2: the dirt lot by work is pretty rough. The extra ground clearance of the Wild Dagger meant that they spent less time bouncing off dirt clods and ruts; 4WD enabled them to keep applying power much more consistently. My 2WD car spent a lot of time making one airborne tire spin really fast. It also spent a lot of time getting tangled in weeds and facing the wrong direction as the terrain bounced it around.

I could just meekly accept defeat and get a Wild Dagger. But where's the fun in that? Ideally, I'd find something that's different, but competitive. How else will we know what part of the manufacturer's hype about these cars is true?

Time to do some research.

Losi? Associated? I read up on them & checked out their web sites. I'm sure their cars are great, but they also looked like they were better suited for a prepared track. Traxxas? Major testosterone in those ads. Might be good, hard to tell.

How about HPI? Hmm, their off-road car, the RS4 MT, comes in three body styles, is 4WD, and has some neat features like belt drive and a slipper clutch. Their web site is well-designed, low-key, and provides lots of information, including close-up pictures of the internals and even scans of the manual. There's tons of add-on parts. Then there's the clincher: I found a newsgroup article that refers to both the Wild Dagger and the HPI RS4 MT in the same breath, as if they were equivalent. I found what I was looking for.

After I finished the car I drove it around the house a little. It seemed fast, fast enough that I promptly ran it into my wife's ankle on accident. Oops. Since it was dark I put the equipment away to try out later.

The next day at work I turned the throttle up about half-way, and drove around the parking lot a little. Once I was comfortable that everything was working OK, I opened it up all the way. It accelerated fast enough that one of the people watching thought I had shifted gears or something. Berkeley said "We are so screwed." Another oops. Whoever compared the MT to the Wild Dagger never saw them run side by side. They're apples and oranges.

If you've got questions about any of this stuff, e-mail me.