Exo Terra Buggy

I've been working on my Axial Exo Terra Buggy.  A 4WD R/C off-road buggy from the same manufacturer as the SCX10.  This is an awesome kit.  It has plenty of scale details, even details based of off and offically licensed from actual racing parts.  It even has an actual roll cage with body panels instead of just a full molded body shell.

The assembly process took a long time, but it was fun.  Getting the shocks together was my only snag (I'm not a fan or putting shocks together).  You can call me a geek for this, but I did take pictures during the process.  I might put them into a small video of sorts.  With this buggy, I ended up getting my first brushless motor setup.  It took me a little time to decide, researching on how brushless motors are rated, but I finally decided on the green of Castle Creations with a Mamba Max Pro ESC plus NeuCastle 4600KV motor combo.  I also picked up an extra Airtronics receiver for my MX-Sport 3ch 2.4GHz radio.  Didn't want to run my first brushless motor setup with the standard AM 75Hz radio band.  For the main body panels, I chose a metallic blue paint.  I did do one mod during the build: added 2 light buckets to the hood panel.  Unfortunately I did this after painting.  I don't really recommend doing that if you can help it.

After getting it together, electronics installed, and painted, I finally took it out for it's first run.

During my first run, the brushless setup was not bad.  I was actually expecting it to be a little to fast for me to handle.  But it wasn't.  I picked a lower KV motor to get the slower speed, and I don't have Lipo battery packs yet.  The battery I did put in is a Venom Group 5000mAh 7.2v NiMH pack.  And I'm using the stock gearing setup.  This actually seems like a good way to ease in to brushless, especially after reading up on how fast brushless motors can be.  I had fun driving.  Now I need to find some dirt to drive on.

Since the first drive, I have added a light kit.  That took a little bit of time to install.  I had to watch the wire routing and make a few holes bigger.  And this brings up the major downside of this buggy.  any kind of internal maintenance will be a lengthy process due to the roll cage.  To me this is definitely more designed to the basher/scaler over the full on race pro.  Mainly due to something breaking which give you some increased bench time.  I also added an Axial hub cover set.  It covers the screws and nuts that hold on the wheels, and I picked up a black set to match the wheels.

Over all, I recommend this kit if you like off road 4wd buggies, scale details, and assembling your R/C models.  But I do suggest having some R/C kit building experience first before tackling this R/C assembly kit.  If I get an opportunity to, I may pick up another one.