Monster Truck Madness – Initial Thoughts of the CEN Racing HL150 Monster Truck

Hey guys, in case you missed it over the weekend, I have finally gotten my hands on the new CEN Racing 1/10 Solid Axle Monster Trucks! I posted unboxing photos right here, and I have a brief video with my initial impressions on my Trigger King R/C YouTube channel right here.

While the final review is several weeks out, I have spent a bit of time wheeling the HL150, as well as totally dis-and-reassembling the truck to see how the components are, and I wanted to share a couple notes with you all, as well as a size comparison to several other rigs.

I guess we should just start with the size, since so many are curious about that. I have two pics below, one comparing it with my “Nuclear Banana” Axial SMT10, and another where it sits next to my “Mr. Yuk” Tamiya Lunchbox. As you can see, the truck slides somewhere comfortably in-between.

Also to note is that a myriad of bodies fit on this fella right away. Here it is with stampede sized JConcepts ’89 Ford body.

And here’s a sneak peak of what the truck is going to become after the review is finished and I start to build it up. My custom painted Parma Samson “Green Monster” body is mounted and it fits dead freakin’ nuts. Oh baby, gonna paint those rings green and it’s gonna be slick looking.

But anyways, yeah, the wheelbase is perfect for the stock Clod Buster or Stampede sized get-ups.

Another note here on the transmission. This is a really burly gearbox, especially when you consider this truck is on the smaller/lighter side. The machined gears are really nice, and have a wide contact area. Something interesting here is that the truck actually come stock with two different gear ratios. It comes RTR in the lower gear, but if you flip the middle idler gear and change the shaft location (this is all detailed in the manual), you can put it into high gear mode and it REALLY speeds it up. Pretty cool. Tony @ CCxRC has a great video where he shows off this process here.

Anyways, that’s all I have for now. I really don’t want to give away anything for the review. Don’t worry though, once that’s finished you’ll be seeing a lot of content here on the CEN trucks!