Thunder Tiger EB4 S3 RTR 1/8 Scale Buggy
So I ended up with the Thunder Tiger EB4 S3 RTR 1/8 scale buggy from RC Car magazine as a "feel the love gift" for some articles I did. Honestly I don't think anyone else wanted it, but hey don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
The RC Car review blasted the buggy for a ton of things of which I can say were all true. As brutal of a review as that was they were being kind. The Thunder Tiger EB4 S2 is pretty much a giant piece of junk that at even at $300 it's overpriced. The motor and RX/TX are good, but everything else is really scraping the bottom of the barrel with quality.
This looks pretty much part for part like my Yusa. The bad news and very sad part is that the Yusa is a much higher quality build and I only paid $79.99 each for those. The EB4 doesn't even have sway bars, or adjustment nuts on the links and has fixed tension on the servo saver. The chassis braces are all plastic not metal like my Yusa. It's like Thunder Tiger took a decent cheap roller chassis and then stripped it of everything good.
With one way grub screws as links and without dual threaded adjustment nuts on any links the Thunder Tiger it was/is a nightmare to tune, so much so that at a point RC Car kind of just gave up on trying to tune the thing. It is tunable, however it's a pain and the factory settings are just stupid. Why Thunder Tiger didn't just have one of their factory drivers set one up and just copy that setting on the production units baffles me. I would say unless you are desperate, strapped for cash, and have an "anything will do just get me a buggy" mental moment, the Thunder Tiger is a poor choice. Honestly I am not really sure what Thunder Tiger was thinking since they make such solid motors. On that the motor is a tank and assuming you do take the pain and weather the agony to tune the S3 it will run and run and run and will probably outlive the chassis.
I did a partial tear down side by side with one of my Yusa rollers. The problem as I see it is that other than the aluminum front hubs everything else would be a downgrade if I started moving parts to the Yusa.
FYI - RC Car flogs their test vehicles viscously - none of that snap a pic and write and article garbage that apparently occurs in other magazines. The Thunder Tiger unit they sent over had a bent deck, front shock tower, caster link, both front shock shafts were bent and the tires were bald. I of course straightened everything out and will simply just flog this thing until something breaks.
No bad for free, $200 maybe, but I wouldn't waste my money on it at $300-400 retail.
THE REAL STORY
Ode to Burnout
The Nitro Therapy Buggy
Since my first article with RC Car magazine the beginning of 2007, they have kept me busy... very busy. In fact in the last couple months I have had just enough time to complete article specific RC projects. My list of project ideas, parts, and targeted RCs continues to grow, however my "just for fun" RC time seemingly vanished. I love RC, writing, testing, and creating, however lately it felt like work and that's a very bad thing indeed - I was burnt out.
The un-intended solution came in a two-phased format. The first part of a solution was an agreement made with my wife. If we went to iHobby, no RC hobby work for two weeks. In light of my current state of mind that wasn't tough to agree to. I also asked Stephen (the editor of RC Car magazine) if I could skip a month and pick up in December. The break was really nice.
Sensing I was on the verge of being RC'ed out, Stephen fired over the Thunder Tiger ED4 PRO RTR Nitro 1/8 scale buggy at the end of my second RC free week. If you know me at all you know that I am a brushless guy, and generally consider Nitro to be a giant pain in the ... well you get the idea. Secondly, if you read the scathing Thunder Tiger EB4 review, you know there are a number of things that make the EB4 kinda suck. The used, abused and tested EB4 was even worse as delivered. Both front shock shafts and the front shock tower were bent, the deck was actually torque twisted (presumably from the same wreck) and the speed of the steering servo made you want to throw the whole RC through a wall. Even after straightening out all the bent parts and replacing the bald tires, the Thunder Tiger was definitely in the beater category of RCs with little hope of a return to perfection. Give me a break it doesn't even have a body. Stephen knew that, and knew that this was what we term a therapy car. A therapy car is one you have no emotional attachment to, in fact, you kind of hate it. It generally starts perfectly, goes mildly fast, and begs you to break something. This is the type of car you would attempt to jump your house with.
I don't like nitro, I really don't. Its loud, dirty, inefficient, takes 5 minutes to warm up, and another 5 to tune, and yet another 5 minutes of pulling the glow plug and adding a drop of oil in the cylinder after you are done... and let's not even get into cleaning the air filter. However, I must admit, it you are going to take out your frustrations and get a little therapy, all of the above is the perfect solution. Loud, dirty and painful is how I like to let it all out and screaming full throttle with a stinky cloud following was just what I needed.
I used the Thunder Tiger for a snowmobile on the hard packed snow for a cold but tolerable couple weeks of a Nebraska winter. Ridden hard and left wet comes to mind and a testament the Thunder Tiger motor, it started every time.
After about a month of beating the heck out of the Thunder Tiger, I Ebay'ed the POS... yeah it was that bad, but it did sell quick. ;)
