Pure Six – Mugen MBX-6
Middle
The MBX-6 is based around a nicely milled hard coated 3 millimetre T6 aluminium chassis. Unfortunately we did not have an unmodified MBX-5 chassis at hand to measure if the new item is any lighter as with many parts of the new buggy. All parts of the chassis are located in a rather conventional way which means that Mugen did not use the fancy ‘off-set’ positions of the centre differential etc. some of the newly designed buggies show. Everything looks nice and ‘familiar’ making you feel at home instantly. The differential is located in a two piece plastic mount making access easy for maintenance or set-up purposes. The fibre brake pads are now part of the steel plates doing away with the need to properly fit and glue them together. Routed from the centre differential area to the front and rear are the common chassis braces for added stability. The rear one is an alloy item for added strength while the one up front is made out of plastic for better rough track handling.
On the right side of the chassis the revised radio tray and RC box can be found. Those who know the old MBX-5 design will instantly notice that Mugen went away from the laydown steering servo design! This fact now leaves room for the front chassis brace while the tank seems to hang more towards the centre line of the chassis making for a very slim design of the whole car compared to its predecessor. The new design of the RC box also adds to this. The box for the receiver battery now only accepts straight line packs (whereas hump-style packs could be used before) but this helps to centralize weight towards the centre line of the chassis resulting in a more agile handling on the track.
Compared to the MBX-5 the engine of the X-6 seems to sit a couple of Millimetres more to the front in its one piece engine mounts. The clutch is set-up with a 13T clutch bell, alloy clutch shoes and 1.0 Millimetre springs. This suited very well with the RB S5 we used for the test of the MBX-6.
Rear
Assembly of the rear suspension starts with the carbon shock tower that offers a more upright position for the dampers compared to the front. The wishbones attach to the gearbox via an alloy suspension holder up front. This offers again different plastic inserts to adjust the amount of anti-squat. The rear part is made out of plastic and is supplied with six different anti-squat/toe-in configurations. O degree anti-squat with 2.5, 2.75 and 3.0 degrees toe-in as well as with 1 degree anti-squat and the aforementioned toe-in settings. Wheelbase can be adjusted in multiple ways by using the clips on the suspension holder shafts or three different shims in front/behind the rear upright.
Like the front the rear is equipped with a ant-roll bar – this time a 2.8mm item as well as with CVA universals that spin in large 15x21mm and 8x16mm bearings. A nice touch are the plastic mud flaps that can be screwed onto the rear wishbones. They do away with the flimsy Lexan shields the most of us European guys had to scratch build for loamy, muddy conditions.
The 18mm big-bore shocks come equipped with five hole pistons and medium (9.75T front and 10.75T rear) springs. The supplied 400 cps oil should make for a good start set-up especially for flat surfaces with medium height jumps.
Finish
To power the Mugen MBX-6 we used a RB Concept Sportline S5 L2G with EFRA 2045 and 25 percent nitro RB Concept fuel. Traction was provided by Tourex X-300 tyres. For steering and throttle/brake duties we relied on KO Propo’s PDS-2368 and PDS-2367 servos. Control was offered by our old and trusty KO Propo EX-1 Mars with 2.4GHZ Spektrum-RC module and SR-3500 receiver. The new sleek body Mugen provided for the MBX-6 is of very light weight and was again painted up by Chris Holden of Ginga Paint.
