Beige

That looks remarkably like an overheating linear regulator. Most of the little 1A BECs are nothing more than a LM7805 or LM317. They're good for 1A for spikes, closer to 500mA for a few seconds from a 6 cell NiMh... Wagging the steering back and forth will be pushing it a fair bit. when the regulator gets really hot the output gets limited until it cools a little. Swap the ESC for one with a switching BEC, or run a separate one. Job done.

X-CAR 45A brushed right? I've got 5 of them in service at the moment, the only downside I've found is the under specced inductor in the switching BEC, it tends to get a wee bit hot. But if you use an external BEC that's a non issue. I'm using the X-CAR in preference to far more expensive ESCs when running high turn motors in scalers. Love em! Be nice if they were waterproof though...

Nicely done! The scalers are great, I always get interested people and kids when driving them around. Far more than the fast models.

Looking tidy. That steering setup will work, but the rear most steering needs to have a shorter arm, you could try moving the linkage in a hole. As you have it it'll load up the servo when you steer at speed. You'll see the effect when you get it running. Theres a good image here: http://www.scale4x4rc.org/forums/showpost.php?p=185309&postcount=145

When you get to the body, the stock access with the tilting cab is dreadful! I built mine so the top panel of the roof is held on with magnets, makes life so much easier. Also can't help noticing the front link mounting plates might be not quite right Enjoy the build! Theres plenty of it

I've got a Cross RC MC8 on the way, same basic chassis, but a bit longer with an extra axle, The body is more or less a Man Kat. Theres also the MC6 which is a 6x6 Kat, and theres the XC6 which is another body type. They all look pretty cool, the material the axle cases are made from seems to be a little suspect, but even the more expensive brands can crack when it's cold enough.

Technically quite so, however I've landed dead stick on the far end of a large field with a DX8 using DSMX with no signs of loss of signal (using telemetry), and given even large scale trucks don't really tend to be used at great range I would rather have seen DSMX used here. I would almost suggest DSMR is 99% the same as DSMX...

DSMR... Really??? Why do we need yet another standard, ok, DSM and DSM2 were rubbish, but DSMX fixed pretty much all the issues, so why not use that on the ground based gear? Also, 4 channel? wow, Why not 8? Multiplex had the Profi car 707 7 channel radio how many year ago?.. *Grumble Grumble* Having said all that, if the price is right it looks to be one of the better well specced radios around.

if you're talking about the antenna then yes any damage to the wire will attenuate the signal. But, I do believe the antenna on the W3.1 is just a length of wire, so you can crack open the radio and solder in a new length being sure it's the exact length of the original, and it wouldn't hurt to be a similar gauge too

Generally I find a 1 inch or so hole cut in the windscreen (hole saw works a treat) does the job nicely, on a touring car you also might want to cut hole in the rear window, about 25% bigger than the intake as the body is close to the ground.

The wire wants to be as straight as it can be with the wire going up to just before the end of the tube. Having the wire go past the end of the tube and then run back down the tube has always been a daft idea, but one that has been standard in RC cars for ever... Without going into too much detail, the section that run back down the tube is in effect removed from the overall length of the wire... Have a look for HF/VHF antenna design for more info. Having said that, most 27MHz and 40MHz radios are still good enough when set up like this, providing adequate range so it doesn't really matter all that much as long as the bulk of it is straight up. With 2.4GHz however there are some other factors, such as the type of wire used for the antenna, most low cost radios use 4 or 5 inches of plain wire, which is a bit nasty, but as long as the last couple of inches if fairly vertical and in the clear you're good to go. The other common type is coaxial, you can normally tell because the last inch is thinner, the thin bit is the only active part of the antenna and needs to be vertical, but you have to be very careful not to kink, or tightly bend the thicker bit as it will deform the coax which will heavily attenuate the signal.

Analogue radios generate the pulse that gets separated and sent directly to the servo/esc. Digital radios send a data packet which the receiver processes and generates the servo pulse. On old analogue radios you could get to the complete pulse train, but on the digital systems you can't, so the only connection you have are the servo connections. A servo frame is 20ms long, starting with a rising edge, holding for the pulse time (1ms - 2ms) then falling and staying low for the rest of the frame. I can't help wandering what you're planning to do with the radio that needs the extra info? Knowing this might help steer you in the right direction.

Old analogue systems wold send a series of pulses, one per channel the width of the pulses (1ms - 2ms) determine the servo position, and then theres a special pulse that acts as a reset, normally there would be a chip like a 4017 in the Rx to separate the channels. These days though most radios are completely digital and send data packets often containing the servo positions at 10bit values. As for Rx to Tx comms, theres a certain amount when you bind a 2.4GHz pair but that about it until you start using telemetry.

2.4Mhz you say... thats two point four megahertz, I think the band you're after is 27MHz, or even 40MHz As for the end point adjustment and model memories, thats not a given, the majority of the cheapo 2.4GHz radios aren't spread spectrum and use a signal channel making them extremely susceptible to lost frames. Spektrums DSM and DSM2 are marginally better using 2 channels and switching between them, but they seem to be quite adequate for ground RC. For real robustness you need a system like DSMX, where it uses many channels, 50? and switches between them in a random order, but is in sync with the receiver. So if one channel is noisy you only loose 2% of the data. As for 27MHz and 40MHz. 27MHz is a band assigned for general use, so you can find welding equipment putting out megawatts of power as well as many other sources of interference. 40MHz on the other hand is dedicated to ground RC, so you shouldn't get much interference from external sources, but due to various factors it is very susceptible to badly suppressed electrics. So, 27Mhz - AVOID!!! 40MHz - Better than nothing 2.4GHz - Cheap radios suck Oh, theres also the modulation AM vs FM on both 27MHz and 40MHz to choose from. AM can be upset by a passing car with dodgy ignition, where FM will be fine, meaning FM is far more robust. I was only going to type the first 2 lines, but got carried away a bit

If I remember rightly the D Box is nothing more than a simple rate gyro, if so have a look at the GWS PG-03, which you can pick up for