The WL Toys 144001 is a great car for the money and pretty durable but certainly not the toughest thing out - for my money that goes to the SG 1601 / HBX 16889 (long term review here). I have however found an tested a few direct bolt on parts that you can install in about 20 minutes to make this way more resilient to crashes than stock

By now I've made a number of brushless upgrades to the WL Toys 144001 which I've documented, each with a different objective in mind. All of these offer an improvement over stock which, depending on option offer an improvement of speed, acceleration, weight, balance and efficiency over stock. The objective of this brushless upgrade is simple - the cheapest brushless setup worth having for bashing

Let me start off by saying that the WLToys 124018 is one of the coolest looking 1/12 scale RC cars on the market. I have been a big fan of desert truck/buggy body styles for some time. Larger scale trucks like the Losi Tenacity and Losi Lasernut have always caught my eye, but the cost and lack of a place to run something that large have kept them off my buy list. The 124018 or the LC Racing EMB-DT/Tacon Cavalry that it is a clone of fit in a sweet spot of a portable size, an affordable price point with heaps of potential for tuning, upgrades and customization. 
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The 124018 out of the box is far from perfect - check out the QuadifyRC review here. The tried and tested 550 brushed motor and combined ESC/receiver combo have been thoroughly discussed by the 144001 community. In the larger scale platform and full body cage, this car is weighted like a tank. I would have gone with the original LC Racing EMB-DT, but to get one delivered would cost 3x the price of a 124018, which I had a hard time justifying. So, I decided I should just get the 124018 and use the savings to customize and modify it to my personal preference. At the same time, I wanted to see if I could come close to or exceed the performance of the LC Racing EMB-DT but on a smaller budget. So here I start my project to build my WLCRacing 124018 and will compare how my incremental improvements affect things like weight, speed, and overall handling of the car.
Target Weight: Equivalent to LC Racing EMB-DT RTR Weight – 1200g with battery (according to LC Racing site)

In this guide Geoffrey has provided a simple, convenient and reversible option to painting your RC car body shell and most importantly has gone in depth on the how to guide with lots of detail around how to get a finish you'll be proud of.

The WL Toys 124018 is a 1/12 scale off road 4WD ready to run radio controlled car with a desert-truck look. It shares over 90% of its parts with the hugely successful 124019 (and 144001) buggies but there are several key differences. In this article I'll dig in to the differences and why they add up to more that just the look of the car.

Before you go any further please look at my 124019 review here. Rather than rehashing the same detail here I'll just focus on the differences in order to keep focused so I'll wait here patiently while you read that first...

The SG 1603, SG 1604 and UDIRC 1601 are small 1/16 scale 4wd on road cars designed for skids on any smoothish surface. They are extremely durable and the edgy body shells (SG 1603 Hoonitruck/Infraction and SG 1604 Moke) being the only thing that separates these two. Here I've reviewed the SG 1604 Moke and have written a setup guide on how to greatly improve performance by fixing the errors out of the factory

Before I start this review I'll note that this car from "SG" is supposedly the same company that made the SG 1601 and SG 1602 4wd 1/16 brushless truck which won my budget RC basher of the year award for 2020 here. In addition my review and follow up can be found here and here. Thus is was with great expectation that I have reviewed this car.

WL toys have had a series of hits with the 1/14 scale 144001 and now more recently with the 1/12 scale 124019 and 124018 - same car just a little longer. In order to hit their price point though they have had to compromise on the power train - opting for brushed motor technology that although surprisingly fast offers poor long term durability and even worse efficiency leading short running times. Upgrading to brushless is a solid option but has required hacks and workarounds in the past to get anything other than basic speed run builds. This new guide aims to be drop in solution with no mechanical modification required.

Just to recap I've already made 3 brushless builds. If you have the ability I still highly rate the ultimate brushless upgrade as I believe the motor and gear combination is perfect for fast, reliable and efficient 2s running.

• 144001 ultimate brushless upgrade guide (2838 4500kv and 17t pinion) - also for 124019 and 124018
• 144001 no cut option (as above with 15t requires rebore of the pinion) - also for 124019 and 124018
• 144001 speed run build (3650 5200kv on road only) - also for 124019 and 124018​

DumboRC have a range of very similar 2.4GHz digital surface radios (for RC car and boats) with subtle differences which makes them confusing to buy. All of them around around the $30 mark which makes them extremely good value if you know how to pick the right set of features for you. In this guide/review I'll break down the differences and review the two variants that I recommend - namely the DumboRC X6 2.4G 6CH Transmitter and DumboRC X6A 2.4G 6CH Transmitter with X6FG Receiver and will of course review them and give you my recommendations.

The WL Toys 124019 is a 1/12 scale RC Car released late 2020 by WL toys and is largely identical to the hugely popular WL Toys 144001. Although the 124019 did however have some notable improvements as covered in my review, a bit of simple setup and tuning can improve this much more. In this guide I will cover how to best setup and tune your 124019 to get the best out of it without spending anything on upgrades other than consumable items like grease.

I've already written over a dozen guides on improving the 144001 here which are applicable to this car as well but I wanted to use this guide to be very specific on the exact improvements I made since the manufacturer has fixed some of the issues mentioned in my 144001 guides here and here.

The WL Toys 144001 is a very fast little 1/14 scale RC car thanks to it's massive 550 brushless motor that powers it with some rather tall gearing. The downside to this is the heat that it generates. Over time this heat can damage electronics and cause a decrease in performance and indeed motor failure. This is a quick and dirty guide to significantly improve motor cooling for less than $2 which should only take 5-10 minutes to do with simple tools.