After enjoying the TLR 22-4 2.0, and its quirks, I decided to try another unusual vehicle. Ofna was a company that was around a few years back, and they sold the Hobao Hyper TT under their brand and called it the Hyper 10TT.
Well, Ofna is no longer around, but Hobao has decided to sell their vehicles directly in the U.S., so they brought back the Hyper TT. It originally came out in 2010 and is now currently sold by Tower Hobbies again.
Overview:
The Hyper TT is a 1/10 scale Truggy, which is basically a 4WD stadium track. It's a close cousin to the Hyper 10SC and the mini-ST that used to be sold. They are essentially the same vehicles, with different length chassis and different bodies, but use the same arms, drivetrain, shocks, steering, etc. So about 90% of the parts are interchangeable.
Now, this truck is really the only vehicle in its class. Nobody makes 1/0 scale truggies. The Traxxas Stampede can be converted into something similar, but has nowhere near the performance of the Hyper TT. Trust me, I've had a Stampede truggy, and the high-center gravity chassis makes it fairly unsuitable for racing/track applications.
Build: N/A
The Hyper TT comes as either an RTR or 80% almost ready-to-run (ARR), which means the rolling chassis is pre-built. I chose the latter and added my own electronics and glued up my own tires (it comes with wheels and tires unmounted) and painted the body. The kit was reasonably well built by the factory, the only thing I would suggest is to make sure you thread-lock all of the screws threaded into metal. They don't use loctite on most of them, and I found my steering post screws backed out.
Design: 5
The Hyper TT is essentially a 1/8 scale buggy scaled down. It's got a 1/8 style drivetrain utilizing 3 diffs (front, center, rear), steel Mod 1 gears, dogbones down the center of the aluminum chassis, and a centralized motor on one side and the battery on the other. It also uses pillowball suspension, which is the only 1/10 scale vehicle I know of that features this.
The drivetrain is extremely durable and loud and is probably the highlight of this truck. It's got steel dogbones in the rear and CVA's in the front. I ran a 4500kv 4-pole SMC Racing motor on 2S and it could definitely take more power. I think there are guys out there running 3S with no problem. The drivetrain is very beefy.
The pillowball suspension up front is a first for me, and honestly I'm not really a fan of it. There's no camber link adjustment to modify roll centers, so you have to rely on springs and ride height. The pillowballs are beefy steel units, but the arms and steering knuckles are pretty fragile. More on that later.
The steering is a little archaic, and there's not enough Ackermann built into the steering at full lock. This makes the truck not able to carve around sharp 180's very well, and I think it's more suitable to a medium sized track. Unfortunately, the Ackermann is not adjustable.
Overall, I like the general idea of scaling down a 1/8 scale platform to make a beefy little truck, but some of the design choices could have been better, namely the pillowball suspension.
Performance: 5
The out of the box setup is rather poor, and there are definitely some changes you need to make to the factory setup.
The shocks are actually reasonably good units -- they're full aluminum small bore shocks with bladders. Not my favorite design, but they're smooth and don't leak and work fine. The front silver springs are too stiff, and there is too much damping, so definitely get yourself some Losi black or blue springs and lower the shock oil wt. In the rear, the springs are actually way too soft -- Losi blue is the firmest I could find that fit, and are a lot better, but maybe still a little too soft. Rear shock damping is ridiculously stiff, go with 25wt or 27.5wt Associated oil.
In the front, you need to ditch the front swaybar and add a little toe-out, and then you'll have a decent amount of steering and can move onto more tuning.
The truck jumps OK -- it tends to jump nose-high to me, I'm not sure why, and landing is adequate. While the drivetrain is beefy, throttle control is a little iffy because there is a fair amount of slack in the drivetrain. So it's hard to be precise with the throttle and braking application.
I have to say that the performance feels a little bit dated to me. The truck originally came out in 2010 and it doesn't quite have the super taut, connected feeling that today's vehicles have.
There's also a fair amount of pitch front/back due to the short wheelbase and vast amount of power most guys run. This isn't really the truck's fault, but it would be nice if the design allowed you to dial in more anti-dive or anti-squat.
So overall, I have to give the truck a mediocre score. It's not great, it's not terrible, it's OK once you do some tuning.
Durability: 1
Honestly, this is my main issue with the truck. It is extremely fragile. It was fragile back in 2010, but fast-forward 6 years, and today's vehicles are super durable, and this truck feels like it's made of glass by comparison. I pretty much break something every time I run the truck, which is a shame, because it's pretty fun to drive.
On the first battery pack, I broke the steering knuckles. The second time I drove it I broke an upper arm. The same day I was there, another kid broke the front top plate/hinge pin brace. The third time I drove the truck, I broke a rear arm.
Fortunately, there are some upgrades you can make to the truck to make it more durable, but no matter what, the arms will still periodically break, so just expect that.
Durability upgrades that are pretty much mandatory:
- Aluminum steering knuckles. Integy still makes them, and STRC used to.
- Aluminum top plate. Made by Hobao, Integy, STRC. The top plate also functions as the top hingepin mount, and that's the part that will crack.
- T-bone Racing front bumper. If you lawn dart this truck, this bumper will go miles towards preventing breakages.
- Boil all of the arms and the rear hub carriers. I did find that this helps quite a bit and softens the plastics so they are more resilient.
On the plus side. the body and molded plastic wing are quite thick and durable and I suspect will hold up very well in the long run.
Value: 5
At $219, the Hyper TT seems like an amazingly good deal. I mean, where else can you get these kind of specs for $200? Aluminum chassis and shock towers, fully aluminum shocks, pillowball suspension, front and rear gear diffs with a center diff. Wheels, tires, body, wing all included!
But once you start going through the truck, you notice where Hobao cut some corners. The steering rack uses bushings. The rear driveshafts are dogbones. They use self-tapping screws to mount the servo. The turnbuckles have holes in them instead of square/hex shaped so you can't use a standard turnbuckle wrench. It uses battery straps. The shock towers are cast pieces. The plastics are brittle. The body clips are a joke. The wheel nuts should be tossed directly into the trash.
At the end of the day, you're going to have to spend $20 on new turnbuckles, $30 for aluminum durability parts, $15 for a bumper, and about $30 in spare parts for when things break. Throw in some miscellaneous wheel nuts and clips, and you're in for over $300.
This is about what it would cost to get a Stampede roller off eBay and build a similar truck. The Hyper TT will have better performance, but the Stampede will be way more durable. So kind of a wash.
Support: 3
There aren't a lot of places to get Hobao parts. Your local hobby store isn't going to carry parts, so you'll have to get stuff from the Internet. Hobao carries all the spare parts online, but the stuff ships from Taiwan and takes about 8 days to get to my house in California.
Dislikes:
Really the fundamental flaw with the Hyper TT is that it's not very durable. With upgrades, it's at least adequate and won't break every time you hit something, but I would still consider it not very durable. The steering has some geometry issues as well.
Conclusion:
If you want a 1/10 scale 4WD race-style stadium truck, this is pretty much the only game in town. The Stampede is the closest competitor, but can't touch the Hobao performance-wise. I can't really recommend the truck for most people because it just isn't very durable. But if you want something unique, and you're OK will being your own parts warehouse, the Hobao is fun to drive and pretty cool.
I always get people asking me about the truck whenever I bring it out to the track, because there really is nothing else like it.
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