Scale trucks are all the rage now days, but most of them are of the crawling/slow variety. For the ever growing bunch of consumers that demand some speed with their scale looks, Kyosho has released the Outlaw Rampage PRO Kit. The Outlaw Rampage is big on the scale detailing, but also caters to the hardcore hobby crowd by coming as a ARTR (it needs a bit of assembly, plus electronics, to finish). By leaving the electronics up to you, it saves some cash up front, while allowing you to put in any kind of electronics that you desire (or already have on hand). How well does the Outlaw Rampage drive? How scale does it look when being driven? With all those scale looks, can it take a beating? Read on to find out our take on the Kyosho Outlaw Rampage PRO Kit…
From: Kyosho
Direct Link: Outlaw Rampage PRO Kit
Unboxing Pictures: Outlaw Rampage PRO Unboxing
Review By: Cubby
Photography By: Tim Mohr
Specs:
RTR or Kit: ARTR
Age: 14+
2wd or 4wd: 2wd
Electric or Gas: Electric
Scale: 1/10
Length: 561mm
Width: 262mm
Wheelbase: 335mm
Weight: 2600 grams
Motor: Not included
Speed Controller: Not included
Radio: Not included
Differential: Gear style in rear
Slipper Clutch: Yes
Driveshafts: Metal
Shocks: Metal bodies, plastic caps, oil filled
Servo Saver: On servo output shaft
Screws: Metric, hex
Spur/Pinion Pitch: 48 pitch
Bearings: Yes
Tires: Kyosho Cross Bound A/T scale realistic
Battery: Not included
Part Number: #34362
Bashing Specs:
Front wheel travel: 2.1″
Rear wheel travel: 2.2″
Wheelie on demand: No
Backflip off ramps: No
Runtime (measured by BSRC, energy used 5 minute run, 2S 5250 LiPO): 963mAh
Top Speed (measured by BSRC): 37 mph
Street Price: $219
Primary Competition: As the Outlaw Rampage is a scale 1/10 off-road truck, it does have a number of competitors with one of the most notable being the Losi Ford Raptor.
What’s Needed To Complete: Ya, so the Kyosho comes as a ARTR. You can plan on setting aside a couple of hours to install the electronics and to paint the body. To complete the Kyosho you’ll need a speedo, motor, servo, radio with receiver, paint, batteries, and a charger.
Build Quality: Most of the Kyosho comes assembled, but part of it is up to you (the paint and electronics install). We found the chassis to be very well assembled by Kyosho with no issues.
Test Drivers: Oh ya, we had a whole bunch of people pull trigger on this one. Iron Mikeee, The RC Kid, T-$$$, Brian, Robbie G., and of course yours truly.
Test Venues: With the weather in the Midwest finally drying out, we were able to hit a bunch of our old bash spots. Some of our favorite bashing venues like Minnie Ha Ha Park in Fenton Missouri have been underwater for most of 2019, but in the last few weeks we have been blessed with drier weather, thus opening up plenty of bashing areas for testing. Besides Minnie Ha Ha, we also used a pair of city parks in Arnold Missouri, plus we spent plenty of time on the St Louis Dirtburners 1/8th scale off-road track.
Set-up Notes: To power the Outlaw Rampage we weren’t messing around, a Castle Sidewinder 4 ESC was used along with a Castle 1410 brushless motor. MaxAmps LiPo batteries were used to supply plenty of juice to the Castle system, while a beefy waterproof Hitec D956WP handled the steering duties. A Hitec X1 Pro charger kept the batteries full of power, while MaxAmps AA cells were used in a Spektrum DX5 Rugged transmitter to control the rig.
Turning: The Kyosho turns in a scale manner. What exactly does that mean? It means that in high traction conditions, the truck tended to traction roll easily (like a full sized off-rig of the same style). In looser conditions, the Outlaw Rampage turned quite well. The suspension was set in such a way as to give the driver a scale experience while driving. On loose dirt or slick asphalt, the truck turned in a fairly neutral manner, and it certainly gave the driver a real scale driving experience. With the Outlaw Rampage being a 2wd truck, you can tap the brake at corner entry to pivot around ultra-tight corners, or you can tap, then pound the gas, to steer with the rear. It was loads of fun (and relatively easy) to drift the Kyosho around wide, loamy corners. Overall- it turns in a manner like the 1:1 unit, which is great fun for scale driving fanatics.
Jumping: This just might be the best jumping solid rear axle truck that we’ve tested. Most “scale’ish” trucks with a solid rear axle jump very poorly (they Love to jump nose-down), but at least with our power system we didn’t notice it as badly on the Kyosho. Now, we had a ton of extra RPM on tap thanks to tall gearing and a 3800kV brushless motor, which certainly helped. Plus the Kyosho was a 2wd, which means a lot less weight up front than a 4wd (which most scale type trucks are) and that really helped it when catching air. Landings from “reasonable” (getting less than 3′ off the ground) type jumps were very plush, but bigger jumps could easily bottom both the front and rear suspension quite hard. Also of note, on jump take-offs, the Kyosho was not able to ignore ruts as well as “race” style trucks, so on rough jump faces, we had to really pay attention to get cleanly off the lip.
Bumps/Whoops: The Kyosho has a good deal of suspension travel, but the suspension is tuned to give the truck a realistic look when being driven, not for optimal whoop speed. What that means to you the consumer is this. You can enjoy the scale feel (read- realistic bounciness) by running all the stock suspension settings, or you can stiffen up the damping front & rear to improve real world handing. Stock, the truck certainly looks scale when driving over rough ground (small dirt clods or rain ruts), but part of that scale look is getting out of shape at relatively low speeds (compared to a race style rc truck). Most of our test crew had a ball enjoying the extra realistic bounce in the Rampage’s step, but others wanted to throw in some stiffer oil for greater control.
On-Road: If you drive on dusty asphalt the Kyosho can be a drift monster, but if you drive on a high-bite surface like brushed cement, the truck does a lot of traction rolling. With the power system we had installed, we had more gearing than control when doing top speed runs. The stock tires are relatively hard, and when combined with soft suspension, the Kyosho simply isn’t set-up for speed passes.
Grass: Ya know, we didn’t really miss 4wd on the Kyosho until we hit taller grass. Yes, the Kyosho can get around in grass, but not nearly as well as some of its 4wd competition.
Tires: Oh yes, those stock tires. Kyosho hit the nail on the head with the looks, but went a bit hard on the actual rubber compound. Using a harder rubber can come in handy for a long life and for helping to keep the truck from traction rolling. However, there is the downside of simply not having a lot of raw grip. The tread pattern looked awesome and worked quite well in loamy dirt. The lugs on the tires did a good job of digging down and finding traction on softer surfaces, and cleaned out fairly well/easily too (a crazy power system didn’t hurt when attempting to clear them out either, LOL).
The Electronics We Put In: We pretty much grabbed what we had laying around the office, thankfully we had a bunch awesome gear. The Hitec waterproof servo had tons of power but didn’t brown out our ESC. Speaking of the ESC, the Castle power system did a great job of over-powering the truck on just 2S. Speaking of 2S, MaxAmps doesn’t play when it comes to putting out serious power, we used their 2S 5250 packs with great success in both raw power and runtime. Controlling the little powerhouse was a Spektrum DX5 Rugged, which goes without saying is the “cool” radio to be seen with right now (and works incredibly well to boot). No, none of these come with the Kyosho, but we can highly recommend these products for your own Outlaw Rampage.
Broken Parts: Oh yes, all those cool scale looks, how did they actually hold up? Well, the first issue we ran into was very minor. Not all the time, but every once in a while, we would pop off a front ball cup. It was weird, sometimes we would hit a curb with a good deal of force and it would stay on, at other times, we would barely tap something, and off it would come. After a bunch of what we call “normal” bashing (getting no higher than 3 feet off the ground, not purposely running into slabs of concrete, treating it like we want it to live to bash again tomorrow, etc) we didn’t have any other issues. We hit a number of things at decent speed, but the Kyosho drove away like a boss each time. Being who we are, we had to truly break something on the truck so we started driving it like we stole it. Iron Mikeee is also known as kryptonite to unbroken vehicles, so we turned straight to him to see what would break first. Little did we know it would take less than a minute of driving in his hands to catch a curb at 30 mph+ and break one of the rear trailing arms. The hit was gnarly, in fact we were surprised only one part gave it up on such a hard slam. Overall, it isn’t what we would call a tank, but you can drive it fairly hard without much worry of it breaking.
Misc Notes:
It was very cool that Kyosho included two different build options for the front headlights, two different options for a spare, etc. This made the little building that was left fun, plus it means that not everyone’s truck will be exactly the same.
A lot of scale “speed” trucks (4wd, IFS up front w/ solid rear axle) will really pull one of the front wheels up in the air while cornering. There is none of that on the Kyosho (it is a 2 wheeler after all). Both front wheels stay nicely planted on the ground, no matter how hard you pound the throttle around a corner.
You should plan on running only 2S in the Kyosho as the battery area is not set up for taller packs. However, in our experience, 2S was more than enough for raw power.
The very rear of the body attaches in a realistic manner. The rear of the body clips into place on the plastic rear cage. We didn’t think this would hold up very well in real world driving, but the rear of the body only came loose when we had a large rear hit (just like the real deal). Interesting, different, and at the end of the day, a cool feature that worked as intended.
Have you always wanted a really scale looking Slash before? That’s where we think the Kyosho is aimed at. It is a 2wd drive like the original Slash, but is new-school-super-scale from bumper to bumper.
By running the Spektrum DX5 Rugged we were able to dial in some stability control to the Rampage while driving. With the electronic stability control of the Rugged enabled, we were really able to dial in the corning of the Kyosho. Suddenly we had the option of a scale driving truck that was actually easy to drive! Most of our drivers ended up running between 30-70 AVC on the Kyosho, which resulted in a truck that was much easier to corner on slick surfaces.
This version of the Outlaw Rampage is the PRO version, meaning it comes with a slew of cool hop-ups. Very nice Kyosho! Plus we really dig the fact that it doesn’t come with electronics. Every long time hobbyist has tons of RTR &/or high-end electronics just sitting around in their garage. With the Kyosho you don’t have to buy yet another set of RTR electronics that we were just gonna ditched before you ever drove the truck anyways.
Best Mod: The first mod is an easy & cheap one- to install captured rod ends on the front tie-rods. Du-Bro or Traxxas captured ends are super affordable and only take a couple minutes to install.
Summary:
A = Outstanding/Best in Class, B = Above Average, C = Average, D = Below Average, F = Horrific
Time To Bash: C An ARTR style truck definitely isn’t the fastest way to get up and going, but it does have its upsides as well.
Workability: B For a scale looking rig, we found the Kyosho to be extremely easy to wrench on. In fact, it just might be the easiest “scale” looking truck that we’ve ever spun wrenches on.
Car Show Rating: A There are different levels of “scale” now days, but overall we feel the Kyosho is a great looking truck. Some of that look is up to you as you are the one putting the paint on the body, but the Kyosho’s wheels, tires, bumpers, all look top notch.
Bash-A-Bility: C We found the Kyosho to be a fairly durable truck. However, its easy-to-pop rod ends bring down the score a bit here.
Fun Factor: A What is there NOT to like about driving an over powered 2wd scale off-road rig? The way the Kyosho drove in a scale manner kept us coming back for more.
Handling: A/C This is where the scale movement starts messing up our scoring system. If we are grading on how scale the truck handled when being driven, then the truck gets an A. If we are grading on how well it gets over bumps/jumps as an rc car, it gets a C.
Value: A We feel that you get a whole lot of scale performance goodness with the Kyosho for under $220. The PRO version we tested even comes with loads of free upgrade parts.
Parts Availability: C Our Bash Crew was not able to find any spare parts at our local hobby shops, but we easily found some on-line.
BigSquid Rating: B If you are looking for a scale truck with some speed, the Kyosho Outlaw Rampage PRO Kit can absolutely be that truck. The Kyosho allows you to do some of the building, and as an ARTR, it lets you pick the electronics of your choice. Both the looks of the truck, and its driving style, are heavily scale oriented, which is an extremely hot trend in rc right now. We had a blast with the Outlaw Rampage and can highly recommend it to you.
