Remember that Christmas present as a kid, the one with the remote controller, 4 AA batteries, and a plastic car with four hard rubber wheels? Well, you can just forget about that relic and feast your eyes upon this beast to the left. The S-Maxx is one of many Nitro (racing top fuel, the same that Indy cars use) RC Cars that Traxxas offers. When I say these things are serious, I mean their serious.
I bought mine about three years ago after I test drove a friends. I had never really thought much about gas powered rc cars back then, I knew they existed, but I had no idea how sophisticated they were. 2WLD or 4WLD, gas or electric, pull start or EZ Start…these are things that never even crossed my mind, all I knew of was the Kangaroo battery powered buggy that I had gotten as a gift as a young kid. That thing used to cruise pretty good, maybe with a top speed of 20-25 mph on the road with a full charge. That seems great until you compare it to one of these beasts from Traxxas, most of them powered by the TRX-2.5r or TRX-3.3 engines that boost these cars and trucks up to 45+ mph! It seems ridiculous, I know, but ridiculous has never been more fun.
After a quick engine break in period, the Traxxas RC car or truck (S-Maxx for the sake of this article) is ready to rip. Load in the 20% top fuel, adjust the idol speed, mess with the carburetor’s air to fuel mixture to get peak performance, pull the throttle on the remote, and watch your toy soar down the road at unbelievable speeds. The control is outstanding as well, these things drive better than the real thing, and they are a heck of a lot more durable too.
The most fun thing to do with these besides driving them as fast as they can go of course, is doing tricks and racing them against other enthusiasts. I never raced anywhere besides the woods behind my own house, so I don’t have much input on that subject, but I can tell you that, against even just one other RC car, it is actually quite adrenaline pumping. As for the tricks, I have jumped my S-Maxx over ten feet in the air, landing it on its wheels perfectly with no broken parts. The suspension that comes on the S-Maxx is outstanding. You can adjust it with spacers to make it more or less dampening, more for extreme off-road terrain, and less for street riding and hard turns.
Most of the parts on the S-Maxx are a composite plastic material, pretty strong, but in many cases not strong enough. Be prepared to be buying replacement parts and screws as much as you buy fuel for these things, one wrong turn and your flying into a tree trunk or parked cars tire. The good thing is that the replacement parts are fairly cheap, depending on what it is you broke of course. Ebay is a great place to find these parts for a great price.
Upgrades are everywhere too. You can swap out many if not most of the plastic parts for metal. Although this does make the RC car more resistant to crash sustained damages, it does also make the vehicle significantly heavier. A trade off, one that you need to decide upon based on how you plan to drive it. Personally, I bought a set of metal skid plates for underneath which I do not regret one bit, because in a head on crash, that and the bumper take the most damage. I went through about 5 plastic skid plates before I purchased the metal version for around $20. The next metal swap I will most likely perform is the front and rear bulkheads, these things seem to break or wear out just as much as the skid plates do.
The S-Maxx is a 2WD model with the ability (with optional 4WD package purchase) to add a four wheel drive gear box to the RC car. I know, it sounds like I am talking about real rally car racing, it’s crazy, but so much fun. I personally like the 2WD feature of the S-Maxx because it allows for a drifting effect around loose turns in dirt and gravel. You can pop wheelies fairly simply with the 2WD cars, and donuts on the baseball field are unbelievable addicting as well. Although you can probably do some of this stuff with 4WD models, the extent to which you can push the car too doing such tricks only goes so far. I would recommend the 4WD drive featured T-Maxx from Traxxas more for those who are interested in racing, where 4 wheels on the dirt track at all times is essential to maintaining control and speed to power through the turns.
All in all, great weekend fun, and if you have sons, this is a great way to teach them some basic mechanics on a 1/10th scale.
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