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Old 2010.10.20, 01:51 PM   #1
deloreanaka8
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Maisto/Fast Lane Monster Drift car

Hello guys.
I'm here to give my review about what I think it's a really nice toy.
The Monster Drift car is the typical recepie for a common drift rc car, it's basically a 4WD chassis with plastic tires on.
But what makes it special? Read along to find out.

When I was at one of my usual visits to my local Toys'R'Us shop I stumbled across what seemed to be a nice almost Mini-Z scaled toy car, so far so good, but what made me look twice was the fact it said "Drift" in the box... -"Wait a minute.."- I said -"Drift? This thing drifts?... How much for it?"- I looked down and got impressed with the fact it only costed 14.99€ (~$21USD) as a RTR, so I looked for different bodies and concluded there are 2 bodies, a orange and a blue one.


Each body resembles bits of real common drift cars, and there are also 2 different frequencies, 27mhz for orange car and 40mhz for the blue.
After a bit of wondering around (and quite a bit of making fun of it, I admit) I bought a orange car, since it was only under 15€ even if it didn't really drift I would have something to fool around.

At home I took it out and had a better look, the car did brought a cone but I didn't really use it.


The radio uses a 9v battery and the chassis uses the same as a Mini-Z, 4 AAA batteries.
It's kind of nice to see the antenna in a straw like real RC cars, that was a nice touch imo.
When I had my 1st trial run I used disposable batteries and I felt the motor didn't had much power to perform, but after using a rechargable 1000mA set I was sliding like crazy.
This thing can really drift like it said in the box, thanks to it's real 4WD drivetrain and plastic tires.
The only thing I didn't like much was the steering only working as full-lock, but that was already expected since this is a toy.

After having my 1st tries I wanted to see how did such a cheap toy featured real working 4WD, so I decided to have a closer look taking off the shell.

Did you notice the batteries are in the same position as the older MR-01 and MR-015 Mini-Z? Hehe.


But that didn't work much, only thing I noticed was the front wheels were spining even when I jammed the rear ones so I actually got afraid of have ruined it.
It turns out that, after having unbolten the chassis, this thing actually has a one-way gear at the front and a direct sprocket at the back.
Both of these gears drive solid axles with no suspension what so ever. (tbh you don't need it either)
There is no servo, the reason why you only get full-lock is due to having another motor directly rotating a pinion into a steering rack turning the front wheels.
There's a spring pushing the wheels into a neutral position, it's primitive and not the best but it functions and it's cheap to produce.


The 4WD distribuition is made by another solid axle.
When you look the complete system you can clearly say this was designed to be as simple and cheap as possible, and I think the fact they put a one-way gear just made it one step above a toy line.


A funny part I noticed was the board being the same size as the pcb of the Mini-Z, of course it doesn't mean it's better than any other regular rc toy car available out there, just made me wonder how much this was somewhat based on the Mini-Z.


After doing this, I put it all back together and set off to a few more corners.
Unfortunatly the measurements weren't taken on time as I already gave the body to a friend, but I concluded this 1/24 scale car has 102mm of wheelbase (yup, as long as a Nascar body) and it's about as wide as the front of a Enzo body.

Likes:
-Very cheap and looks nice
-It really drifts like said in the box
-The string antenna in straw like real RC cars
-It's a really tough car, I slammed it hard sometimes and it didn't break

Dislikes:
-Only delivers full power with 1000mA AAA batteries
-The full-lock steering sometimes messes up
-Due to only having 2 frequencies available (27mhz/40mhz) you can only race a 2nd car from the other band

And finally for a little observation, I had this thing running for a full 20 minutes under water without the body and it never died.
It had no grip but it just kept going even in some places where it was completly submerse, just amazing.
I didn't get to take a good picture of it nor a video, but I'm getting a 2nd car so I might do that later for you to see.


Hope you have enjoyed this review as much as I enjoyed doing it.
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