The Bonsai 141600 (Jubatas) is a newly released car that at first glance looks similar to the popular WL toys 144001 in the now crowded 1/14 4WD RC Car class. Retail price before discount at time of writing is just under $90 which is also similar to these other cars. In this review I'll look through the specs plus how it actually performs and compares to the other cars and what I recommend.

First let's discuss the title image. I'm a little bit sick of Youtube thumbnails teasing a new product to be the greatest thing ever only to find out following a review that it is in fact not, nor was it ever likely to be. So I've chosen to break convention here and let you know straight up that this is not a great car for reasons I'll cover below. I'll also let you know what I do recommend instead because there are some really good and inexpensive options in this category

The HBX 16886 Spectre is an all-new 1/14 scale 4WD desert buggy from the company that bought you my favourite car of 2020; the brushless HBX 16889. This package comes with the car, transmitter, battery and charger - everything you need to get running. In this review we'll take a close look at the car with the hood off and then see how it performs and I'll give you my thoughts on how this compares to other cars in the category,

Haiboxing - better known as HBX have been coming out with some really good value cars recently. As I mentioned above the 16889 was my favourite budget basher of 2020 with its durability, speed and battery life and the little HBX 2098B devastator crawler is probably the most capable micro crawler out. So you can understand why I was so keen to get my hands on this all new car. Let's first take a closer look at the specs and what they mean as they relate to the car

I've now built up quite a library of articles for the WL Toys 144001 (and 124019 / 124018) and thought I would use this page to share them. As of 3 August 2021 I've finally done a bit of an overhaul to make sure all articles are included and have added some new categories plus reviews. Enjoy!

A quick Recap: Geoffrey is building a special build from a WL Toys 124018, taking time to build the car that he wants. This is a very methodical build going deeper into each component and looking at many options. There’s a reason why this project car is called the WLC Racing 124018: several of the upgrade choices are sourced from the LC Racing catalogue and are a direct replacement. This goes to show how heavily “inspired” WLToys was with their 1/12 scale models. The parts mentioned in this article are also compatible with the 144001 and 124019. ​

The WL toys 124016 and 124017 are faster and more efficient brushless version of the hugely popular 124018 and 124019. If you want to know more about these new brushless cars then check out the preview article I wrote here: ​WL TOYS 124016 124017 PREVIEW: FIRST FACTORY BRUSHLESS WL TOYS RC CARS
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In this  article I'll be taking you through my top 5 mods for this car

If the stock car is anything to go by, the brushless model will be at least as fast but with much stronger acceleration and better battery life. With the understanding that you will be going faster for longer, there is an increased change of breakages on what is not an especially weak but not an especially strong car either. In addition, the extra speed and acceleration will show up the handling. For these reasons and but one of the 5 best mods below to improve your 124016 or 124017 will focus on DURABILITY and HANDLING and maybe just a little more POWER

The WL Toys 104001 is an all new 1/10 scale 4WD offroad RC Buggy that was released in 2021 and you can find my full review of the 104001 here. I found this to be a great handling car but felt a little on the slow side. I was able to get some more speed out of it for very little money by increasing the size of the pinion gear here but performance is still a little on the lack-lustre side. Clearly this car is crying out for a brushless upgrade so it's my pleasure to present the one I have put together and have been testing over the last few months and I'll call the 104001 big brushless upgrade. 

WL Toys have just announced that they are releasing a brushless version of the hugely popular 124018 and 124019 1/12 scale ready to run RC cars. Of course they have gone with predictably boring names - 124016 and 124017 🤦‍♂️. I've set this blog up to discuss the specs and what we can glean from the images. I do no have the cars (yet) so this is not a hands on review but of course I expect to review these as soon as they are available.

Firstly if you want to see my reviews on the brushed version of these cars, here is the one I did on the 124019 and the differences for the 124018. Based on initial pricing, the new brushless 124016 desert buggy and 124017 race buggy this looks to be only around $20-30 more than the brushed version which represents really good value. I made a guide on the cheapest brushless upgrade worth doing and at best mine had a $50-$60 premium although it did include replacement radio gear, servo, esc and motor. The benefit on coming from the factory is that you won't be left with a spare brushed setup in a cardboard box in your shed somewhere (True story, I have a box full of 5 stock brushed systems!)

The ZD Racing EX-07 Is a massive 1/7 scale street bash RC car based on the looks of Ken Block's restomod Hoonicorn Mustang V1. It is available as a ready to run car with everything or a kit version without the electronics and I've chosen the latter. They have got the looks 90% of the way to looking amazing but let themselves down on the final execution, with the body drooping badly around the front of the windscreen it kicks the nose up awkwardly and makes it weaker too. In this guide I will show you how to fix that and make some other easy improvements to the stance to make it look even better than the Arrma Infraction and Felony that it competes with.

A quick note that this is not a review - I plan to do that soon but it's taking a while since I bought the kit version knowing that the stock electronics are a little sketchy. This allows me to choose my own servo, ESC and motor to get the performance and reliability I want. In this article I'll show you how to fix the horrible sag in the body the makes the nose point up, adjust the stance to make it more even by modding the body posts and droop screw settings and lastly an option for different wheels which in my opinion really set the car off.

The WL Toys 124016 and 124017 (and the Eachine EAT14) have a major issue with cogging - the stuttering that occurs when accelerating from standstill or low speed and is a major downside to these recent releases. Cogging in your car is not by bad luck but by design choice; in the search for top speed bragging rights, the tall gearing has really compromised these cars ability to accelerate. Never fear, QuadifyRC to the rescue! I'll give you a couple of options on how to fix this issue by addressing the root cause rather than by going on a wild goose chase and addressing the wrong things.

As soon as I found out WL Toys and Eachine had retained the big 27t pinion from the brushed models I knew they would be fast but were going to be poor on acceleration. This turned out to be correct as you can see on my Eachine EAT14 review which has the same running gear as the 124016 and 124017. You can get away with this big pinion on a brushed motor (like with the 144001, 124018 and 124019) because of the way they work but not on a brushless motor because of the way they differ mechanically. Cogging is when the electromagnetic field invoked by the motor is not strong enough for the motor rotate and catch the next pole thereby getting out of phase and rocking back and forth; it's that jiggle your car make before it takes off. So what causes it? The motor can not generate enough torque for the given load. The 2845 is not a small motor for a car this size so it is safe to assume that it is the load that is unreasonably high due the very tall (fast) gearing.

Since we know the root cause we need to address it directly in order to get the best quality solution but before I do that I'll let you know the things that will NOT fix it:

Adding more power with more cells. You'll see I mentioned that the motor didn't have enough power to turn so what if we go up from 2s to 3s to give it more power? Well, you haven't addressed the real issue which is the load, not the motor power. Increasing the power to the motor will make it more likely to spin but it wont fix the cogging and you will more than likely do damage for anything but speed run passes.

So it's clear by now we need to reduce the load on the motor, The drivetrain runs freely so it's not like anything is binding. This leaves us with the gear ratio. As mentioned it's really tall and so dropping the pinion size will resolve this. Easy right? I'm afraid not quite for 2 reasons:

1. This car does not have an adjustable motor mount
2. Even if it did, these cars use mod0.7 gears which are painfully uncommon.

I still have fixes however and will take you through the options based on what you want to spend and what you expect to achieve.

Parts Needed. Here we will reuse all of the electronics and will need to do a small amount of drilling and filing to get a reliable car that performs well at minimum spend. For this we will need:

Installation guide. In addition to the above you'll want a little butane blow torch. These can typically bought for less than $5 and are needed to melt the super strong threadlock that WL toys use. Follow the steps below to remove the motor:

Next we need to use the 144001 motor mount as it has preset holes the align for perfect mesh with the 15t pinion. A little bit of material remove is required to make this fit. Take care in enlarging the pinion bore especially as it is easy to get off centre. I'd recommend ordering at least 2 pinions for this reason as they are cheap but have a long delivery time.

From here do the reverse of what you did earlier, reinstalling the gear shrouds, motor plugs and of course the top deck. It should look almost identical from before but you may notice the the motor now sits inside the car a little further.

Performance. Make no mistake, on the same 2s pack this car will be slower, I measured 44km/h  with my GPS on stock wheels and just under 50km/h on these wheels. Cogging is completely gone though and you will also have the other benefits:

• Much stronger acceleration
• Much more battery life
• More more throttle resolution (smoother) at lower speeds
• ESC and motor will run much cooler (longer running life)

Parts needed. As I showed in my Drop in brushless upgrade guide for the 144001 / 124018 / 124019 there is a much easier install path but you will need to but another motor. For the additional $10-15 outlay though you will not need to drill, file or cut and in my opinion is well worthwhile

As per the first option you'll need to remove the motor but since you are using a new motor mount, motor, pinion and screws, you can leave that whole assembly intact and set aside.

Installing the motor and other hardware is super easy now since you don't need to bore out the pinion nor the motor mount.

So there you have it, two genuine options to resolve the cogging issue in the 124016, 124017 and EAT14. My personal preference is for the second option because it is just so much easier but if you have the tools and patience then do consider option 1 to make use of the stock motor.

Before I wrap this up I'll give you a little bonus: my favourite radio options if you wish to upgrade from the barely acceptable range on the stock radio. These directly replace the stock transmitter and receiver:

The WL Toys 124019 is a small and fast car out of the box - it'll do 55km/h on the old technology brushed motor that comes stock out of the box. For bashing and off-road I prefer to upgrade with physically smaller and more efficient brushless motors but if straight-line on road speed is your objective as is the case here, then using a 3650 sized motor can get you massive speed... there are many examples where this car can go well over 100mph. The objective of my build here is to see what kind of speed I can get without pushing the budget or modifications too far - bolt in parts, stock body and a car than is as reliable as stock and can easily be converted back.

For this build I've chosen the WL Toys 124019 which is a long-wheelbase version of the popular 144001. The reasons this car makes for a good speed run build is:

1. It's cheap - around $100-$120
2. It has a fairly strong and efficient 4wd drive line
3. The comparatively massive brushed motor can easily be replaced with a comparatively massive brushless motor
4. The long wheelbase allows for more room for large components (namely ESC and motor)
5. The car is relatively durable with low cost replacement parts

Let's get on to the build which I have broken down into sections. We'll start with the powertrain which most of you are here for but I'll also cover important lessons in wheel/tyre choice, suspension set up, aero, speed measurement and driving technique. Read on for more