Nitroholic

Genuinely thing this is a good idea. I mean...it's a Tamiya with proper suspension and ball bearings. Less good will be the fact that it will cost a fortune for what it is, but it does at least show some concept of how to keep a model looking like it used to be, but working like it should. Oil damped shocks. Damn. Revolutionary stuff. Incidentally, I planned on picking up a Lunchbox to do something similar with. Graft on proper suspension. End up with a usable vehicle that looked stock from a distance, but wasn;t.

Nitro has died more times than that wierd bloke in a hockey mask in that film franchise. It will probably die again next year as well.

Wipe it down to get the worst off, clean all the nooks and crannies with a small stiff bristled brush (old toothbrushes work well). Then dry it off. Moisture left will promote corosion. Last thing, give it a shot of WD40 or GT85..but DO NOT spray it into bearings. It will wash out grease. If they are wet...take off the wheels and leave them somewhere warm to dry out.

Factory setting is basically where you start for break in. Massively rich to give as much lubrication as possible while hte motor is still very tight. It's not a long term running setting for best performance, and will, as you can see, throw a lot of unburnt fuel out the back.

The re-brand could be due to the previous company folding, and them starting over with a fresh director, new company, and previous debts written off through bankruptcy. Or they could just have packed it in and restarted. Either way, the world seems full of people who see 'Go Fund Me' as a way of getting things for free by having someone else pay. Hmm..my PC is slow...lets set up a crowd-funding page to get money to buy a new PC. It's enough to make you go all cynical

If you need a puller that's a bit bigger then the pinion one ...try a small windscreen wiper puller: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/355417040318?_ul=GB You would need to drop a pin down the central motor shaft to push on the motor shaft. I keep old drill bits. Especially 3-5mm ones if I snap one or ruin the tip. Would be easy to drill into the 'anvil' part of the wiper puller and drop a pin in. Choose a pin to suit the motor shaft Then you got a scaled up pinion puller. edit: If you make the pin removable...you could still remove stuck on windscreen wipers from the motor shafts too 😉

I tie a simple loop knot like this.... which the pin goes through. It doesn't slip and won't pull out.

If you have forward only and no reverse...check your ESC settings. You should not be relying on the reverse switch for this.

Your car has a set of batteries on it that power the servos and the receiver. That's what you left on. You you can discharge them to the point that they no longer work. Leaving the batteries on should not damage the receiver. How are you testing the power supply to the servo? You should have power, ground and a signal channel. Power and ground drive the motor...the signal is required to tell it how much to move. You can't test the signal with a fan, but you can test power and ground. That would indicate from your results that you have power, so the batteries are doing their bit. Do you know what radio system is supplied with the buggy? It is possible it has failed, though not as a result of just running the batteries flat. May just be coincidence that this has happened.

Yes. absolutely

Acetal spur gear is basically a harder machineable plastic.

Well....when you look at the actual parts .... it gives you a PITCH value as well as the teeth on the spur gear. 48DP. Is your pinion the correct PITCH. Nothing to do with the number of teeth, it's about the size and shape of the teeth. You could fit a 19T pinion with the wrong pitch, and it would just ruin any spur gear you fit. Acetal spur gears should not strip on the motor you have. It's relatively low KV (3300) but it is also one of those finned cans, which usually mean it;s a 380core in a can that looks bigger than it is. If anything, it's underpowered for a 1/10 truck with big wheels, so that's not the issue. so... either your motor isn;t mounted correctly, you have sloppy bearings in the driveline allowing the spur to wander, you have the wrong pitch of pinion, or else there is another physical issue like a bent motor shaft screwing the mesh. I used to use the paper method to set the mesh until I got to the point where I could justfeel what was right and be pretty close. Only truck I built that had issues and needed a steel spur was an XL nitro Savage running twin .28 nitro motors through the same gearbox. I also had to replace it;s stock gearbox foir a single speed unit as it just smashed internals.

What motor did you fit? What size and what KV rating? Also, what gearing are you running? Be sure also you bought a spur gear with the right pitch. There are 3 different pitches common on 1/10 cars. 48dp, 32dp and mod 0.7. Can be hard to tell them apart sometimes, and using an incorect spur/pinion combo will strip the softer one very quickly no matter how well meshed. While you are checking other stuff, check to make sure the motor mount is not flexing and that there are not side issues like bearings failing in the driveline. A metal spur is less likely to strip, but it doesn't necessarily mean all the problems just go away. You shouldn;t need a metal spur gear. If you do fit one, don;t use a brass pinion with it. That will just eat itself. A metal spur needs a hardened pinion.

Looks like a Baja clone to me.... which means pulling the spur gear and brake assembly, getting the gearbox out ( possibly take the engine out first ) followed by tearing down the gearbox to get to the diff. Then open up the diff and see what's in there. As it's virtually impossible to tell what is in there, get some decent silicon diff oil in your chosen viscosity...and clean out all teh gears and refill with the oil. Then rewfit in the gearbox, grease the gears with a decent lithium grease, and put it all back together. It's quite a bit of work, but worth doing if you suspect the thing might have cheap diff oil, or even just grease.

We found a new craze. Dirt oval racing RC. Great! Make a hideously ugly shell, slkap on some token sponsor labels and bung it on some old 2WD Slash chassis we have been struggling to sell. Double the price too while you are at it. I can think of many reasons not to buy.