Picked up two 4x Pros (and SF4 F1) less than a month ago. Had a super fun time building them. Unfortunately, I was on a time crunch and had to get them ready for my first race in less than a week. I highly recommend never trying that. Trust me. Lol.
Review:
Instructions are pretty straight forward but you can’t totally appreciate the ingenuity that went into the car till you see the whole car together. Everything fits very well with tight tolerances except where there were bearings there was a bit of play like the centre pulley part between the holder, the rocker and the steering mechanism up and down. Works just fine but might get some very thin shims later.
Again, I was limited by time but the 3 parts of the build I was a bit worried about was the rear diff, heave shock and the roll shocks. But building them were easy but I had problems with leaking. In the diff, I had leaking coming from the sides of the 4 screws that hold the two parts together and between the edges of the 2 halves. That I blame myself not tightening the two halves together enough and I’ll use green slime on my rebuild. The main shock I also had leaking at the bleeder hole. I’m surprised that hole is only blocked off by a 3x5x1 shim held tight by a ball cup. I’m gonna add some very thick grease/anti-wear grease in there and tighten the ball cup even more. The roll damper was nice. No leaking and very easy to access to change things and to adjust tweak. Any advice for reducing the diff and shock leaking would be awesome.
Car is light. I didn’t know how light it was until I put all the electronics in. I’m using the stock carbon chassis (awaiting my aluminun chassis hopefully this week) and I had to add 50 grams of weight in my Modified car (5.0t Orca OE1) horribly in a stack on the electronics side and 70 grams of weight in my Stock car (21.5t Orca OE101) in a more horribly higher stack on the electronics side. I picked up a thin sheet of brass which I will cut to fit under the battery so esthetically it will look better and lower centre of gravity too. I didn’t weigh the carbon chassis but does anyone know the weight of the Carbon vs the Aluminum chassis so I can get the right weight of brass cut when I rebuild over the aluminum chassis? I think putting the brass under the battery would be the best placement. Advice?
Car drives awesome. I just used Joachim Bruneau’s setup on Petitrc (
http://site.petitrc.com/reglages/ser...Setup20190105/) cause I’m on high grip CRC carpet. Corner speed I think is on par with the Awesomematix’s at my club. I just need to figure the stock motor gearing setup and learn to figure out the mod settings on the Orca ESC and work on throttle control. Once I get the aluminum chassis I’ll rebuild the car (taking my time) and then I’ll start playing around with setup. I see a lot of potential.
Car is durable. I did break a small part cause I flew off the track and it hit a concrete corner not hard just awkwardly. I did have some screws come loose on my first 4-5 runs but I blame just building the car too fast and not checking on screw tolerances. I do notice the screws on the top deck a bit loose after each run but I’m probably not tightening them enough but I’m not sure how much tighter to hammer them down. I’m just worried going too tight and stripping the aluminum that the screws are going into. Anyone have any advice or use blue locktight on any screws?
I’ve had 1 race weekend and 1 club race on my cars and very happy with them. Could have tried any car but wanted to try something different. Happy with my decision. Not too worried about parts support cause either Serpent America or overseas like rcmarket are well stocked. I think the car is like when the Awesomatix first came out. A lot of interest but everyone was apprehensive until a good little community formed around them and now there’s great setup help and the car is probably the fastest in the club racer’s hand. I know it’s a boutique kind of car just hoping for little help here and there and for me to try different things to renew my interest in this hobby and this car is doing that for me.
Hope more onroad racers give this car a try. It’s a 180 departure from what I use to do and glad I got the 4x pro…..even with this new X20 car coming out. Also nice to see this forum with everyone helping out. It was some of these guys that answered my PM’s that also helped me make my decision to go with the 4x pro. Thank you.
May try the mid motor conversion in the future but I’ve already got my plate full with what’s in front of me already.
Ivan
ps. The Serpent F1 car is also a beauty!