When I first saw this car, I knew this was not designed for slow and precise off-road driving. This is a raw off-road racer. It does basically only one thing – to run fast off-road. Even on the box they say it runs up to 40 km/h ... multiplied with scale that's almost 500 km/h! Such a real buggy would be a great and often deadly challenge to most drivers :). That's why the whole video is composed of slow-motion shots so that you can enjoy the functioning of the chassis in detail even at high speeds.

Water is a major threat – since the Feiyue-03 is very fast and its steering is not absolutely accurate (and I don't have that reactions :) ), one of the shallow water runs went wrong – the right front wheel got caught by deeper water and the whole car was flooded within a split second. You can see the situation on the video. It didn't look that bad, but you must consider the fact, that the front part of the car is open, so basically a water wave went throught the car all the way over the electric motor, servo and receiver too. The car managed to do a few more video shots, but then stopped completely. Unlike the HG P402 , the Feiyue-03 is NOT a "submarine" and if water gets inside you are in trouble.

After returning home, I disassembled the electronics in the car including the receiver. When it all dried up, the car returned to normal behaviour except for driving reverse. Now the car does not want to drive reverse at all. If I press the gas lever to reverse position on the transmitter – nothing happens. And no matter whether the sensitivity is set to 50/50 or 70/30.

Interrestingly, water has only made the problem worse. When I made my first meters with the car right out of the box, I experienced something like this too – the car didn't want to go reverse a few times. At first I thought this might have been my driving mistake, but the water accident has only made the problem permanent. Has anyone experienced a similar problem? What would you recommend to examine or investigate?

Findings and experience:

• Steering – someone asked me if the steering is sloppy – so far I can say, that mechanicaly the steering is designed and manufactured well, the steering joints have no apparent loosenes (yet :) ), at least on my Feiyue-03 . Steering control has one interesting feature – you can limit the steering lock on the transmitter (the range of the steering servo). The steering geometry changes with suspension travel (this is inherent to independent axle design). The steering servo reacts jerky and has some delay (it stayed the same even after the water accident). Maybe it's normal, I do not know. When you do rock crawling you probably wouldn't care, you drive slowly and have a plenty of time. But controlling this "cruise-missile" is rather hard, especially in the rugged terrain of loose sand. It was more like a fight for survival at high speeds. You have a really short time for every reaction, notably when you try to drive to make it look attractive on the video – i.e. pedal to the metal, huge spray of sand flying off all the wheels, car at permanent skid :) . Therefore, following a narrow path precisely was almost impossible and many runs have had to be made and recorded.
• The range of suspension is truly amazing, especially at slow motion. The car literaly "glides" over bumps.
• When I processed the source video footage, I appreciated how the car is well weight-balanced. Every jump it made felt so smooth and natural. The car lands almost everytime on all 4 wheels. That means the front vs. rear weight distribution is nearly ideal for jumping.
• The battery was able to lasts surprisingly long – video recording of the first part took approx. 1.5 hours (that made 1:40 minutes of final video). Nevertheless, the second part was more about driving at full throttle and the battery emptied after some 40 minutes.
• Opening the car requires loosening more than 6 screws. Unfortunately, supplied hex keys are made of very crappy material, so be prepared to use your own.
• There is a slight oil leak in the area of the rear cardan shaft (may be from the clutch or gearbox). That's pretty realistic ;) , isn't it?
• Damage – both rides were not devastating, the car worked mechanicaly well. I just noticed one thing – left drive shaft of the front wheel is a bit sanded. Closer examination showed that the shaft hits a bottom pin in the axle arm when the suspension hits a bump. On the right side it's not happening.

Pros:

• Feiyue-03 is a fast and raw racer, not a slow rock crawler
• Adjustable suspension with awesome range
• I really like the mechanical design. The car is spongy and it seems like it can withstand quite a hard punch. Jumps are not a problem.
• Very cheap compared to similar competition
• Well weight balanced

Cons:

• Steering servo could have been more precise.
• Electronics on my car has some problem, it does not want to go reverse.
• Battery does not last long, I'd recommend buying more and/or higher capacity units