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Savage 4.6 RTR Review
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Posted on Sat Jul 21, 2007 6:26 am by Squid |
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HPI was good enough to send SC a Savage X 4.6 to do a review on, and after a few hours of bashing it and a couple weeks of club racing, I feel I have gotten a good feel for the truck.
The new F4.6 fired right up and idled beautifully through 2 tanks sitting on my break in stand. After a couple trouble free tanks doing some slow to mid speed circles and figure 8’s I put it on the track bone stock for the RC Pro-series event that was held at my local track.
A few changes were needed for the track:
1: The stock tires while being excellent for bashing around the yard and on a gravel driveway just didn’t have enough bite on the hard packed clay track. I found that the HPI Dirt Bonz worked very well with a little loose fluff on the track even when water was added to keep the dust down.
2: The shocks are too heavily sprung for a rough track. I removed 1 spring from each corner and all the preload spacers, and changed the shock fluid to 25wt oil. This lets the truck stay in better contact with the ground over the rough stuff. I tried to fit a sway bar to the front end, but none that were in stock at the LHS would fit. The bulks and lower arms have holes to mount a sway bar, but I cannot find one on HPI’s site. A sway bar may not be the answer, but the inside front tire is lifting going through corners, and I would like to try one to see if it helps.
3: The grease in the diffs was not heavy enough for racing. I opened up the easy access diffs and put 30,000 in the front, and 20,000 in the rear. This may be a bit on the heavy side, as the truck does push a little, but it is very predictable. Total time to open up both diffs add oil and reassemble was about 30 minutes. About 1/3 the time it would take with the old diff set up.
4: The stock dual disk brakes had awesome feel at first, but after only the Pro-series race, and 1 club race the disks shredded. Gluing the edges of the disks may have helped keep them together, but I was not able to get my hands on another set.
The easy access tranny is also a great improvement. Changing a spur gear takes about 10 minutes total time if you are replacing the same size gear. The top of the tranny comes off with 7 screws, and the spur shaft is in your hand. If you change spur sizes you will need to loosen up the motor and reset the mesh.
I did not use the stock radio gear, as I was going to be participating in a large race with over 200 entrants, I wanted the flexibility of my Synthesized gear for the race. I have used HPI’s radio gear in the past, and there is not a problem with it. I used the stock gear with my Savage .21 for an entire racing season with no problems.
Sadly, I am not able to say much more about the F4.6, as my receiver pack broke while landing a jump, the impact drove the throttle servo open, and the truck landed on its roof. The engine was wide open for about 30 seconds wheels in the air. I need to get a new piston and sleeve for it. I had about ½ gallon through the engine at the time, and for being so fresh, I was impressed with it. The front wheels were lifting easily on the track, I had to feather the throttle coming out of turns to keep them down. This engine shows great promise.
A week or so after the big race, I took the truck over to tbills place for some bashing. We set up a medium sized jump, and proceeded to put a hurting on the trucks. The RTR X 4.6 took everything I could throw at it. Badly landed jumps, and hard rollovers. I managed to keep from running head on into anything, but other than that I abused the truck pretty hard.
Over all, HPI has managed to up the racing capability of the Savage while maintaining its bash-ability. The X 4.6 RTR is a step forward in the evolution of the savage in my opinion.
After writing the bulk of this review, and having not yet posted it, The 2007 Northeast Bashfest came around. I took the new X 4.6 RTR to that and really handed out some punishment. After a full day of backflips, long jumps, missing the take off ramp completely, and other abuse, the only things I broke were a couple dog bones, a minor little bend of the TVP under the fuel tank, and 1 after market engine.
Bashfest Aftermath Thread
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Average Score: 1.5
Votes: 4
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