Review - CEN Ford F-450 Super Duty

Who needs a big, long, gigantic truck for their scale transporting needs? In our home is the Ford F-450 Super Duty dual. With a unique, fully licensed Ford F-450 Super Duty shell, this large 1/10 scale four-wheel drive truck looks heavy-duty but is really a solid-axle trail truck rig. Before we go behind the wheel and speed-run this heavy-duty mover, let's take a look.

CEN Ford F-450 Batteries

It is important to note that this truck is ready to go, with the electronics, painted body, and transmitter already installed. This truck doesn't require any labor to start, but it does need a 2S or 3S LiPo battery pack and four AA batteries for the transmitter.

How fast is the CEN Ford F-450?

We were able to reach a top speed of 14 miles per hour after installing a 3S LiPo and velcroing our GPS speed meter in the truck's bed. We achieved an incredible 10 miles per hour with the 2S LiPo. Although it's not particularly quick, it has a lot of hauling torque, which you can adjust to increase the peak speed—but we'll discuss that later.

CEN Ford F-450 Two Piece Body

The legally authorized Ford F-450 Super Duty body, which consists of two Lexan parts, is included with this heavy-duty carrier. Screws and washers have been used to secure them together in the middle, one for the bed and one for the cab. Since the truck is more than 26" long and more than 11" broad, it requires a large body, and this F-450 Super Duty is the perfect one. Once secured, it has a 17.6" wheelbase. Here, it is positioned next to the Enduro Trail Runner, a typical 12.3-inch trail truck, for size comparison.

The Super Duty's grille, lights, windows, and other scale characteristics are highlighted with numerous decals throughout the body to give the full-size vehicle the most realistic appearance imaginable. There are then significant, huge, rugged plastic side mirrors with reflecting decals on each one and hard plastic wipers on the windshield to give the body a slightly more realistic appearance.

CEN Ford F-450 Wheels & Tires

Fury low-profile Country Hunter tires, which are officially licensed through Fury off-road tires, are mounted on the licensed formally American Force H01 Contra Wheels to complete the scale appearance of this Super Duty vehicle. A 12mm plastic hex and a 4mm nut are used to join the hubs to the axle after the tires are glued to the wheel, and the wheel is fastened to a hub using ten screws.

CEN Ford F-450 Chassis

When the body is removed, this vehicle resembles a 17.6" wheelbase stretch trail truck. The steel frame rail is really made up of three separate components that are fastened together to provide the desired stretch length.

This sizeable plastic battery box toward the back of the truck has two hook-and-loop straps with openings in the front and back to fit any 2S or 3S LiPo battery you could use or a NiMh pack if you prefer.

CEN Ford F-450 Servo

The electronics are visible as we move up front. We have a chassis-mounted servo reportedly manufactured by Savox, although the front doesn't have a model number. It has a torque of 12 kg per centimeter or 167 ounces per inch.

CEN Ford F-450 ESC

A HobbyWing WP-1040, 40amp brushed ESC is used for our electronic speed control (ESC). It has a T-style connector attached and is watertight. Additionally, it includes a voltage cutoff for both LiPo and NiMH batteries. However, it is configured in LiPo mode by default, so you will need to switch that jumper into the NiMh mode if you wish to use nickel-metal batteries with this ESC. With a few screws on the top, the receiver box above the ESC is sealed and appears to be waterproof.

CEN Ford F-450 Motor

Our Super Duty has a 550-size brush motor, a slipper assembly inside, and a 32-pitch pinion and spur gear. Our transmission, a typical three-gear transmission with metal gears inside, is located next to the motor.

The high torque settings produced the speeds we previously discussed. Your top speeds will rise if you put it in high-speed mode, but you should maintain your transmission in the high-torque setting if you're hauling or doing heavy loading, which is what this truck is designed for.

Pro Tip: "The transmission is set in the high-torque mode from the factory. However, the gearing can be slightly adjusted. You can go from high-torque to high-speed mode by simply removing one gear and reversing its orientation, changing the gear spacing, and then reassembling everything.

CEN Ford F-450 Shocks and Sway Bars

Finally, the plastic shocks are placed on these stamp steel shock hoops and have threaded spring adjuster bolts. The truck has a good amount of suspension thanks to the oil-filled, reasonably smooth shocks. However, because the car has sway bars on both the front and rear, it prevents the shocks from having excessive suspension articulation or flex. It will keep the vehicle flat as you drive it and help avoid front-end torque twists when you're hauling a load. Each side has a wire through the plastic arm connecting the post, and these sway bar arms are attached to the metal post that passes through the chassis via a wire.

Pro Tip: "One of those rear arms was missing the wire when we unpacked our truck." We fixed it by simply inserting a 1.5mm L-shaped Allen wrench—one comes with the truck—through the arm and post, and it fit. After determining the required length, we drew off the L on the Allen wrench, inserted it through the arm, and tightened it. We were able to fix that sway bar in five minutes. We couldn't find the metal wire, so we weren't sure if it was attached to the truck or if it had fallen out during shipping. Fortunately, this was a relatively simple and quick remedy.

CEN Ford F-450 Suspension

Now, you can see everything else, including our front and rear three-link suspension, if we flip the truck over. As previously stated, a servo installed on the CMS chassis, a steel skid plate here, and our driveshaft protruding to the rear are all there. Our rear driveshaft extender, which powers those back tires, is visible in the front. It contains a dog bone. The plastic bracing that joins the two chassis rails is also clearly visible, and it helps to make the entire chassis relatively rigid, with the exception of the very ends, where there is some flex.

Finally, you can see our axles clearly underneath. They have a detachable diff cover and are multi-piece in design. Even though the front driveshafts are dog bones, they still look good and offer a good amount of ground clearance underneath.

It is important to note that these axles use real working differentials, which are not locked up. This allows the differentials to spin freely, improving the truck's driving performance. You will need to go inside and lock up those differentials manually if you want this to behave and operate more like a trail truck.

On Road

This rig feels more like a legitimate on-road vehicle than a rock crawler or trail truck when driven as configured. The car stays reasonably level when driving over the more excellent traction pavement outside. Because of the sway bars, it doesn't want to tilt very much. Although the truck drives flat most of the time—it turns flat and stays flat—you can slide it just so and get one of the tires to rise and diff out that rear end if you push it hard enough and loosen up the rear end a little.

Off-Road

The truck's 4WD drive system ensures that it operates well off-road. These tiny, hard, low-profile rubber tires occasionally spew out on the ground. They are a little more challenging on uneven surfaces because they don't curve as well as actual rock crawler tires. Wheel spin, diffing out, and simply finding traction and momentum are more common in off-road situations.

CEN Ford F-450 Transmitter

As we previously stated, the truck's top speed isn't exceptionally high, and that's fine because fast speeds aren't really what this truck is meant for. The transmission is geared low since this truck is designed to tow your other 1/10 scale trucks easily. The Super Duty loading and carrying capabilities of this vehicle are further enhanced by the addition of four tires on the back axle, or a dual arrangement as it is frequently called. It is a truck that you would likely stroll alongside or behind while it transports your crawler and your equipment.

The truck's transmitter range was the only drawback we could find. We most likely moved the vehicle 50 to 100 feet away from us during our speed tests, and the transmitter did lose signal. As previously stated, the majority of people will stroll next to or behind this truck, so you will be right there with it and won't experience any transmitter problems. However, if you are out running about, you definitely won't want to drive too far away.

Trailers for your CEN Ford F-450

There are several choices for actually attaching trailers to the vehicle, including the enormous RC4WD Boat Trailer, the Xtra Speed Dual Axle Trailer, and the smaller Yeah Racing Leaf Spring Trailer. We placed the Axial SCX-24 in the truck's bed purely for amusement.

Although its rear chassis brace has a hitch attached, it isn't a bumper in the strictest sense of the word. The issue with that is that it's likely a few inches or centimeters from the outside of the body, so in order to extend all that weight underneath the body and then protrude on the outside, you'll need a really lengthy trailer hitch.