LRP Shark 18 Monster Review, Part 3

Apart from the refilled shocks the LRP Shark 18 hits the track completely stock. Like with Kyoshos Inferno ST US Sports I can’t really think of anything worth improving for little money: There is nothing to upgrade on the Shark 18 Monster with ‘household items’, the desirable tuning can only be done with costly hop-up parts.

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... happened indoors. On the one hand I want to see how "home-track-worthy" the 1/18th offroader is with the stock setup, on the other hand I didn't feel like taking the Shark-18 outside at brass monkey weather.

Two things quickly stand out when racing through the well-heated rooms:

• LRP's mini-truggy handles swiftly and the tires got grip on lots of different surfaces (carpet, parquet …) except tiled floor.

• As an R/C indoor racer the Shark-18 is a little too fast unless you’re lucky enough to have a spare of 50-100 square metres of (loft-)space at your hand. Without that you’ll only be able to do some short stunt-runs (indoor furnishing-trial with a bit more speed ;-) )

At the second attempt (meaning recharged battery) the fun quickly had an end: The front left universal simply broke out of its yoke. The damage wasn’t really caused by motor-power but more by the inertia of the relatively big and heavy tire which spun after jumping a five-millimetre ramp and was then slowed down rapidly at the landing.

What does that tell us?

• When doing big (planned) airs you should always release the throttle… nothing new here.

• But with small unpredictable jumps like in (relatively!) rough terrain or with a harder suspension that trick won’t help – so what?

Our mini racer doesn’t have a slipper, so there only remains the possibility of buying the (not yet available) metal hop-up prop shafts (Nr. 112540 twice) which will cost about 80 Euro for the whole package. That’s more than half a new Shark 18 A-RTR!

Such news narrowed my enthusiasm about the good handling characteristics quite a lot. A pack of spare universals cost about 18 Euro, which isn’t really cheap, regarding their "offroad-" lifespan.
Furthermore these universals have to be assembled by hand, which can only be done when they have been pre-heated with a hot air-gun. At room temperature the plastic is too hard and likely to break in the presence of tools.

The sun is shining, the Shark 18 got back its four wheel-drive – time for the first outdoor session!
The indoor speed is put into perspective when we confront our Shark 18 Monster with a bigger playground: The acceleration of the truggy is moderate. Not slow, but it cannot be compared to a stock 1/10th either.

At least my car wasn’t able to reach the sticker-predicted ‘30+km/h’. But I do have to admit that I didn’t do any tailwind-downhill-slipstreaming for my speed runs …
But, all jokes aside, this speed might be reached on a flat even surface and with a freshly-charged battery, but the Shark 18 Monster is an offroader, isnt’ it?

Apart from that the Shark 18 Truggy scores big time with its precise and swift handling which can largely be accredited to the well-matched tires. The hard profile can lock itself into thready ground (short lawn, carpet) while the tire and the foam is soft enough to give when confronted with harder surfaces.
Together with the kit motor and the quite weak 600mAh battery the chassis hasn’t reached its limits by far, so there remain lots of potential for stronger motors and batteries (then the metal universal shafts should be installed at the latest!)

Off-road – which can easily be short lawn for the Shark 18 Monster – the suspension works really well. So well that the truggy glides over most of the bumps instead of lolloping all over the place like I would have expected.
With regard to the prop shafts the Shark 18 Monster was spared any "hard" and broken surfaces like dry crackled mud or such.

But we gave our best at testing the flight characteristics. Jumping and landing the LRP Truggy could be called ‘no worries’ whatsoever. In the air it can be swiftly controlled by revving up (nose lifts) or braking (nose dives).
The weight balance between servo plus motor and battery, ESC and receiver is a bit on the left side, but that doesn’t really matter in (flight-)practice. Let’s put it this way: Quite a number of things have to go sour before the Shark 18 Monster has to wave its PTO-flag.
All in all the performance is impressive and makes you go for more! For a first step this could be a quicker mini-servo to enhance the remarkable handling. (the standard servo cranks along quite unhurriedly) More battery capacity would also be recommended, especially offroad – because runtime is quite limited with the 600 milliamp-calibre, without even warming motor and ESC too much. With LRPs VTEC-label you will get up to 1400mAh which will more than double the runtime.

LRPs Shark 18 Truggy took the test session pretty well, without really wearing out. There is a little more play in the suspension but this can be quickly eliminated thanks to the PBS.

The suspension travel-limiters that press onto the chassis from below did not work out: by and by (and depending on the track) they are slowly ground away, which leads to differences in suspension length in case the shocks are mounted to their innermost position.

The "substandard" ruggedness-rating may not be the Shark 18 Monster deserves at a first glance, above all because it only comes to grief with the weak universal shafts.
There would be two possibilities to eliminate the problem:

• Space-wise much thicker prop shafts would be possible.
• Due to the little axial movement over the whole suspension travel much cheaper but sturdy aluminum dogbones could be used.

LRP’s solution consists of metal "MIP-style" universals at an obscenely expensive price, but they may be needed even with the kit motor. Our rating-criteria tell the following:

"two points: The test model is below average: There are major deficiencies, which can (if at all) only be remedied at comparatively large expenses"

Conclusion: the rather hefty price of the hop-up shafts by itself prohibits a better rating. With stronger (plastic-) universal shafts that would at least provide long-term performance with the kit motor, a much better rating would have been possible.

If you expect to run the Shark 18 truggy more "onroad" and with the standard motor you will surely be happy and without much maintenance with the (A)RTR-set.
Hop-uppers and real offroaders are recommended to wait until LRP releases a factory-version as they did with the Shark 18 buggy. The tuning-package would then contain the most important parts for unworried offroad-action at a much more reasonable price.

• Return to part 1 - overview and chassis construction

• Return to part 2 - the RTR-factor

• Interested in LRP's Shark 18 Monster? Want to share your experience? Visit our forums!

Special thanks to:
 

WR-RC-Racing.at

Text and pictures by Aaron Banovics
Translation by Markus Simon
This review has been published on www.offroad-cult.org on 02-10-2007.