HPI Baja 5B SS

When HPI launched the Baja 5B in the summer of 2006, it opened the large scale market right up by appealing to people that had never been a fan of fifth scale petrol powered kits. I was one of this new breed of users mainly due to the fact that for the first time, there was large scale kit that I really liked the look of! And you needed to really like it because with a street price of around £650, it’s a lot of wedge to shell out!

Despite this new generation of users, there are people in this hobby that only want a new RC kit if it requires building from the ground up and HPI have always recognised this by producing a Super Sport or SS version of their models that require just that. As a bonus, these kits come bundled up with a whole host of upgraded parts making the SS version a real Daddy of the range!

all you need

So here I am, faced with my second kit build of the issue and having just finished the Hot Bodies D4, I moved onto the Baja - you can hardly get two more extremes! This is instantly obvious when you look at the tools you’re using. I mainly used a 2mm Allen wrench with the D4 yet on the Baja you’ll find a 3, 4 or even 5mm Allen driver in your hand! Fortunately HPI know the Baja takes a bigger screw than your average RC and supply an excellent range of tools including drivers, spanners and a plastic moulded wrench that’s used for just about everything from tightening the wheel nuts to building the shocks. In fact they supply you with tools you never even know you needed like a plastic stud that fits under the A-arms and enables you to squeeze the metal balls in without mashing up the plastic arm with your pliers.

the hop-up parts

True to form, HPI have packed the Baja 5B SS with a shed load of upgraded parts, some of these, like the gun metal 8081 T6 aluminium chassis and the blazing orange aluminium parts, are strikingly obvious (hold on a moment while I do a small leap of joy over the fact that there are no purple aluminium parts here!). Okay that feels better, I’m starting to feel quite excited by all this now.

To heighten the anticipation and get you to the point of salivation, check out the new 26cc Fuelie engine! Offering over 10% more displacement than the original RTR engine and coming with a shiny tuned pipe plus a high RPM clutch, it’s bound to give this new SS version an even bigger kick! Other hop-ups in the SS kit include the highly essential metal geared steering servo, aluminium diff case, heavy duty dog bone drive shafts, revised rear shock tower brace, front and rear sway bars and newly designed VVC/HB shocks.

the build

Over the years I’ve built a fair few kits from quite a variety of manufacturers and from this I know that HPI usually make the build process pretty painless, although I started to doubt this as soon as I clocked the instruction manual. With 115 pages the manual is certainly in proportion to the size of this kit, more worryingly, by the time I’d got to the fifth step, I had five different bags open and the birth of one big mess!

Ripping open several different bags just to complete one stage isn’t normal for an HPI build and it really starts to slow the process down. An average kit build takes me between six and ten hours but I could see this was going to take at least twice that, especially as I kept stopping to take pictures of things. After taking the best part of one evening to build the front end which being 2WD didn’t even contain any drive train components, I started to think I’d never get it finished before the weekend and our planned testing session. So there was only one thing for it, I needed the help of an expert! As I couldn’t find one of these, I roped Nobby in and we abandoned the office leaving Tom, our designer, to no doubt play Scrabble on Facebook for the day!

With Nobby’s help, things really started to move forward – team work really was a marvellous innovation! By the time you reach the steering assembly, the overzealous use of plastic bags starts to die down but the plastic parts are still scattered all over the place and bundled in two huge bags. It’s hard to appreciate the makeup of this kit when you have the ready to run version, I was very impressed with the way bits started to take shape although this does mean you seem to use half a dozen plastic bushes, spacers or blocks just to make something like the steering knuckle!

Still, on we ploughed and soon had the front end attached to the main chassis with the servo saver steering cam in place. From here you move on to the middle of the buggy and things are looking a little more familiar as the modular make up of this kit becomes more obvious. The radio box is one unit and you build it up before dropping into the chassis and securing it with body clips which allows for easy removal in the future.

HPI kindly supply you with the large scale, metal geared steering servo but you need to provide your own throttle/brake servo, receiver and battery pack. With the Baja having a large engine and being such a big bit of kit, I went to town and used an ACE DS1015 servo for the throttle/brakes and luckily already had a 6V 4200mAh battery pack from Dave’s Discount Motors in the USA. HPI make two of their own battery packs you can use in place of this, the standard 2000mAh pack that comes with the ready to run version or a more powerful 3000mAh. This more powerful battery pack retails for £19.99, just £2 more than the standard one and I’d highly recommend using at least a 3000mAh pack because past experience with the less powerful battery has shown that it barely lasts the 45 minutes you can get out of a single tank of petrol and leaves you having to carry this behemoth back. Finally make sure you use a failsafe and FM radio kit or better skill a 2.4GHz system with any petrol kit as the two stroke engine produces RF noises that interferes with an AM radio leaving you with no control!

The 700cc fuel tank with its built in stone filter takes up the rest of the space in the tub chassis before you move onto building up the rear section. The back end of the Baja is all mounted on a piece of bright orange aluminium that secures to the main chassis and it’s only when this is in place do you start to get a true perspective on how big the Baja is – blimmin huge!