The shell and wings are the icing on the cake as it were.  Previous predators were tested in wind tunnels and the like, its not clear if this new "aero" package (as TTech describe the shell and wings) got the same treatment, but its low and pretty  sleek.

The car looks fantastic, but that is partly the design of the car rather than the body shell its self, personally speaking I quite like it.

The shell covers the car quite well, the sides interlock with the chassis stopping any ingress of dirt though painting an intricate design along the side would be quite difficult.  The front of the shell goes over the front laydown shocks, I found the shocks did take a little paint off here.

TEST RACE

For the test I used a KO Propo 2343 Fet servo, Orion core 10x5 with V2 end bell, Peak 3300 Cells.

For the test of the car, I went to a club meeting outdoors (yes, in december), at Bury Metro Buggy Club. The track is a multi surface affair, mainly astro turf, quite a bumpy and demanding track and a good test of the X10.

I had hoped for nice weather but it was raining all the way to the track, having been up until 5am that morning building the car I was not going to be put off by a bit of rain.

I ran my Kyosho for the first 2 heats until I had the X10 ready to race.

In my first outing with the X10 I was quite timid for the first couple of laps then started pushing it, I was very surprised at how well it went around the bumpy undulating Bury track, it really was very quick indeed. On lap 6 whilst going round the banked corner the car seemed to keep going straight and ended up off the track in a heap.

I thought it was over for the day after only 6 laps, having heard a lot about the weak carbon steering link I assumed it had given out. When i inspected the car I realised in my haste to get it done I had missed off the threadlock on the balljoints which link the bellcranks to the steering knuckles. The screw had worked loose and fallen off. Ah well.

In those 5 Laps I did manage to go 3/4 of a second faster on my fastest lap, compared with the Kyosho ZX5, the car did have better tyres on and more grip, but I was also driving it slower because I did not want to break it so wasnt taking as many chances. Its hard to say if given the same tyres it would faster or slower, but it is quick and handled the bumps very well.

Light was fading and it was time for the finals with only 6 racing laps under the belt of the X10 and lying in 3rd place from the zx5's qualifying time. I was behind 2 xx4's. Off the line the predator proved its explosive acceleration and I was straight into 2nd, after 2 more corners I was in first for a brief moment when I clipped pole man John Price's xx4.

 From then on I simply could not get round the track without spinning out randomly, I ended up a very poor 5th and couldn't really understand how things had gone so badly in the final, as the car seemed so good earlier.

Looking at the car in my hand it was very obvious, the left hand rocker assembly was in no way attached to the car, it had pulled clean out of the front gearbox on that first lap, in effect the car had been scraping along the ground for almost the entire 5 minutes.

After the final. Left hand rocker hanging off, it still finished though.

This was impossible to see from the rostrum, as the car looks like it is scraping the ground anyway!, It did at least explain the poor performance in the final after such a promising few corners at the start.

Speaking to TTech Team driver, Tom Yardy as well as other X10 racers, it seems common for these pins to come loose and everyone seems to glue them in.