The HS10422 HS10423 HS10424 is a large 1/8 scale 2WD RC Truck that includes everything needed to run (including battery and charger). It is the cheapest truck of this size by a long shot so I decided to check it out to see if it is any good. I'll cover in a LOT more detail below but I came out of the review phase thinking this is the best big beginner car by some margin. When I first saw this car I had to double take - a 1/8 truck for $120 (or much less on promotion) is pretty crazy. On closer inspection this had proportional servo steering, a full 540 sized brushed motor with electronic speed control and even includes and battery and charger. No matter which way you cut it that is an awful lot of car for the money. Now that I've had a chance to play with this for the last month or so I can confirm the size is REALLY impressive - check it out compared to some of the popular WL toys car below too. I've obviously had a chance to gauge it's performance, durability, battery life and more as well as taking a closer look at the design and build. Read on to find out more plus my conclusions and recommendations.
Design and Build quality In this section I'll cover how this car has been designed and put together. If this is of no interest then I'd recommend jumping straight to the performance section. Power and drive train Power starts at the battery which is a 2s 1500mah li ion pack. Li Ion batteries tend to have less peak current output than comparable lipos but in this case that is fine - as you'll see this is an extremely efficient truck and so puts very little stress on the battery. As you can see in the images below, there is plenty of room for a larger battery if you wish. The battery compartment is well made and very secure.
The HS10422 uses an extremely efficient 2wd gearbox that is practically silent. Pinion gear is a mod 0.6 mod press on unit which is well suited to this car and mates cleanly to a plastic spur. Gearing to the diff is of a heavier pitch but is well lubricated and as I said, nigh on silent. The motor does not have an adjustable mount and the pinion gear is press fit. This means that although there are great options for pinion gears available for cheap in this size, they will be difficult to fit without a lot of modification.
According to the box, metal gears are used in the diff which is a great find. Since this is 2wd only there are no complicated transfer gears or front gearboxes to worry about. Further out there are metal output cups and decently thick metal dogbone drive shafts. Outer cups are also metal and drive the wheels by the common 12mm hex drive to the wheels. This means you have plenty of wheel options available if you wish to change. Suspension and steering Suspension is very basic - coil springs and no oil dampening. This will make the car bouncy off-road and will compromise grip somewhat although it does have some decently big tyres to offset that. This is probably the one place I would consider upgrading with something like this at around $12 a pair: 2PCS ZD Racing 7359 Alloy Oil Filled Rear Shock Damper Absorber for 1/10. At 86mm eye to eye these shocks would be easy to replace with low cost oil-filled shocks on all 4 corners like the ones mentioned above but honestly I'd drive as is first. There are no adjustable tie rods to adjust camber and toe front and rear but plastic links instead and I'm ok with that - they are well tuned from factory and the cars runs straight and neutral. In this case the plastic is very durable and I haven't had a single issue with them since I've had them. In fact, some of the crashes and spills I've had with this car would have popped off adjustable tie rods whereas this car flexes and keeps on going. Lots of plastic here but it's the durable type that absorbs shock well. I've seen this setup on the SG 1602 before (reviewed here) which was super durable. Due to the fact that front wheels only need to steer in a rear wheel drive car, steering is very basic and powered by a slowish but reliably centering servo. Fit for purpose. Body and wheels I really like the body on this one. Style is a cross between truggy and monster truck and it is made from nice thick polycarbonate, prepainted and stickered from the factory. It integrates really well with the factory bumpers front and rear which should protect it really well. There is a spoiler included but I prefer the look without it. It actually attaches directly to the body which I don't like - it puts to much stress on the body in a crash - a truggy would usually have this mounted to the rear shock tower instead. Spare body pins are included which is great, I swear I have a body clips gremlin in my garage. Wheels are straight up awesome. diameter and with suit the car well and you can see the dimensions below. Yes, the rubber is pretty hard but this means they won't wear too fast and given the power of this truck, grip just fine. The size means this truck has good ground clearance without even really trying.
Performance
Pickup / acceleration The sacrifices made in reducing to speed are made up in acceleration which is brisk for this car - certainly more than the 2WD system is capable of maintaining traction on most surfaces, even with the large tyres. Lots of skids for this guy which make it more involved to drive than a 4wd setup. Battery life The other benefit of having conservative gearing is battery life. You'd expect a big car with a small battery like this to get poor battery life but it is actually really good - I typically get around 15 minutes of pretty spirited driving in grass, dirt, tarmac and not just in straight lines - bouncing of obstacles, spinning out, taking off - the works. Compare this to the WL Toys 144001 (which has the same size battery and motor) where you get only around 7 minutes of running.
Now one thing that really surprised me was how well balanced the weight split was and the positive impact on cornering. Usually rear wheel drive cars understeer (plow) badly through corners and you need to essentially steer with your throttle, especially on cheaper model. This car really surprised me with good responsive steering even when I was trying to invoke understeer. Check out the video below to see what I mean. This makes for a predictable drive, certainly for a 2wd anyway. My last comment on handling is for stability. Usually monster trucks have a high centre of gravity due to big wheels and high ground clearance so are often flipping which means a walk of shame to turn the thing over fairly regularly. It is surprising but that's not the case here. At most I seem to be turing this over maybe once per battery? Pretty good in my books. See more in the video below: Terrain. Due to the high ground clearance and big wheels this car is very much at home grass and dirt unlike some of the smaller scale cars which either struggle through grass or overheat if they do. As you can see above it's fun on tarmac too as long as you have some corners or obstacles to play with. You may struggle in really heavy off road due to 2wd being a limiting factor - there is just not as much traction on offer compared to 4wd. Durability This truck seems to be surprisingly tough. I've almost forgotten how simple a 2WD car design is and that simplicity and much smaller number of moving parts means that even at a base level this will have and advantage in the durability stake. When you combine that with lots of plastic that seems to flex well enough to absorb impact but stay stiff enough to not to flex when not wanted than that certainly helps too. Since the body is of a monster truck style it is compact and doesn't take impact often compared to say a short course truck design. As mentioned the front and rear bumpers also do a good job of keeping the body safe. Lastly, one thing I haven't mentioned is that this car is fairly light - this means that much less energy is carried into a crash. Recommendations. So after all of that bench review and performance testing, who do I think this car is for? Lets review key characteristics:
In my best budget bashers of 2020 the SG1602 as my favourite basher because it required no real upgrades and was a lot of fun out of the box, was strong and had great battery life. Well I think that the small hit on speed that the HS10422 takes is more than made up for by the presence of size so yeah, fair to say that this car is now my recommendation for newcomers (or relative newcomers) to the RC car game. Thanks for reading and feel free to ask questions below or on my facebook page www.facebook.com/quadifyrc/ if you wish to know more.
Thanks for reading, if you found this article useful please feel free to like or share, the facebook links below directly link/like this article. I don't believe in asking for money by patreon nor by paypal but if you do wish to help me, the affiliated links in these articles help me buy the bits and services I need to produce this type of content. If you are looking for RC cars, quads or parts check out my coupons and discounts page which I keep updated with only the RC cars, parts and quads I like at a proper discount
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