sevin7
Active Member
I drove my new Notorious for the first time last night. My previous driving experience includes: 4x4 Arrma Senton (brushed version), E-revo 2.0, Stampede 4x4 VXL, Rustler VXL, Slash 4x4 VXL monster truck with Castle MMX and 1512 motor (and every other upgrade you can think of). I used a single 6 cell SMC battery with a 100 watt hour capacity. The total run time was far shorter (~12 minutes) than my uber slash (~20 minutes) using a single 4 cell gensacearespammers with a 108 watt hour capacity (the uber slash weighs 9 lbs fully loaded vs ~12 lbs fully loaded for the notorious). I was driving on short grass and gravel and did a few speed runs in a large open parking lot but was trying to avoid running on pavement to prevent tire wear. After the run I measured my motor at 170 degrees with a temp gun. I will be installing the yeah racing dual heatsink fan as this temperature is dangerously close to causing damage. The stock center diff fluid (100k) is far too light, no matter what terrain I drove on a huge amount of power was lost to the front wheels. I was not impressed by the top speed or acceleration because I'm used to my uber slash and its significantly faster. To be fair I bought most of the uber slash used, but if I had paid for it new including all the parts it would cost about $1,200 and the notorious is $500. The main reason I bought the notorious is because my uber slash monster truck has some breakage issues with the type of off road driving and jumping that I do (even the most expensive upgraded parts still break) and I was hoping that the notorious would be faster in grass because of the larger tires (compared to 2.8" badlands MX28 on my slash) and higher ground clearance (my slash uses a LCG chassis). The notorious was not any faster than the uber slash in grass and it accelerated much slower likely due to the power loss to the font wheels. I'm going to put 500k or 1 million weight diff fluid in the center diff ASAP and I hope that will resolve the problem but I'm pretty certain it will harm durability because having a tighter center diff will make it harder to transfer power to the opposite end of the car making drive line components more likely to break (the notorious doesn't have a slipper clutch to absorb impacts, which is both good and bad as slippers can be very irritating). Another thing I didn't like about my uber slash is it traction rolls pretty easily even on grass because I had to make the springs very stiff to give it the needed ground clearance (due to small tires and LCG chassis) for where I drive. The notorious has more ground clearance than the uber slash with its default configuration that includes a little bit of static sag due to the spring preload adjustment (which is a good thing). The notorious is 4 inches wider than my uber slash (my slash is much wider than a normal one) which made it incredibly stable and it never traction rolled even when I pushed it super hard to see if it would. I'm very pleased with the handling of the truck. The stock tires on the Notorious are excellent, I don't think there are any aftermarket tires that I would like better. The backflip tires not only have great traction (just like the badlands), but they are better than any offroad tires from Proline that I'm aware of (I've used trenchers, badlands, and badlands MX) because they are ribbed on the inside to prevent massive ballooning, any Proline tires are going to balloon like crazy at speeds in excess of 30 MPH. I don't like installing my own tires or taping to prevent ballooning and taping can often result in the tape coming undone. The only downside of the stock tires is I'm pretty sure they will wear very quickly on the road, I wish they were a copy of the proline badlands MX series (MX38 in this case) as they offer the same traction with far better tread wear. The power delivery on the notorious was not nearly as smooth as my uber slash and the way that reverse worked was terrible (large delay before hitting reverse then it was way to fast and sensitive), but I'm comparing a $500 truck with stock components to a top of the line sensored castle system ($250 just for the motor and ESC) that was programmed to work exactly how I want (including 30% reverse speed). I'm considering swapping out the stock receiver and remote with the Traxxas TSM receiver and remote to let me use the Traxxas self righting feature (It can be used with any motor and ESC), my main concern about this is the Traxxas receiver uses a large antenna and I'm not sure if it will fit in the notorious receiver box, but I think I will give it a try soon. I jumped the notorious about 20 times, the largest jumps resulted in about 15 feet of flying forward and about 5 feet of ground clearance. I did a few back flips and had a few bad landings. The notorious responded much slower to wheel spin than my slash when in the air (meaning it was harder to make it rotate forwards or backwards by spinning the tires); I think this is because the notorious tires are much lighter relative to the overall vehicle weight compared to the uber slash. The notorious was very stable in the air and felt very balanced, much more so than the uber slash. I had a few landings that would have broke something on most stock vehicles, especially all of the Traxxas ones I've drove (including the E-revo 2.0).
For $500 the notorious is awesome. The included center diff fluid is a major disappointment, I'm not sure why Arrma thinks its acceptable other than they might be doing it for durability purposes (because a tighter diff likely means more drive train failures). The instruction manual is complete garbage compared to Traxxas manuals. The $450-$500 Arrma 8th scale cars offer massively more bang for your buck than the $400 Traxxas 4x4 brushless 10th scale cars and currently I think they are better than the $550 E-revo 2.0 because it has a lot of issues (my friend has one and I've used it and seen all the problems he has had). The E-revo 2.0 has more advanced electronics (and more problematic), a much better center diff out the box (they call it a torque-biasing center drive), a "cush drive" (advanced slipper clutch that works really well), and a very strong wing and wing mount (I hear the wing mount sucks on the notorious). However, the E-revo 2.0 stock tires tend to shred very easily (other than shredding they are good, but what good are shredded tires), the ESC has critical problems for a lot of people (my friend has to get his replaced after the 2nd drive), the rod ends constantly fail, the drive shafts constantly pop out, the body pops off sometimes, the center drive shaft is plastic, the chassis is plastic (and higher center of gravity which results in worse handling), it uses 2 garbage servos (silly design by Traxxas), it requires 2 batteries of a very specific size (compared to extremely versatile Arrma battery tray). The e-revo 2.0 is also the only Traxxas 8th scale offering (and they moronically still call it a 10th scale car... there is the UDR but its kind of in a different class and the Summit is a brushed crawler). Arrma offers a bunch of different 8th scale offerings (with the Kraton being most like the e-revo), which is another reason why I went with Arrma - because I wanted the short wheelbase and Traxxas doesn't even offer that (they retired the E-Maxx, I bet it will be replaced soon, the old one is terrible by 2018 standards).
I already ordered t-bone front and rear bumpers. I plan on removing the stock wing and wheelie bar and cutting the wing mount to let me utilize a normal 8th scale body because I hate the look of the stock body. I thought maybe I would like it more in person as I had never seen it in person (I saw the outcast in person and I really hate it), but I was wrong, I will get a new body soon. I'm not a fan of old cars or trucks, I like modern so I'm going to get a modern truck body or a Jeep body.
Also, here is a picture of the uber slash I was referring to above:
For $500 the notorious is awesome. The included center diff fluid is a major disappointment, I'm not sure why Arrma thinks its acceptable other than they might be doing it for durability purposes (because a tighter diff likely means more drive train failures). The instruction manual is complete garbage compared to Traxxas manuals. The $450-$500 Arrma 8th scale cars offer massively more bang for your buck than the $400 Traxxas 4x4 brushless 10th scale cars and currently I think they are better than the $550 E-revo 2.0 because it has a lot of issues (my friend has one and I've used it and seen all the problems he has had). The E-revo 2.0 has more advanced electronics (and more problematic), a much better center diff out the box (they call it a torque-biasing center drive), a "cush drive" (advanced slipper clutch that works really well), and a very strong wing and wing mount (I hear the wing mount sucks on the notorious). However, the E-revo 2.0 stock tires tend to shred very easily (other than shredding they are good, but what good are shredded tires), the ESC has critical problems for a lot of people (my friend has to get his replaced after the 2nd drive), the rod ends constantly fail, the drive shafts constantly pop out, the body pops off sometimes, the center drive shaft is plastic, the chassis is plastic (and higher center of gravity which results in worse handling), it uses 2 garbage servos (silly design by Traxxas), it requires 2 batteries of a very specific size (compared to extremely versatile Arrma battery tray). The e-revo 2.0 is also the only Traxxas 8th scale offering (and they moronically still call it a 10th scale car... there is the UDR but its kind of in a different class and the Summit is a brushed crawler). Arrma offers a bunch of different 8th scale offerings (with the Kraton being most like the e-revo), which is another reason why I went with Arrma - because I wanted the short wheelbase and Traxxas doesn't even offer that (they retired the E-Maxx, I bet it will be replaced soon, the old one is terrible by 2018 standards).
I already ordered t-bone front and rear bumpers. I plan on removing the stock wing and wheelie bar and cutting the wing mount to let me utilize a normal 8th scale body because I hate the look of the stock body. I thought maybe I would like it more in person as I had never seen it in person (I saw the outcast in person and I really hate it), but I was wrong, I will get a new body soon. I'm not a fan of old cars or trucks, I like modern so I'm going to get a modern truck body or a Jeep body.
Also, here is a picture of the uber slash I was referring to above:
