HobbyZone is probably best known for their park flyers and beginner aircraft. However, they couldn't refuse a chance to jump in on the rapidly exploding mini scene. So they developed the Mini Mauler, a two-wheel drive off-road truck built to attract those interested in the mini craze the hobby is now experiencing.

HobbyZone put together a very complete package, and provided everything you'll need to run your Mini Mauler in one box. Even the batteries are included. Packing features such as a lexan body with a chrome roll bar, and an ESC capable of handling their upgrade motor, HobbyZone was most certainly thinking of a well-rounded product. Its detail like that that helps provide a viable choice for those who are looking to make a purchase.

With all of the minis out there it's hard to decide which one is right for you. The only way to determine this, is to see exactly what a particular truck offers, and how well it performs. So sit back, it's time to turn these pint-sized terrors loose and see what happens.

The body included with the Mini Mauler is a true lexan body, which I'm glad to see. While the hardened polycarbonate bodies may make it easy to provide more detail from a realistic aspect, I generally find they don't take abuse very well. This is especially true when it comes to off-road action. The body comes already stickered with the Mini Mauler and HobbyZone logos, as well as other details such as the headlights. In the truck bed you'll find a plastic light bar that's been finished in chrome, providing a nice complimenting touch to the body of the truck.

You don't get a lot in the way of accessories with the Mini Mauler, but in reality not much is needed. What you do get is a manual that covers the general operating procedures of the truck itself. The manual covers the basics and helps get you up and running quickly, although you'll soon find that there isn't a lot you'll need to do to get the Mini Mauler from the box to a running state. You are also provided a cardboard ramp as well, should you desire to operate the Mini Mauler indoors.

By looking at the pictures above, you should realize that all the batteries are included as well. All you'll need to do is install them. In doing this, HobbyZone has provided you with everything you'll need for your Mini Mauler. You'll also receive a pack of body clips, so that you can secure the previously mentioned body onto the chassis.

The chassis layout of the Mini Mauler is similar to that of other vehicles in the mini genre. A combined ESC and receiver unit handles the main operational functions of the truck. The receiver operates in the 27 MHz frequency range, and therefore offers a total of 6 channels of operation. Extra crystals available separately will be needed to access channels other than the one your truck comes prepared to use.

The ESC portion, of the combination unit, is more than capable of handling the stock motor. It is also capable of being used with the high performance motor upgrade available from HobbyZone as well. This will come in handy should you desire more power than the truck offers in its stock configuration. The motor is provided bar-style male and female connectors, so that removal is easy should you desire to perform this swap.

The front suspension features two shocks that use friction-based dampening. I'd expect, since it's typical with friction-based setups, that you'll see very little dampening action from these shocks. Despite this, the springs seem to be matched with the truck well, and the shocks themselves are protected by a front bumper that stretches across the entire front of the truck. For easy access and repairs, the shocks can be easily popped off of the independent suspension arms with a small flathead screwdriver.

The rear of the truck offers a stark contrast to the suspension setup of the front. Where the front uses an independent suspension, the rear utilizes a solid-axle approach. You still have two shocks in the rear, but the axle and transmission is a single unit, held in place by an upper and lower suspension link. This approach provides a good range of motion, and makes transmission maintenance very easy to perform. Simply disconnecting the upper and lower suspension links followed by the shocks, results in the whole assembly being removed from the truck. The motor is housed above the axle and to the left of the transmission. As with the front, the entire rear of the Mini Mauler is protected by a plastic bumper.

From the underside of the Mini Mauler you will first likely notice the most prominent feature, which is the battery compartment. The location of the battery compartment is as low on the chassis as it can get, which helps to maintain some stability for the short-wheelbased truck. Its lid is held in place by two clips which are easily removed to allow access to the battery compartment. In its stock configuration, the Mini Mauler comes equipped for use with AA batteries. However, HobbyZone offers optional 4.8 and 6.0 volt NiMH battery packs which it can be used with as well. Many standard nitro receiver packs could also be used in the compartment as well, but will require that the connector on the battery be changed. Since most receiver packs are nearly double the Mah of the HobbyZone packs, using them would seem to be a good route to consider despite having to change the pack's plug. After all, the higher the Mah ratings, the more runtime you'll see.

While the upper suspension link is easily snapped off, the rear axle's lower suspension link does not easily pop off. Instead the lower suspension link uses a pin secured by e-clips which hold it in place. While this method works well, you should be careful of where you work on your Mini Mauler at. E-clips are notorious for becoming lost, and these clips are very small which makes that even more likely. I'd advise keeping a few spares in your pit box, to save yourself some downtime should you need to work on your Mini Mauler in the middle of a bashing session.

Looking around at the underside of the Mini Mauler, you should easily be able to locate the power switch. It's on the small side, but appropriately sized for the truck itself. You should be able to easily flip the truck on and off using your fingernail. If the need arises to separate the battery holder from the Mini Mauler, a plug between the ESC and battery compartment easily allows this.

Just in front of the power switch, you'll see the front skid plate. The screws holding the skid plate in place are countersunk and recessed to provide a smooth surface in case of contact with the ground or other obstacle. If you look carefully, above the skid plate, you can catch a glimpse of the servo saver which we'll see better a little later in the walkthrough.

With the Mini Mauler's wheel removed, you can get a much better glimpse of the front suspension setup. Since the Mini Mauler is two-wheel drive, the front axles make use of an axle pin which supports the plastic bushings in the front wheels. The axle pin sits in a steering block which resides in a c-hub. The c-hub uses screw pin to secure it to the suspension arm, and a Phillips head screw to attach it to the upper camber link at the top. The camber link doesn't allow for adjustment, but I don't see this as a big issue. This is due to the fact that the Mini Mauler is more about simplicity than all out adjustability.

The rear axle approach once again offers a contrast to the front, just as the overall suspension differences between the front and rear do. For the rear, the plastic bushings are in the carrier not the wheel. The left side of the axle is notched to accept a matching plastic hex adapter so that the spinning axle can transfer its motion to the wheel, while on the other side the hex adapter is actually part of the differential. The wheels throughout the truck are held in place by plastic nuts. These nuts would be another good item to keep handy, as they can become worn out over time. Even better would be real nuts with nylon inserts, which should be available at most hobby stores. I really wish the manufacturers that produce mini-sized trucks would start avoiding the plastic nuts altogether, but unfortunately this does not seem to be the current trend.

While the bumper is a separate piece making replacement easy, it can also be removed along with the skid plate for easy access to the bulkhead area of the Mini Mauler. With the skid plate and bumper removed, you can easily access the pins that hold the suspension arms in place. The suspension pins are trapped in place by the front bumper's skid plate, and provide a positive hold on the suspension arm. With the skid plate out of the way, the bulkhead can be easily removed by removing screws at the top of the bulkhead, as well as a few on the underside of the Mini Mauler. The bumper itself provides some flexibility, which helps to absorb frontal impacts.

The steering of the Mini Mauler is handled by a servo horn and spring assembly which functions as a servo saver. The servo is a mini-sized servo that sits centered between the front wheels. The servo gears are plastic, and are replaceable should the need ever arise. However, the small tire size shouldn't prove to be very rough on the servo's gears.

As I previously mentioned, the entire rear axle and transmission assembly of the Mini Mauler is easily removed for maintenance. The motor is mounted to a stainless steel plate, providing a very rigid mount unlike solely mounting to the plastic housing like I often see on other models. Plastic will often warp over time, which can lead to the motor slipping out of position and causing stripped gears. HobbyZone has also provided easy access to the motor, should you want to swap it out for their upgraded version. Simply pop the cover off of the upper part of the transmission. From there it only takes the removal of a couple of screws and you can have the motor out. This can even be performed with the assembly still mounted on the Mini Mauler.

Diving further into the transmission assembly shows us the axle and differential. The axle is a single 3mm shaft that's threaded on the ends for the wheels nuts. All of the transmission gears are plastic, but since a truck of this size doesn't need a vast amount of power to get it moving the plastic gears should still trouble-free service. Notice that the differential unit uses three small gears to provide a limited slip effect to the rear wheels. This is very similar to a spider gear setup found in many larger monster trucks, but the gears are just mounted inside of the main gear.

Once the differential and axle are removed, you can get a better look at the stainless steel plate the motor mounts to. This plate stretches across the entire side of the transmission to provide strength, as well as a secure mounting point for the motor. It also houses the plastic bushings that support the axle as well. If plastic bushings aren't your thing, HobbyZone offers a set of bearings as an upgrade. The bearing upgrade will help reduce rolling friction, provide a little longer runtime, and require less frequent replacement than the plastic bushings will. The part number for the bearing set is HBZ3049.

With the axle removed, you can get a much better picture of how HobbyZone has designed the Mini Mauler's driveline. The flat part on the left-hand side of the axle accepts the hex adapter mentioned earlier. On the right hand side, the hex adapter is actually the right half of the differential, and it can spin independently of the axle. This provides the Mini Mauler with a true differential assembly.

The rolling rubber for the Mini Mauler is mounted on plastic wheels with a shiny chrome finish. The six-spoke wheels remind me of a set of Weld draglites, and look very good on the truck. The wheels are vented, to help allow air freely flow in and out of them as needed for jumping and traction. The tires are a medium compound that should provide decent wear, and when coupled with their Chevron pattern, they also provide good traction for this application. The tire compound might possibly be too hard for some vehicles, but work well for an application such as this. To help maintain the shape of the tires, they contain foam inserts.

The radio is very similar to the radio found with the Losi Mini-T, and considering the ties between Losi, HobbyZone, and Horizon Hobby, that doesn't surprise me. The only thing missing that I'd like to see would be a dual-rate adjustment. However, unless you upgrade to the stronger motor, the lack of dual-rate may not even be noticeable by some people.

The radio does not have a built in charging jack, which would give you the ability to use a rechargeable transmitter pack and charger. However, you can still use rechargeable AA NiMH cells with an external charger. The radio does provide standard features such as the ability to reverse the servos and indicator lights so you know when the radio is powered on or the battery is low. The trim adjustment knobs are analog, which is typical with most RTR radios. You should keep in mind though, that this means they're susceptible to being moved out of adjustment when the radio is off. The radio fits very well in my hand, and the rubber tire-like steering wheel is a nice touch. I also find it provides a much better surface to grip than some of the foam wheels I've used before.

There isn't much you need to do to prepare the Mini Mauler for action. I'd have to say that the hardest thing to do was probably opening the box. However, after pulling the Styrofoam tray out of the box, you will still need to do a few small tasks to ready the truck for action.

The first thing you'll need to do is to install four of the supplied AA batteries into the battery compartment of the Mini Mauler itself. If you happened to purchase a battery pack to use with your Mini Mauler, you'll install it instead. After installing the batteries, ensure that the harness is fully plugged in and close the battery compartment back up. Then you'll turn your attention to the radio. Take the remaining 8 AA batteries and install them into the radio, paying close attention to the correct orientation. If you have purchased rechargeable AA batteries, obviously you'll want to use those instead.

The last item you'll need to address is to install the body itself. Pull it out of the Styrofoam tray and set it into place on top of the Mini Mauler. Then simply use the supplied body clips to secure it into place. Once that's completed, you're ready to go!

Upon receiving the Mini Maulers, the first thing I did was pull them out of the box and install the batteries in them. I then proceeded to drive them around the house. In an indoor environment they had plenty of speed and power, as I soon found out. You had to pick and choose your location before you could run them wide open. Most areas of the house required careful navigation to avoid hitting a kitchen chair, a couch, or the entertainment center.

After a little time driving them, and getting used to zipping around the house, I pulled out one of the cardboard ramps and set it up. This added a new dimension to running them, and definitely made things much more fun. The Mini Mauler jumped the ramp well, although it was pretty bouncy when it landed. This is typical of friction-based shocks though. Most of my driving was done on carpet, and the linoleum of the kitchen floor. I saw around 25-30 minutes of runtime before the AA batteries really started to show signs that they were exhausted. Several days later, I installed a set of Duracell batteries in one of the Mini Maulers and played around the house some more. I got about another 10 minutes or so out of the Duracells.

While indoors is fun, I would much rather being outdoors when it comes to running any sort of remote control vehicle. After all, being in North Carolina, it's not uncommon to see some mild weather even during the winter months. We don't spend the majority of the winter with snow on the ground like those several hours north do. The fact that the Mini Mauler was electric made this even easier. Even on a cooler day, it's easier to get out and run an electric than it is to spend some time initially getting a nitro-powered truck adjusted to the fluctuating winter weather we see.

After loading the Mini Maulers up with some fresh batteries I set out to give them some runtime outdoors. I started off by sticking to the sidewalk and driveway. The Mini Maulers had no problem at all on the smooth surface, which presented no surprise. Even the speeds maintained themselves as decently impressive, due to the fact the motor didn't have to work very hard on a smooth type of surface.

The next task I laid before the Mini Maulers was the mulched area beside of the sidewalk and driveway. Once the truck hit the large chunks of mulch it became obvious, that the truck had to work a little harder in this situation. If you stopped in the middle of the mulch, about half of the time the Mini Mauler would get stuck when I tried to get it started again. It was very apparent in rougher terrain such as this, the limits of the Mini Mauler's two-wheel drive were being reached. I could fly across the mulch at a rapid clip, but it tried to steer itself for the most part. The light weight of the Mini Mauler, coupled with the need for more dampening, made it a little difficult for the front tires to maintain a good contact patch with the ground when it came time to steer.

After spending some time in the rough mulch, and finding out that type of terrain isn't suited very well to the Mini Mauler, I decided to move on to something else. So I hit the dirt, which is what I had wanted to do all along. I felt as if the dirt would be a good match for the Mini Mauler. It would be an outdoor environment, but at the same time it would also be a lot smoother than the mulch as well. It was beginning to show that the Mini Mauler seemed to favor areas that were more to the liking of a stadium truck.

Once in the dirt, I was reassured that the Mini Mauler was in a more familiar element. The tires bit down into the soft dirt and established plenty of traction using their Chevron pattern. With plenty of traction available, the truck had no problem with sprinting up to its full speed moving across the dirt. In fact, even using alkaline batteries, I felt as if the Mini Mauler had decent power for it's size. The stature of the truck can only handle so much before it becomes too hard to control, and while I would have liked it to be faster in some aspects, it would be much harder to control.

I also found, that when turning, I had to be careful as the Mini Mauler could easily traction roll due to its narrow stance, and fairly high center of gravity. Even though the batteries are placed as low as possible, there's still a good amount of weight towards the top of the truck, which means turning takes a little getting used to. More power in the truck would only serve to intensify this condition. Just moving to a rechargeable pack alone would provide enough of a power boost without the need for a stronger motor for many who choose to run the Mini Mauler.

After spending some time running in the dirt, I decided to start climbing up a small hill to see how the Mini Mauler would fare. The tires dug in well and, despite the fact it's a two-wheel drive truck, had no problem with getting the Mini Mauler to the top. The only real caveat to going up the hill was the short wheelbase. If you weren't careful, you could easily find yourself back-flipping back to the bottom of the hill, or rolling over if you tried to turn on your way up.

Despite the precise navigation needed to negotiate up the hill, I found the challenge to be a great deal of fun. Instead of just pegging the throttle, some skill and forethought was required to make a successful climb to the top. The last time I had a challenge of that sort was when I took some of my nitro trucks to a 20-25 foot mountain of dirt and tried to negotiate up it. When comparing the obstacles on respective scales, the situations were very similar.

After spending some time climbing, I naturally decided to reverse the situation and run the dirt pile the other way and jump the Mini Maulers. However due to the more bouncy nature of the un-dampened shocks and lightweight, they usually did more tumbling instead of jumping. A good clean and bump free run would help, but wasn't possible in this area. A well-groomed dirt ramp on a track or off-road bike trail would work much better, as the better control launching off of the cardboard ramp showed me earlier.

Regardless of the fact the truck is limited to two-wheel drive and has some difficulty with rougher terrain, running the Mini Maulers proved to be a lot of fun. It's apparent after my testing that it's much more suited to smoother areas, and wasn't really designed for some of the terrain that a four-wheel drive mini would be able to tackle. They most certainly provided to be very durable though, as I had several indoor collisions with objects in the house. Outdoors they tumbled many times while in the dirt, and even had a few head-on collisions. However, I'm happy to report that both of the Mini Maulers walked away with no damage at all, other than a few scratches on the body.

Overall I've enjoyed my time with the HobbyZone Mini Maulers. While there are plenty of other minis out there that offer a more complex model in regards to adjustability and design, the Mini Mauler takes the route of simplicity for those just starting out in the hobby. I think its strongest selling point is that it's best suited for a beginner, who's just starting out in the hobby.

There isn't much I'd consider in the way of upgrades. However, since you can easily go through AA alkaline batteries quickly using a model like this, a rechargeable pack would be a prime upgrade choice. As I mentioned before a receiver pack could be used as well, but you'll need to perform a plug swap. Regardless of whether you purchase the HobbyZone pack or something from the aftermarket, you'll be saving money in the long run. You'll also gain a little performance as well, since a NiMH pack will provide a much better power source than AA alkaline batteries.

Bearings would be another wise consideration, as they will have a much longer life than the stock bushings. They will also reduce rolling friction which can provide you a slight edge in regards to runtime and speed. While the swap isn't anything that's an immediate consideration, I would certainly pick up bearings instead of another set of bushings once the stock ones wear out.

The Mini Mauler has proven itself to be tough, and more than capable of some abuse. While the two-wheel drive hinders it in rougher terrain, it will be fine in a smooth area in the backyard. It will also perform well in an indoor setting, should that be more to your liking. With the current crop of mini trucks rapidly expanding, this fresh choice from HobbyZone is most certainly worth looking into.

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