This car is made by what seems to be a fairly obscure brand, although I am happy to be corrected if that is not the case.  It is the first and only one I have made by this company.

• Body: White ABS plastic
• Chassis: Generic 'VS'
• Motor - Stock 130 single shaft with propshaft driving gears on each axle.

Again this one was one that I purchased fairly early on my foray into the world of Mini-4wd and overall was pretty unspectacular.  What I mean is assembly was very straightforward and I didn't encounter any particular issues.  The parts seem well made, instructions were adequate if not as good as ones from Tamiya, and the car ran fine straight after assembly not needing any fettling to get it running (unlike some can).

As far as I know the design is a clone of one of the older Tamiya models and it has been cloned pretty well with no problems with parts fitting, dodgy electrical connections or gear meshing issues.  On this basis if I found more by this brand and they were models I like the look of I may well be tempted to get some more.  Although having said that I'm not actively searching for them. 

This car is one I picked up off eBay recently, although it is an older kit, made by a manufacturer I've been unable to find out much about at all, it is quite an interesting one.

One nice thing is that it is a model of a real world car and features a separate interior glass part (plastic of course lol).  It also has as can be seen in the picture 6 wheels instead of the customary 4, this is probably to give you differing assembly options.

That is about as much as I can tell you about it at the moment as I've not studied the kit assembly instructions so don't know what sort of chassis it has or what the body mounting is like.  What I can tell you is;

• Body: Black ABS plastic
• Chassis: TBA
• Motor: Stock 130 single shaft with propshaft driving gears on each axle.

When or if I build this kit is uncertain as I'd really like to find out more about it than I currently know and also to establish exactly how uncommon this kit is.  If anyone has any background to the maker and the range please drop me a message as I'd love to know more.

This car was the first one I got hold of and built when I got into this hobby, although I was aware of Mini-4WD first time around at the time I couldn't find a source of them in the UK and of course back then we didn't have the internet!

Anyway, back to the current day and with the internert I managed to source this from a popular Chinese website to finally try and build one of these cars.  I have to say I could have picked something a bit easier as my first car for several reasons.

To start with the design is a little out of the ordinary with some of the rollers mounted in strange places.  The design also gives you very little scope for modification and improvements as well.

To make mattes worse the instructions were pretty poor, not even printed on a sheet of paper.  Instead the inside bottom of the box contained the body assembly and sticker placement.  The rear of the box contained the full assembly instructions and were limited by size of the box in terms of details.

Anyway, this car has the following characteristics;

• Body - White ABS plastic
• Chassis - Slightly modified VS, black ABS plastic
• Motor - Stock 130 single shaft with propshaft driving gears on each axle.

During assembly I did hit some issues, partly due to inexperience with these cars, partly due to the poor instructions and dodgy quality components.

Some months later I now understand that Jeipen is quite a well known brand in Asia, but I have to say I'm surprised they are as popular as they are as in my opinion this is the worst kit I've had to date.

This car is another legacy model that I purchased second hand off of eBay as the 'look' caught my eye.  When I received it the car was basically fully assembled, but was actually non-functional.

The problem turned out to be a problem with the placement of the battery contacts along with some gear meshing issues (in other words they were not, the motor was spinning and not turning any gears.  After a bit of fettling I got the contacts fitted correctly and then adjusted the pinion cog and other gears so that they meshed properly and lo-behold a running car.  I still have to sort out a permanent solution to fitting the body as currently it does not secure properly due to a broken part.  As I can't find this brand for sale anywhere and don't have the original part I can't make a new one as I don't have the pattern for it.  But have a few ideas on how to get round this.

• Body - Yellow ABS plastic
• Chassis - Modified VS, black ABS plastic
• Motor - Stock 130 single shaft with propshaft driving gears on each axle.

The main modification to the VS derived chassis is the odd rollers fitted, due to the placement and size its unlikely I can easily replace or improve these if I wanted to.  The rear battery contacts are odd, there is a small switch on the left side (looking from the front) that you can twist to move the contacts allowing easier battery changing.  

You may also have noticed that there is a hole moulded into the roof of the body shell on the right rear side (looking from the front.  This is there as apparently when this was in production you could by an upgrade kit that provided you with remote control capabilities for this car.  I can't tell you much more than that as it doesn't say much on the box, but I believe it only gave forward and reverse control as the front wheels are fixed axle like any Mini-4wd car.

This was the 3rd Yang Kei brand car I picked up, the first two being models based on one of the Avante body shells.  This one is not based on the Avante and I'm not exactly 100% sure what this body shell shape is, if you know please drop me a note telling me so I can update the info.

• Body: purple ABS plastic
• Chassis: Modified MA (see below)
• Motor: stock 130 centrally mounted dual shaft which transmits power directly to gears on both axles

I mention that this car has a modified MA chassis, this is not uncommon and is also found in all of the Yank Kei models that I have purchased to date.  However as I said it is modified as it features spring loaded individual suspension on each wheel.  This is implemented by having a plastic part that is hinged which contains the socket for the axle shaft.  This is spring loaded to normally keep it pressed down, however when you hit something that pushes up on a wheel that wheel can lift slightly to absorb the impact before being pushed back down again by the spring.  How far you tighten down the nut that keeps the spring in place allows you to adjust how hard the suspension is.  At the moment I only have it set on what is probably the softest setting until I can get it out on a track to see what effect the suspension has and if any changes to the spring tension will improve things in certain circumstances.

The other unusual thing about this model is that it also has working headlights.  These are turned on by pushing back the body part directly above the cockpit window.  This then turns on the dual LED's on the front of the car.  The nice thing is this is pretty much self-contained and uses a couple of button cells to power the LED's so does not take power away from the motor.  Weight of the components are pretty minimal as well.

As you can see I have modified this slightly be adding carbon fibre stays, metal rollers and post cap balls.  Unlike the other Yang Kei cars these were not supplied, I sourced them from a 3rd party.  I also chromed the wheels, engine, exhaust clip and a few other small details to improve the looks.

This car was the second Yang Kei branded car I bought, having been impressed by the contents of the first kit (silver body version of this one).  Although I wanted the car I already had plans to use the upgrade parts from this kit with a different model I had recently built.  Basically I was able to get the upgrade parts cheaper this way than buying them as separate components!  Check the details of the Silver version to see what you get in the box in terms of upgrade parts.

The body was also provided in a nice gloss black finish using the same body shape as the silver variant.

• Body: purple ABS plastic
• Chassis: Modified MA (see the 'Speed Spark' variant for details of the modifications)
• Motor: stock 130 centrally mounted dual shaft which transmits power directly to gears on both axles

Like the silver kit the downside is the lack of any detailed instructions, but I knew this, also again no stickers/decals which is a bit more of a problem with this kit.  With the silver one its easy to justify no markings, with this one it is crying out for something, as is often favourite with me I did chrome the wheels instead of leaving them boring grey. 

Longer term I intend to create some custom stickers using a vinyl digital cutter.  I also need to decide what rollers etc... to add to this car which is otherwise finished mechanically.

As you will probably notice the box cover image looks nothing like the model in the box.  This is a common fault with the Yang Kei packaging, you need to ignore the picture on the front of the boxes, the contents are indicated by what picture is ticked on the rear of the box!

This car was the first Yang Kei branded car I bought, partly as I was interested in some of its features, secondly because it comes as standard with a whole host of upgrade parts including carbon fibre stays, metal rollers, mass weights, post balls etc...  If you look at bottom picture in the left column you can see the set of parts provided laid out.

The body was also provided in a nice chrome silver finish which was attractive to me as was the body shape which is based on one of the Avante designs I believe.

• Body: purple ABS plastic
• Chassis: Modified MA (see the 'Speed Spark' variant for details of the modifications)
• Motor: stock 130 centrally mounted dual shaft which transmits power directly to gears on both axles

The parts are generally very well made and once you figure out the instructions it goes together pretty well.  However I would suggest you do need some level of experience before trying this model as the instructions are one of the poorer aspects of this kit.  The instructions are pretty sparse, printed pretty small on a single double sided thin sheet of paper and do NOT contain any instructions or suggestions on how to use the upgrade parts.  The only thing covered is the construction of the basic car, everything else is down to you to figure out somehow (youtube can be your friend here).

You will also notice that the body is undecorated, this is because although it is chromed by the maker they have not printed any markings on it or provided you with any stickers or decals at all.  Therefore if you want more detail you are forced to either source stickers/decals elsewhere or be very handy at painting.

These oversights are a pity as it turns what could be a stunning kit into one only really suited to an experienced Mini-4wd kit builder.  Having said that I guess some of this is down to what can be done for a certain price as these kits can be found at very reasonable prices.  It seems that the maker has concentrated on ensuring good quality parts and mouldings to create a fundamentally nice car once assembled.

One last thing, ignore the picture on the front of the boxes from this maker, the contents are indicated by what picture is ticked on the rear of the box!