HengGuan Mercedes G63 6x6 Review

[BoyFreakWonder]

I have been wanting a G63 6x6 for a very long time even contemplating building a body but my skills are not up to par. Soooo... I bought it.
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Its a really big, same size as a RC4WD Beast 6x6. I actually mounted the body on top and it looks like it could work as well.
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The seller was good and shipping was fast. I didn't get it from fleaBay they want to much for this kit. The bad things are the charger is not set up for american outlets and the battery is a useless 2 cell (she needs more powar)
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I tested it and it ran fine. I took off the electronics and slapped on the Farcry esc I had on the side from RC4WD so I could run the better battery pack.
Stock
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Upgrade
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And now just extra pics.
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The chassis rails are plastic with some metal bracing. This makes it very flexible in the rear. I will see what type of bracing will work to negate that. I will open up the axles and transmission and see what probably needs to be upgraded in a bit. Overall Im not disappointed for what I paid for it.

[jebster]

Been waiting to see someone get this truck and check it out. I'm really interested in the transmission layout and the axles.

[Gula]

Yeah the tranny layout is pretty cool!

[Szczerba]

Glad to see some more pictures of this rig popping up.

[BoyFreakWonder]

Here are more things that I found on this car that I don't like. The shocks are bad. They are lubricated with a really tacky grease. I replaced them with 120 mm shocks and all is good plus I gained 1 cm clearance up front. The drive axles are not the standard 5mm we have on most of the 1/10 scale vehicles, they are 4mm. You can make an adapter with 5mm x.45 pipe. I tested it and all 5mm opening drive shafts work perfectly. So if you brake the drive shaft you aren't SOL. Also be careful with the types of beadlock wheels you will use because the front knuckles will rub with 1.9 axial beadlocks. I tested some 1.9 rc4wd ones and they are fine. I also opened up the axles a few days ago and replaced all 30 brass bushings with bearings. It spins very freely now. The transmission is wonderful but it does not have a sliper clutch. I'm sure we can find one that fits but the axial one doesn't fit, I tried. even with all this I personally still like the car and welcome the challenge of all the quirks.
Here are the innards of this rig.
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Btw the body fits perfectly on the rc4wd beast or k-2 chassis so you could always just buy the body and slap it on that as well.
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[BigSki]

I like the trans and axle design. How does does the overall quality seems to be?

[jebster]

The pass thru axle setup is nice. Probably not built for mad power I would guess.

Thanks for the pics of the tranny. I do like that setup also. Is the high/low switching pretty smooth? I'm wondering if you could drop a servo in and operate it remotely.

[wings_of_fire]

so much plastic!

[g-jero]

Where did you buy it ? Link ?
It looks like something I should have :-) .

[BoyFreakWonder]

Quality is a about as good as axials stock stuff. Plastic helps make it light compared the the beast rc4wd made and it has metal where it counts. I bought mine thru aliexpress. Took the plunge and the seller was good. The seller was USLC international limited. Don't blame me tho if the sale goes south sometimes dealing direct with China sellers is difficult.

[smokinloon]

Any updates on durability and performance?

[BoyFreakWonder]

Quality is really good. Stuff is made out of plastic but its holding out well. For example the driveshafts. They are the stock plastic ones. By now my axial plastics would be toast or have a twist but these are still in running order. I installed a brushless motor on it, will return with results later. The main issue with this rig is the shaft size. They are 4mm compared to the 5mm other scale companies use and no slipper clutch. That shaft is to small and I can't find one that fits.

[makaveliks]

Looks neat. Looks like you could easily make that transmission shift with a servo on a 3rd channel also.

[Olli23]

Originally Posted by BoyFreakWonder

The main issue with this rig is the shaft size. They are 4mm compared to the 5mm other scale companies use and no slipper clutch. That shaft is to small and I can't find one that fits.

Hallo,
i have the same car, and i think it is good for the money. For the shafts you can use Traxxas parts TRA1539R, they are for 4mm shafts.
My esc die at the weekend, what Brushless you are use?

[smokinloon]

Maby try bearings with a 5mm hole and use some scx shafts, what does the inner end of the shaft look like? Squared off like axial or splined like tamiya?

[Nohabfsg]

I id get my HG601 6x6 2 weeks ago. The shell was damages in shipping but they have told me they will send me a new one. The steeringservo was not working. But I was interested to test this new car to us crawlers in Sweden.

In any way I have made the following changes/ modds. 1) motor to a silvercan Tamiya 27T, 2) Pinjong from the standard 28T, which made the car very slow, to a 32T. Now it works as I want it. It goes quite well in step terrain. 3) swapped the bad servo to a TowerPro 995G.

I have a few questions to the tread-owner:
1) How do you measure the length of the shocks? Mine are standard 100mm center to center mountinghole. I think the standardones are a bit hard. The grease inside is horrible. I have ordered 110mm internelshocks. But you use 120mm.
2) Bearings: Do you have a list of the sizes of bearings? It would be very appreciated so we can order new bearings. I Always buy bearings from RCBearings Ltd in England. Collin may not have such a list yet.

It would be nice to know more about the shafts and what you have done so far. I see a possibility to build nice good scalecrawlers based on Axial SCX10 chassiframe and most of the other parts, axels etc from this HengGuan cars. It is easy to make cars this way with the c/c axes 348mm - can be nice farmertrucks.

Hope to hear from you
Björn
Sweden

[Hammer!]

It does actually look relatively to a stock scx10, don't know about measurements but maybe that could be a reference for parts.

[Prop Shaft]

The thing i notice with this rig is that the axles look like they have a nice ratio. Nearing 4 to 1. You just dont find that in any other axles they all seem to be 2.xx to 1. Interesting indeed. Any idea what the exact ration on them are?

[BoyFreakWonder]

Hello guys, well to answer the questions. To our Swedish Bjorn total of 28-30 bearings. So total per axel is six 5x9x3mm and two 4x7x2.5mm. On the from knuckles you will need two 5x9x3mm and two 8x12x3.5mm. I went with 120mm shock because I had them on hand and they did not throw of the way the car handled. In regards to the esc I run the Holmes hobbies torquemaster w stock brushed motor on 3s battery's. The drivetrain is amazing but I did break my front knuckle and am having trouble getting spare parts. Axial don't fit sadly.

[Nohabfsg]

Thank you all for answers and information.
Bjorn