Through the years I have tried racing on tarmac, sand and gravel with everything from buggies to trucks and monster trucks. I have tried 2WD and 4WD vehicles powered by gasoline, brushed and brushless motors. All has been great fun and I have always enjoyed the great selection and thereby the versatility of this hobby.
A few years back I bought a Traxxas E-revo brushless car. My main purpose was to have something that was the “ultimate bashing vehicle” to be used in gravel pits. I had a long list of requirements:
- It should be durable and capable of taking a solid beating when landing after big jumps
- Spare parts should be readily available and not overly expensive
- It should be 4WD in order for it to climb the big gravel piles and still make it to the top
- It should come with a decent transmitter and not need a heap of up-grades before being ready to race
- It should be fairly powerful but still have enough runtime to do bashing for at around 20 minutes on one set of batteries
Before the purchase I did a lot of research and found that all the boxes seemed to be ticked.
I had the car for around 12 months and drove it extensively over that timespan. Never have I put a car through so much and still had a car that just kept on going. Most of the time it was used in the gravel pit but I also tried it out on a 1/8 scale track and on tarmac only changing the tires to suit the surface. It stood out most when doing bashing on gravel but was aways a solid performer on other surfaces
But most importantly… I can’t recall I having had so much fun with as with the Traxxas E-Revo Brushless Edition. It is just THAT good and therefore I went along and bought one again after being away from RC cars for 2-3 years. A thing worth mentioning is that the car has had a few good upgrades in that timespan – the ESC has been made waterproof which was as a bit of a painpoint in the previous version and now it also features pretty solid telemetry if the transmitter is coupled with a smartphone using the Traxxas Link app via bluetooth. I have briefly tried out the telemetry and it seems to work well giving data such as speed, battery voltage, temperature and RPM.
As you can see from the pictures below I have bought the Traxxas Rustler VXL for my son who is 7 years old and I am also building a Losi 5ive-T brushless car that I plan to finish over the coming 4-6 weeks (waiting for parts to arrive from multiple hobby shops).
So all in all – this vehicle comes with the best of recommendations from my side and I look forward to having as much fun again with it as I did in the past!
