fun time

With a whooping 4900mAh in my receiver pack and the supplied two stroke oil mixed in with some normal petrol to a ratio of 25:1, we were ready for the off! There’s no major break in process required with a two stroke engine but it is advisable to take it easy for at least half the first tank. The temptation to gun it in this first 20 minutes was proving very hard to resist but we used the time wisely and pootelled around while Jonny snapped some action shots. We’d visited a bashing spot we regularly frequent with large scale kits as there’s plenty of room to let a kit of this size really open up. Needing a large and safe bashing spot is perhaps one of the downsides to this scale, you just can’t safely run it around your road or local park for fear of some fool getting in the way and being hurt.

With the engine bedded in, it was time to open the engine up to see what this gargantuan buggy had to offer and the first thing that’s noticeable is how good the acceleration is! There’s a crisp clean pull away that’s in a different league to the original ready to run Baja. Of course the bigger engine, tuned pipe and high RPM clutch were bound to make a big difference but the launch on this was comparable to my RB powered truggy! There’s certainly a different approach to driving a petrol engine as you aim to keep the revs up in its power band but the SS makes things easy for you by being able to get up to speed again very quickly, I was really starting to enjoy these upgrades!

Caning around the huge sand and loose gravel area we were at, dropping in and out of deep ruts certainly put the Baja’s suspension to the test as it soaked things up with pure suppleness and grace. The Baja was always a well planted bit of kit but the SS felt really glued to the terrain and flicking it round on the loose sand in a rear wheel drive drift was proving most fun and not a bad excuse for a day’s work if ever I had one!

I know rear wheel drive kits are supposed to be more fun and a bigger challenge but I’d always preferred the predictability of four wheel drive until I drove this. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be ditching my entry into the truggy nationals this year but out bashing the Baja certainly can’t fail to bring a huge grin to your face. It’s not fazed by stones or ditches, so instead of being thrown around, wheels akimbo, it consistently responds to what you’re doing and carries the motion of what you’d expect a real two wheel drive rally car to do.

We eventually moved on as the main pit we’d aimed to plummet in and out of was knee deep in water but there was an old air strip a bit further on and as we had the speed gun, I was keen to find out what speeds we could knock up on a flatter surface. We did several high speed runs clocking around 40 MPH each time and getting 43 MPH one time! It’s certainly quite a nerve racking experience to have something nearly a metre long coming hurtling straight at you and I had the controller in my hands! I think Jonny was muttering prayers to the ancient gods of naff RC drivers as he stood directly in its path with the speed gun. Still at least he could see it clearly which is more than he can do when he’s looking through a camera lens!

conclusion

As they say, all good things… and after a couple of hours of run time, we started to make our way back to the car but while Nobby and Jonny lugged the other kits back, I slung the D4 in my rucksack, topped the Baja up with some more fuel and drove it back annoying every dog walker out for a quiet stroll along the way because if there’s one benefit to the ready to run version of the Baja, it’s a lot quieter, although don’t kid yourself into thinking the noise from either of these won’t make you the centre of attention in a matter of moments. The combination of its size and noise will have every boy, teenager and passing bloke asking you those inevitable questions; how much does it cost? How fast does it go!

But you should bask in this glory though because the Baja 5B SS is something to be proud of. No matter what your normal preferred form of RC is, I’d bet good money on you enjoying every moment behind the wheels (or sticks) of this buggy. The petrol engine gives you the ease of use you’d expect from an electric kit yet the engine and its performance parts gives you the noise, grunt and odours that the majority of women just can’t get any thrill from!

The additional hop-ups are truly worthy editions to the Baja and make it a much more enjoyable kit, there’s even enough performance out of the box to make me feel confident about turning up at a race track with it and being competitive. But whatever your motive, you are looking at a good £700 to get a Baja 5B SS up and running so it’s not a cheap purchase and will probably take a lot of justifying in your mind. But if you are feeling the urge to go large, then spending your money on this kit won’t leave you wondering what on earth you’ve done, it’ll leave you wondering why you waited so long to do it!

Distributed in the UK by Mirage