mjx hYPER gO 14301 14302 1/14 Brushless On road Basher/Drifter Review: My Car of the year 202310/6/2023 The MJX HYPER GO 14301 (and 14302) are brushless 1/14 scale on road cars that are equipped for grip style bashing and drifting. They are not only well featured but well built making for a solid driving experience with a lot of thought having gone into the build. In this review I'll look at the car in close detail and of course offer a full review of the driving performance.  MJX are a brand that are quietly going about building a solid body of work in the budget RC car scene. I've reviewed the MJX HYPER GO H16E here which is a very durable small scale brushed monster truck that outperformed my expectations. They have also made a brushless version of this truck, the MJX 16208 which I've driven but haven't reviewed. It is my belief that MJX have even been contracted to make the WLToys 124008. It is my appreciation of these cars that piqued my interest for the 14301 as reviewed here and the 14302 by association. These are an onroad version based around the same car but with shorter arms, a discrete gyro and altered bodywork which makes them a solid onroad basher. First, lets look at what is included in the box. What's in the box? I've been used to reviewing RC cars that have the bare minimum included in the box recently so I quote enjoyed opening the MJX Hyper Go 14301 to see that there were plenty of extras:  There is of course the car with transmitter that I'll go into much more detail below but also:
A Closer Look at the Car The car itself is well specced with well thought out components and some good technology so I'm looking forward to showing you this in more detail in this section. Powertrain The MJX Hyper Go 14301 onroad basher uses a brushless 2845 3700kv motor. For a small car this is a decent sized motor and the mid-low kV will keep this torquey and efficient. The motor includes a fan and heatsink that although I think is unnecessary, should ensure a long life. There is also potential headspace to run this on 3s but I can't say if the ESC is capable. Speaking of the ESC, it is an unbranded 45a unit. There is no fan on the heatsink but one is included in the kit if you wish to fit it. I like the use of inset banana plugs for the motor to keep the install tidy.
The battery included is a 2s Li Ion unit. Being Li-Ion the capacity is decent for the size (2000mah) but the c rating is only 15C meaning than maximum continuous discharge rate is around 30A. This is probably well suited to the motor (and gearing) choice which will offer good acceleration and efficiency and a greater top speed that can be unlocked with a Lipo battery and taller gear if that is your thing.
Overall a tidy little powertrain and I'll cover the actual speed and acceleration more in the performance review section of this write-up. Driveline The driveline is metal throughout - pinion gear, spur gear, nice chunky 4wd propshaft and diffs which run a full set (4) of spider gears. All gears including pinion and gear are full shrouded. There is no noticeable bind in any of the gears and the full driveline feels smooth. Further out it's nice to see MJX are still using oversized driveshafts on front and rear and better yet; they use CVDs on front and rear. As well as giving marginally better efficiency these mean no more lost dogbone driveshafts. Being so thick they are unlikely to bend in a crash either. Out at the hub they run a regular 12mm hex as well so you have plenty of wheel options available.
Suspension Equal length aluminium bodied oil-filled shock absorbers are used front and rear. The have adjustable spring collars to change ride height. There is no droop screws no drop screw options, nor are there any options to change the mounting point on either the shock tower not the suspension arm. I would call the dampening medium and shocks are well filled with out. Springs are soft and so suspension is effective on this car. There are no anti-roll bars nor any mounting points to fit.
In general weight balance is well split with just over 50% bias toward the rear, which on a car like this is perfect. Suspension arms are double wishbone front and rear with not option for camber adjustment. Camber is fairly neutral on the rear but there is a lot of positive camber on the front.
Steering Steering is powered by a 3 wired servo which is quite fast as you can see in the video below. What I love most about this steering setup thought is that not only is a steering gyro is included to help you with counter steer (drifting assistance) but this is a full adjustable discrete unit which can be used on other cars. Check it out in action and with images below:
So far as the rest of the steering setup is concerned it is fairly straightforward with a typical rack-style setup that allows a typical modern Ackerman angle. There are brass bushings present and little play or bind in the system. It is unfortunately the although the tierods look adjustable they are in fact not. It's disappointing therefore that there is a reasonable amount of toe-out stock as you can see below.
Chassis I really like the chassis of this car - it is super rigid without being overweight. The bottom plate of the chassis is aluminium and presents as flat and smooth on the underside. There is only a small amount of castor angle at the front. Instead of am upper plate there is a single upper torsion bar made of anodised aluminium, no doubt inspired by the Arrma Infraction / Felony. They have done a nice job of integrating this with the various mounts which makes for a clean, strong, light build that is open and easy to work on. I'll also mention here that the front and rear suspension arms have a particularly robust mounting system with aluminium hinge pin mounts front and rear. These combined with the short arms mean I'd be very surprised I'd ever see a broken suspension arm mount, certainly not at the chassis anyway.
Body The Body is pre painted and comes with a few details already on but mercifully there is a whole sheet which you can choose to add more from (I chose none). The body itself has some mice touches like the moulded rails on the roof which will stop the body getting all scratched up when you inevitable filp over. Mounting is really solids and I like the way the front foamed bumper intergrates with the body and the way the rear diffuser/bumper integrates as well - it should hold up to some tough bashing.
Something I wasn't expecting with this car was an underbody dust cover, something we usually only see on the larger full-bodied offroad RC cars to keep the mess away from the electronics. At first I was wondering what the point was but then remembered the mess on my SG1602 drifter (reviewed here) due to the hard plastic drift wheels being ground into a fine dust. A welcome addition when you think about it  Underbody cover is a nice touch and fits well Lighting Like a number of modern RC cars this has a full lighting setip controlled by throttle input and also a dedicated channel on the remote. Rather than go into too much detail on the function, check out the videos below:  Wiring for the lighting is clean as with other aspects of this car
Wheels and Tyres The MJX Hyper Go 14301 and 14302 comes with 3 different sets of wheels and tyres that are all approximated 55mm in diameter. Onroad grip tyres come pre-installed and are probably my favourite. They are a medium compound and are pre-glued with stiff foam inners. They have an aggressive on road tread pattern. I will tell you now that they grip VERY well but more on that in the handling section of the review below. The second set of wheels and tyres are hard plastic drift tyres. Traction is designed to be low on these and are good for easy 4wd drift driving on smooth surfaces. The third set of wheels and tyres are similar to the first with the same rims, glue and foam but have a more aggressive tread pattern and much hard tyre compound. At first I thought these would be better for light off-roading but have since found the off a sweet spot of grip between the grip tyres and plastic drift tyres on road for what is an amazing drift experience with this car - more below in the review.  Good tread pattern, medium compound rubber and stiff inner foam make these a good grip tyre
Review
Handling - Grip For me the handling of an on-road car is make or break territory for me. Let me give you 2 examples. The WL Toys 104072 is an awesome looking 1/10 scale truck in the same style as this one with a full brushless setup but it just didn't handle well with too much weight bias up front (see my review here). Even after I changed the weight distribution and suspension settings quite drastically I still couldn't get it to handle well - it just wasn't fun to drive and so it sits gathering dust. Sticking with WL toys, the tiny 284010 I reviewed recently has (against all odds) excellent handling and it makes it a blast to drive. It also means that when you convert it to a drift setup that balance is already there and so drift remains predictable. Before I digress too much, the MJX Hyper Go 14301 sits firmly in the good handling camp. As you can see from the videos below the tyres obviously offer excellent grip but more importantly the suspension is allowed to perform well because it is setup well, as is the centre of gravity and weight split front and rear. Yes, you can get traction roll on asphalt but this is more a function of the extreme tyre grip than handling issues. Since this is an onroad "basher" the suspension springs are nice and soft while the dampening is in the medium band for weight. This means you are not relegated to race track only surfaces, it can handle transitions well too. If you did want to reduce traction roll you would probably want to look at stiffer springs and a slightly lower ride height but honestly I really like the stock settings. This is not a bad thing because other than changing springs and dampening you are stock with stock settings due to lack of adjustability. One thing that is adjustable however is the gyro. Since there was so much grip in the location below I turned the gyro right down but when you are in lower grip situations (drift wheels being the extreme) the more gyro will generally widen your turn circle but make drifting easier.
In summary this handling setup is perfect for street bashing out of the box and lack of adjustability is a good thing to keep you focussed on driving.  Look how hard these tyres are working, sign of a good setup Handling - Drift Often people can get carried away when using drift wheels and gyros as a way of hiding a poor handling car but this is not the case here. Good handling on grip tyres is usually a strong precursor for good handling with drift. The included discrete gyro is very good and can even be used on other models if you wish. Turning up the gain will increase the amount of countersteer intervention and vice versa. My recommendation is to play with the setting on new surfaces and see how it works and get a feel for what works for you. In general 4wd drift cars with gyros are a nice ease place to start but if you find yourself getting really in to it you'll find yourself becoming limited but the lack of steering lock (which is a feature of 4wd cars) and lack of suspension settings. If fun and useability rather than competition is your goal though, the MJX Hyper Go 14301 and 14302 are excellent options. The included hard plastic tyres are predictable extremely low in grip and slide all over the place. They are good for learning countersteer and low speed drifting but more of a novelty.
Durability This car is very tough for 3 key reasons.
Comparison to Pinecone SG1602 UDIRC 1/16 drift models The Pinecone SG1603 (which I reviewed here) and all of the variants both brushed and brushless that they spawned (SG1604, SG1605, SG1606, SG1607, SG1608, SG1609, SG1610) plus the rebranded UDIRC cars 1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 were small 1/16 cheap drift cars with a built in gyro which enjoyed huge success. After the launch of the brushed variants more expensive brushless options were release plus a number of questionable aftermarket parts. These cars were always very limited because they were based on bottom of the barrel parts and components but came together in a fun package. The MJX Hyper Go 14301 is also a fun package but is on a completely differently level of quality. You can consider the Hyper Go 14301 as reviewed here as what the Pinecone cars always aspired to be. Probably the easiest way to think of the pinecone cars are as toys whereas the MJX Hyper Go 14301 and 14302 is a genuine hobby-grade vehicle. Summary On the whole, MJX have put an excellent car together with the Hyper Go 14301 (and 14302). This street-basher has a very good build quality but more importantly it is built with real purpose as a street basher. The brushless power system has an excellent balance between speed, efficiency and acceleration and is well suited to grip driving and drifting. The 3 sets of wheels and tyres included provide different driving styles with grip and high speed drift being my favourite options (especially the latter). The included discrete gyro is a must have for beginner drifting but perhaps the most important (and overlooked) highlight of this car is the excellent handling. This is not due to it having oil shocks alone but but having these in combination with an excellent weight split and well thought out suspension geometry. This excellent handling makes you want to drive it lots and so it helps then that it is very tough and durable. The only possible downside I can think of given is the lack of adjustability, particularly in the steering tierods but even this can be remedied with cheap aftermarket parts if needed. Without a word of a lie, this is easily the best car I have reviewed this year. In time it wouldn't be a surprise for me to say that this is the best car I have ever driven, certainly for a bang to buck. This is a car I strongly recommend to own for yourself.
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