HOBAO HYPER ST

You might question why I’m in such a state of disbelief. Perhaps I’ve stumbled across someone who actually laughed at my jokes, or could it be that Jonny has finally gone and found himself a girlfriend?! No, let’s not get stupid - in reality it’s the new HoBao Hyper ST that has me dumbfounded. Firstly because it’s actually here and secondly, because on initial impressions it looks like an outstanding bit of kit – one that will certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons in the ready-to-run truggy market.

AN OVERVIEW

HoBao certainly have a knack of producing reasonably priced kits with good specs and excellent durability, the question we want answered now though is, “does this new truggy follow suit”? It’s true the Hyper ST doesn’t exactly slap you in the face with the revolutionary tickle stick, but then what new kit does these days? This ST, like all good truggies, is based on the 1:8 rallycross buggy platform, specifically the Hyper buggy. Looking at it you can see a combination of both the Hyper 7 and 8 parts in there, as well as some brand new touches designed specifically for this truggy. As you’d expect, the Hyper ST has a three-diff set-up but the gearing has been altered in comparison to the buggy version to compensate for the larger truck wheels and tyres. It’s not quite as drastic as some truggies with HoBao opting to go for a 49-tooth spur gear in the centre and 11-tooth pinion gears in the front and rear diffs (standard buggies use a 52-tooth spur and 13-tooth pinions). While we talk about the diffs, it’s not hard to see in the pictures on the next page that the ones on the Hyper ST are encased by plastic shock towers, something we haven’t seen on a truggy before and an item which caused quite a stir when the first pictures of it were released. Many slammed the idea, but when you think about it logically (I am half Vulcan after all), plastic towers will actually be a lot tougher than cheap stamped aluminium which is what you’d traditionally see on a ready-to-run truggy and if you take kits like the Savage monster trucks as an example, the plastic towers on this take a right old pounding.

The unfortunate downside to this plastic encasing is it makes accessing the actual diffs a bit more of a task, especially at the front. With most truggies following the buggy design, you would expect to be able to whip a diff out pretty easily so whilst it’s not a real nightmare on the ST, you will find yourself removing almost twice as many screws to get in there. The front is worse as the shock tower and the top plate encasing the steering bellcrank is all one piece so you even have to go as far as removing the upper hinge pins to take this off. This could be a bit of an issue if you’re a keen racer and want to change your diff oil in-between heats, but for general maintenance it isn’t too much hassle and I opened up all three diffs to replace the standard grease in there with silicone oil in under a couple of hours. Incidentally the diffs were well packed out with grease to start with so if you don’t fancy tearing the ST apart straight away to do this, it will be fine but I strongly recommend you add some silicone oil in the not-too-distant future. I went with a 7-10-3 oil arrangement which seems to be a fairly popular standard set-up for this truck.

ALMOST THERE
The Hyper ST is available at the moment in two guises; the completely ready-to-run and version to be out later this year). We bagged ourselves the ‘almost’ version as this means you can build the shocks up yourself (and know what oil is actually in them) and of course add your own radio kit and engine. On the engine front though we used the new HoBao MacStar 28 which is the block that comes with the RTR version, being a new engine from HoBao themselves that follows in the footsteps of the legendary Hyper 21, but obviously has a cubic capacity of .28ci.

Installing the engine is easy enough with all the parts you require coming supplied. Interestingly the clutch shoes in this kit are a combination of a teflon material mounted on aluminium. I wasn’t too convinced by these, especially as some of the teflon seemed to be crumbling off, but giving HoBao the benefit of my doubts, I whacked them on regardless. A 13-tooth clutch bell is supplied to sit around the clutch and the engine adheres to the chassis via two sliding engine mounts. You’re supplied with two washers to increase the height of this for pull-start engines but you only require one if you’re using a bump-start engine. The mounts themselves are finned and machined from aluminium, but being sliding (i.e. the nyloc nut slides into the mounts) there is potential for the whole thing to move if it’s not done up super-tight. The enthusiastic guys on the MaxBashing forum have already discovered that the Hyper 8 mounts will fit if you elongate the mounting holes nearest the edge of the chassis by about 3mm.

SHOCKING NEWS

I built the shocks up using 30-weight shock oil and the instructions recommend using the new four-hole pistons supplied with the kit (rather than the two-hole ones normally used in the buggy shocks). These shocks are definitely a lot beefier than the buggy ones and utilise a 3.5mm shock shaft for extra durability. I read that some guys have opted to use the two-hole pistons and after a chat with HoBao team driver Rob Giles during our testing at the Clanfield Off-Road track, he informed me he’d drilled the four piston holes out to 1.5mm and was using 50-weight oil in the front and 55 in the rear. Considering Rob won the A final that day by two clear laps, this could well be a good set-up but I suspect his driving skills also had a significant part in that!

RADIO GEAR

The final thing to make this almost ready-to-run model finally ready to run, is to add the radio equipment. I initially opted to use a Hitec 625 for the throttle and brakes and a 945 for the steering, however when I first turned it on, the steering servo went “pif paf poof” and started smoking, so that went back to the hobby shop pronto and I picked up a Sanwa ERG-VZ at a very good price from MK Racing instead. The steering servo is mounted in a lay-down position and handily, HoBao have made a groove in the side guards, so you can get to the servo arm mounting screw very easily.

The throttle and brake servo is mounted with the use of some spacers to clear the slightly larger spur gear, and underneath the servo the mounts have brackets on them to channel the steering servo wire neatly into the receiver box, meaning there’s no risk of it being chewed up by the spur - very clever.

Talking of the receiver box, this is one thing that I found a little disappointing, as it’s straight out of the Hyper 7 and quite a dated item now. There’s no easy access as it’s screwed down with four hex head screws and the receiver battery pack is mounted outside, in fact as the side guards aren’t exactly fat on this, a hump pack or four AA batteries are left dangling over the side (as is the exhaust pipe on the other side).