For our review, we took it to the Intergalactic Short Course Championships at CRC Raceway in Rome NY. They had some support classes in addition to the Short Course specific ones, including 2wd open buggy. Knowing full well guys would be running very powerful brushless systems in that class, I decided to give it a try anyway. Granted, these are aimed at entry-mid level drivers.. and not necessarily for hardcore racers, we just HAD to put it on the dirt track to see how it’d handle.

Like I said earlier, the rear dBoots Terabytes worked very well on this track. I had plenty of forward bite, and I could whip the car around the corners and punch it to get out of it.

With the NiMH battery, the car had decent speed. I estimated 20 mph when I was driving it. Not the advertised 30+ MPH on the box, but we were also running on less than optimal conditions. We made three radar gun passes to see what our best speed with the NiMH would be, and the Bushnell radar gun never lies. We hit 21 MPH.

Not too bad on a loose dirt track and stock gearing. It comes with a 19t pinion, I’m sure in better conditions, say on a perfectly flat road, we could get near 30 in stock form.

Driving the buggy with the NiMH reminded me of why I got away from NiMH last year. It felt great right off the charger, but after only a couple of minutes you could feel the battery getting weaker. But, we aren’t reviewing a battery here, we are reviewing the ADX-10 Buggy.

After running the NiMH pack for the initial run and speed test, we swapped in a 2S Venom 4000mah 20c Lipo. Since the car is “Lipo Power Ready”, we thought we’d see if we’d notice any performance increases. We weren’t planning to test lipo in this, but Kevin picked up this budget pack for a future project and we thought we’d throw it in to see what it’d do. Any lipo would yield similar results over NiMH.

Using the Venom Lipo, we made 3 more speed passes to see if it affected our top speed. We gained 2 MPH from just swapping to the Lipo alone. Not only was top end improved, but it woke up the buggy and felt like it had a little more punch. Lipo is the way to go if you have a compatible charger, and do a little research on charging safety practices, etc. The Nimh option is just fine for someone starting out though.

Regarding horsepower, the buggy is by no means a rocket. However, it is not slow either. I was able to keep up with 13.5 brushless powered Short Course Buggies. The speed is quite adequate for a RTR with a 15T brushed motor. I also love the fact that it is waterproof. If we were bashing this, I would have no reservations about taking this thru a puddle ridden parking lot. That would be a ton of fun.

On the handling front, I have to talk about steering first. The stock servo in the ADX-10 is, in a word, slow. You have to anticipate your turns and start turning the wheel early. For bashing around your yard or a field, this is not a problem. If you have any aspirations of racing this buggy, plan on upgrading the servo as one of your first upgrades.

On high speed corners, I had to modulate the throttle to get the buggy to turn. Some suspension tuning will definitely fix that. On low speed, tight corners, I had to mash the brakes to get it to turn quickly due to the servo.

I found that the ADX-10 really likes to land nose up slightly. If you landed on the front wheels first, it was difficult to keep it straight. It reacted well though to a blip of the throttle off the lip of the jump to give it a slight nose up flight.

Upon landing slightly nose up, the suspension soaked up the weight of the buggy instantly, allowing you to get right back on the throttle, accelerating to the next corner or jump.