BEHIND THE WHEEL

I’m usually not a fan of battery trays with Velcro straps because I end up fighting to keep the straps from sticking or the straps are too long or too short for my preferred battery setup. Not so here; the straps don’t stick to each other, and their length is perfect. Some of my expectations for the Typhon’s performance were set by my experience with the Arrma’s 1/8-scale truck models. I found that the center-diff fluid was a bit on the light side in those vehicles, and that prevented the power system from getting everything to the ground properly. That’s not the case with the Typhon. I mashed the throttle and all four tires spun equally. The buggy’s speed blew my mind as it effortlessly accelerated to 63mph in speed-run testing on the street. “Effortlessly,” as in the car had all the power it needed; handling-wise, the ride was a little on the wild side as the firm-compound tires allow some slip, especially on dusty sections of road. With its overall light weight (by

1/8 standards) and quick-spinning buggy-sized wheels and tires, the Typhon takes little effort from the power system to get it moving, and the steering servo has no trouble changing heading and doing it quickly. I noticed the suspension is a little bit on the stiff side for rough-terrain off-roading on my backyard track. The shocks felt great on pavement, but the bumps and imperfections in my backyard tossed the buggy around quite a bit. The good news is that if you hold onto the throttle and do a little countersteering the buggy pulls itself out of trouble. The small tire tread felt at home in the packed-dirt sections and even did a good job of providing grip on the loose stuff. Sure, more grip in the loose dirt would be nice, but this isn’t a race buggy, and in the end, the lack of grip here and there isn’t a big deal. I ended up hitting some jumps and the suspension did a better job of absorbing the landings than it did on the smaller bumps; landings were controllable. At the end of my test session, I put my hand by the vents in the body and felt the heat from the electronics. Even though nothing overheated and everything ran perfectly during my testing, I still took the time to put a few vent holes in the font of the body to allow more air to enter the body and draw the heat out.