All the upgrade stuff is great, i.e. it's a great runner. It looks great and the tracks, wheels, suspension and gears/motors, hull, track tensioners are all excellent, very strong indeed and feel like they'd take anything I could throw at them. The most impressive bit was when I steered the wrong way, hit the coffee table and pushed it about a foot across the carpet! I've owned a Tamiya KT and this upgraded Tiger feels a lot more mechanically robust and less of a delicate model that the Tamiya did.
In fact let me add a bit more to that. The mechanicals are REALLY robust and the clever system for opening and closing the tank is a really great idea.
Another thing that really struck me is the fantastic quality of the Asiatam tracks. When I owned a Tamiya KT some years back (about 2003 I think), I got a set of Kenny Kong tracks and to be honest, I thought they were crap. They were pre-assembled and so poor (some pins loose, some links very stiff) that I had the take the whole lot apart and reassemble with a lot of cleaning up of the castings and swearing! Not only that but the metal was quite soft.
By comparison, the tracks from Dominique are very, very cleanly and accurately made from a really hard alloy of some type. Also the steel track pins are a great precision fit with a knurling on one end to secure the pin when pushed home. I don't doubt that getting them apart will be a bit of a bugger, but I'd sooner that than have them disassemble themselves, which is what those old KK tracks did before I rebuilt them.
That said, what's immediately obvious is that the Heng Long electronics let the side down rather so I guess they need to go next..... God I knew this would get expensive!
First to go will be the smoke unit. I'm not fussed about smoke and would rather use the space for a better speaker and more battery capacity. Oh and I've got to fit the unit that kills the silly tank recoil today.
One quick question for folks - I'm guessing the poor engine sounds are down to the HL electronics and not just the speaker?
All in all, dead pleased and having lots of fun!
