The crew over at IMEX RC are some of the most hardcore you’ll find in rc. They’ve been supporting this industry before many of our staffers were even born, LOL, and we have a feeling they’ll still be around for a long time to come. For the last few weeks we’ve been driving and reviewing the IMEX 1/16 Bolt RTR Brushless Short Course Truck. The Bolt is low on price point, but big on features, so we put some packs through it to see if it’s worth your hard earned cash. What are you waiting for? Scroll on down for the good stuff!
From: IMEX RC
Direct Link: IMEX 1/16 Bolt SCT RTR
Review By: Cubby
Pictures By: T-Money
Specs-
RTR or Kit: RTR
Age: 14+
2wd or 4wd: 4wd
Shaft or Belt: Shaft
Electric or Gas: Electric
Scale: 1/16
Width (measured by BSRC): 7″
Wheelbase (measured by BSRC): 8.3″
Motor: 2,840kV brushless
Speed Controller: 3S capable, 30 amp brushless
Low Voltage Cut-off: Yes
Radio: 2.4GHz
Differential: Front and rear gear diffs
Driveshafts: CVD front and rear
Shocks: Oil filled, plastic bodies, aluminum caps
Screws: Phillips
Battery: 2S LiPo with charger
Part Number: #19415
Top Speed (measured by BSRC on 2S stock LiPo): 23 MPH
Street Price: $159
What’s In The Box- You get everything you need to run the truck inside the box, with the exception of AA sized batteries for the transmitter. A 2S LiPo is supplied, as is a charger for it. The truck comes completely pre-built and pre-painted, making it easy peasy to get running.
Build Quality- After cracking the box open and handing the truck around the room, we did not find any fault with the construction of the Bolt RTR.
Test Drivers- When the IMEX Bolt showed up it seemed like everybody wanted a turn behind the wheel. Test drivers included myself, T-$$$, Iron Mikeee, the RC Kid, as well as various random people that saw us driving at the park.
Test Venues- We spent nearly all our testing time at Arnold City park in Arnold Missouri. There are literally hundreds of acres to bash at there, with surfaces ranging from pavement, to dirt, to sand, to gravel.
Set-up Notes- Per the normal for a Big Squid review, we ran the truck bone stock on the included 2S LiPo battery. While a charger is included, we opted to use the handy dandy Hitec RDX2 Mini to have a bit more control over the charging.
Turning: When we tested the IMEX 1/12 Exterminator a few weeks ago we found it handled really well out of the box. The 1/16 Bolt came with softer suspension settings than the Exterminator, which helped get more traction on loose surfaces, at the expense of on-road prowess. These softer settings caused a bit of traction rolling on pavement, and even at times, on higher bite dirt surfaces. The Bolt has a ton of steering right out of the box, so much so that we immediately cranked down on the pre-load rings on the front suspension to help stiffen it up to a bit. After cranking the front pre-load and dialing down the steering D/R setting on the transmitter, we found the truck turned much better.
Jumping: For such a small truck, the Bolt jumped really well. It does not have a center differential, so giving the truck a bit of throttle or brake in the air definitely helped the truck level-out in the air. The soft stock suspension did a decent job upon landing smaller jumps, but stiffer springs and heavier oil would take some of the harshness out of bigger landings.
Bumps/Whoops: Once again, the somewhat soft suspension did a solid job on smaller bumps, but heavier damping and stiffer springs would help increase speeds and predictability on bigger bumps.
On-Road: The Bolt is a little ripper and was a blast to fly around on pavement. Now, the stock suspension is set-up much more for off-road, than on, but that did not keep us from having a blast. The stock suspension is soft for on-road, with the soft suspension resulting in traction rolling when trying to corner at speed. If you plan only to bash on pavement, we’d definitely recommend going stiffer on both ends of the suspension.
Grass: The 1/16th scaled Bolt could get around in short grass, but was a tad too small for normal or taller grass. If you plan on doing most of your bashing on grass, we’d recommend one of the larger RTRs from IMEX.
Tires: The stock tires have a nice scale appearance and are molded in what we would call a medium hard compound. The tires did an admirable job off-road and we quite usable on-road. Yes, higher performance tires can be had, but for general backyard bashing, we thought they handled the job just fine.
Power: Is the Bolt quick? Yes, absolutely, even on the included 2S pack. We measured top speed at 23 mph, which isn’t a huge number, but feels quick with the 1/16th sized platform. Power comes on soft right off the bottom, then comes in super strong at the early mid-range. Top end power is quite strong, giving us more than enough power for all the normal bashing we wanted to do.
Radio: Nothing fancy here, but we will say that we loved the easy to adjust speed control on the transmitter. This simple knob makes it super easy to turn the power down for new drivers.
Broken Parts: We ran our Bolt fairly hard and after slapping a curb at speed, we managed to yank one of the screws out of the steering rack. We installed a longer bolt with a nut on the back and were back to bashing shortly thereafter.
Misc Notes:
IMEX is a big fan of using Deans style plugs on their electronics, and we gotta say, we love it! We have so many batteries and chargers around the office set-up for Deans, that getting a truck with them, just makes our life easier. While XT60s are attempting to dominate the connector market, we are plenty good with Deans on anything smaller than 1/8th scale.
Our ambient temperatures during the test period were HOT. Our coolest test day was 85 degrees Fahrenheit, while our hottest test day was right at 95. With such hot ambient temps, it’s hard for any power system to remain cool, especially when sending it hard. We kept a close eye on motor temps and kept our runs fairly short on such hot days to keep anything from getting too hot.
The packaging the Bolt comes in, is pretty cool looking. The inner box looks like a real car garage, very neat!
LED lighting comes stock and worked just fine for us during our review period.
Summary: We drove the IMEX 1/6 Bolt RTR hard and quite frankly had loads of fun with it. The Bolt was always ready to bash, all we had to do was charge up a pack and hit the park. With plenty of brushless power and a good looking SCT body with scale detailing, we loved our review time with the affordable IMEX Bolt and think you’ll have a blast with it too!
