Nitroholic

You are on the edge of specs for the ESC, and as long as you were just using 2S Lipo, it should be able to take it. Just NOT if it's geared wrong. Your car is geared for a brushed silver can basic motor running on NiMh ..... The chances of being able to go that far away from stock on motor/ESC and NOT have to change the gearing are pretty small. There are some overall reduction ratios suggested on the Hobbywing website for the ESC you had. https://www.hobbywingdirect.com/products/quicrun-10bl120-esc?variant=2139725987868 Shows how much the ratio changed from a 23T motor....to a 6.5T motor. You have gone further than that. Needs a much lower geared setup or your motor pulls too many amps, and the ESC smokes. Geared correctly, your motor should probably pull around 50A tops, and should work well with a 120A ESC. But you have to gear it right.

The blue springs look better. White was fine when the wheels were white...but looked out of place after. Blend in better now. And I am sure the lad will love a Lunchbox. Another RC that is BADLY in need of some serious modding!

It would increase the speed...probably...but you are trading power for torque here. You would need to find gearing compromises to keep things cool and usable, which erodes some of the benefits. I had a 1/10 on road with a 4.5T motor. It was really quick. But that was on smooth flat surfaces. It was slow off the line, but really got some speed up when it got rolling. Changing the gearing would give speed at the expense of acceleration. Really, going faster means adding more power.

Car looks good 🙂 I think you have just experienced the classic 'upgrade' issue. Metal parts can be stronger, but plastic parts can flex and spring back while metal ones bend. You can also find that impacts get transferred through to the next weakest part when you beef up one bit. But..if that was a high altitude smack onto the nose on a hard surface..it actually held up pretty well. The ally uprights could still work ( after a good hammering to straighten them ) but I would look at some way of fitting a bumper or similar to absorb an impact like that again.

Himoto stuff is rebranded under a large number of different names for different markets, but it can be tricky pinning down exactly which is which. I am pretty sure Ros has nailed the ID. The motor could be an upgrade as it looks a little larger. The ESC certainly is. Probably why the rear diff let go. The poor thing looks to have had a hard life, judging by the dirt and corrosion.

I higher amp ESC will make no difference at all to the cogging issue you have. Would be surprised if it fitted under the shell, but as you are buying it for another project....thats no matter. If swapping the ESC fixes it, then your previous ESC was faulty. Which may itself help you. Whatever, your gearing needs sorting....and if you run it with the motor angled like it is, it will chew the spur gear up in no time at all. You need the full surface of the gear teeth taking the load. At an angle, you are losing a lot of contact area, multiplying the load on the area left. Which will probably strip it. If it's not possible to get the motor straight....then you should just fit a smaller motor that does fit, or find a way to make it fit. Welcome to the world of modding RC cars. It's seldom as simple as just bolting in things and going out and enjoying it. There are usually loads of issues and tweaking to get it set up and working right. You may also find other areas of the car have issues once you have the motor geared, meshed and set up correctly.

Quite like the shell, really don;t like the fake rollbars on the window stickers .... I see they have taken the same approach most of the BMW drivers I see around town, and removed the indicators. No point in cluttering up the car with something you never use 😉

Really not worth it. The Force .36 went through a period of iffy QC with a run of blown cranks, but if you get a good one they are fine. Just not that powerful. Plenty of torque....but in a Trophy, you won;t notice the benefit. It will, however, drink the fuel a lot faster. If you want to go for more speed, get a good .28 ( the stock HPI option is OK, but its a cooking RTR motor, so not in a high state of tune ) like the LRP Spec4 ... or if you really want a bit more of the ole 'cubes' ... go for the LRP .32. Botrh will give you a big chunk more power than your stock motor, and more than the big 5.9 engine. Plus they won;t empty the tank quite so fast.

Nothing really wrong with the stock shocks. If you are thinking of upgrading, just fit better quality units. People swap out the odd wheel nut setup HPI use as it doesn;t dop a good job, and the rather small nut can easily end up chewed and rounded. 'normal' 17mm hexes, as fitted to just about everything else, work better. Same goes for teh 3 shoe clutch. You get better drive and pickup. For shocks, HPI used to do a set of bigt bore shocks. Haven;t seen any stock for a while though. 97mm fronts, 112mm rears. Threaded adjusters. Big bores give more oil content, so the damping doesn;t fade as fast, giveing more predicatable response. Quality > quantity

Anyone want to sub me £1000 ......

Easy for me .... https://www.modelsport.co.uk/product/losi-lmt-4wd-solid-axle-monster-truck-rtr-son-uva-digger-1334543 It's overpriced, but pretty. I just love proper solid axle monster trucks, and this is the most true to the real thing RC. Gives me some money left over....which would go on either https://www.modelsport.co.uk/product/kyosho-turbo-scorpion-2wd-kit-405386 or this https://www.modelsport.co.uk/product/kyosho-beetle-2014-2wd-buggy-kit-388495 It's easy spending money like this, and far less painful than having to actually find it.

KV is no way to judge speed. All KV tells you is unloaded motor revolutions per volt. If you run a 2000KV motor on 6s ..... and compare it to a 5700Kv on 2S ....you get about the same revs. The amount of power generated though, is hugely different. The 1/8 buggies are usually running ESC's rated to 100-150A. Wheels are easy. It's not like a 1/10 touring car, where many options are available to fit under the shell. Monster truck and truggy wheels come in 2 varieties. Half or zero offset. Your manual isn't specifying wheel dimensions, as it doesn;t really need to. You can see from the pictures of hte stock wheels that the wheel nut is recessed. Zero offset wheels have the wheel nut sitting proud. You DO NOT want zero offeset, they will come too far in, foul the steering and cause issues. Any of the others will be fine. 2200Kv is about as far as you can reliably go with a 6S setup. It's on the limits. 8S would be pretty much undriveable, and unreliable. It's not worth it. More is just not better unless you can get teh traction, and want to have the diffs usable for more than one run. Did it once...slapped the biggest motor I could fit into a Hyper St truggy, planned to run 6S. Couldn;t keep the diffs together, tyres ballooned so badly I couldn;t keep them on the rims and all it did was wheely and crash when it did run. Then it cooked the ESC. Probably from over-revving when the diffs failed.

I wouldn't reccomend either. I would however, recommend you save a bit more money....as your budget is not great considering you will need to buy extra stuff, like glow starter & charger, servo power pack and charger and fuel....plus some basic tools

I think everyone should own a 4 wheel steer 6 wheel driver Hyper 7 .... EDIT: For the benefit of the confused.... I built one to use up a pile of Hyper 7 spares I had.

Never owned a Lunchbox .... and probably won;t .... as I would immediately have to chop it up, fit proper double wishbone suspension. Graft on a Stampede or similar gearbox and motor mount..... just couldn;t drive it with the stock motor and drive setup RC's you have to own? I would say a proper nitro Savage..... but then, I am biased

The Walbro carb for stock, if I remember right was the WT668. The KM motor I had had a carb with 'RuiXing' or somethjing similar looking on the bottom. This was a poor quality item. The proper item should have Walbro cast into the bottom plate on the carb. Quite a few variants can be fitted, but I wouldn't go with a chokeless option. Just don;t buy any of the cheap copies on E-Bay which are advertised as 'fitment for WT668' or similar. Make sure it is a real one. https://www.innovative-rc.com/product_info.php?cPath=27_141_143&sort=1a&products_id=738

Fire it up and see where you stand 🙂 Parts/engines are not going to be difficult to obtain, so once you know what you have to start with, you can go from there. First thing you DO need to do is check what carb is fitted. Earlier KM engines came with a very poor clone carb which didn;t use the stock settings you will find quoted normally for these motors. RC Modelz themselves started swapping carbs over on the cars they were selling to fit Walbro carbs from the outset. These are much better, make you motor run better, and are stock fitment to CY and Zenoah engines. If the motor has a dodgy clone carb...that is well worth swapping. But..really...before you go much further planning wise, you need to know what you have to start with. Fire it up....and if it runs good...run as is until you either brushless convert it or the motor fails. Then you can look at options with a better idea of where you want to get to. There are SO many options out there!

Thats really a call you have to make yourself. A better quality engine will be much nicer to use, will be more durable, and will give a better return through it's whole life. You have to decide if you are going to use it enough to make that worth while. If you are only going to run it a few times, and then go brushless then I would think not... OR if you are undecided about what you are going to do, then selling a used motor never really gets you much of a return. Mostly becuase folks just never know what they are going to get, and whether it's just a worn out piece of junk.. Now...when you say you are looking for a rebuild kit... what state is your current motor in? Might be worth picking up a used motor like this one : https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325553112476?hash=item4bcc7a459c:g:5zIAAOSw5h9jxUZR&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoE1ULyOOzv75jnl%2BQSIvfup9y994A6VDU0Pibmhg85Zh8dTVaVYCdtIsjOWhI0l6LvIZDV7aALIzgvkcW6bPDcpCpXq42W%2B4RKj7tOGtz%2BJxZEYYvq%2Bj97EklK4LohgDXqHIV4t6hsVNEz%2F9IO8CTTsPau6tXQL3KmCvEB9zR9PfBaAA9xVk5jFLvLDiAHlBsFCek398gsLol2U0rzqO%2FTY%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR8ropYXXYQ But I would put only as much into the motor as you intend to get use from it. The stock KM 23cc motor should be able to take basically any 2 bolt headkit. From what I recall of the older 2 bolts, 23 or 26cc kits are fine. 29cc ones come on a few designes and not all fit. So if the bottom end is good, get a head, piston and ring...gasket set...and rebuild the KM unit if you can do it for cheap.

Yeah..I tried a 4WS setup on my Madforce, duplicating the servo setup I had on the front. Didn;t keep it for long. Made the car wander at speed unless I cranked up the servo saver and really dialled down the movement range on the rears.... and unless going slowly...it promoted over steer. Crabbing was fun....for about 5 minutes. Took it off and never bothered again. It didn;t need it. Makes more sense on a rock crawler, or on a slower truck.... but I was running this on 4S and a 1950 4-pole and wasn;t really bothered about going slow

Personally.... I'd buy neither of those options. The KM 23cc 2 bolt is a cheap motor. It's not good quality, and while it does it;s job...it's not worth spending money on. Unless it;s genuinely all you can afford, in which case piston, rings and a head kit. But if you are looking at spending cash.... buy something better. which is NOT a 30cc cheap motor. Thats a bigger cheap motor. Where I would spend my money would be on a much better quality motor, which will provide a decent life and performance. In terms of quality in these motors, Zenoah are probably the best of the bunch, followed by CY. For your £160, you could get this: https://www.innovative-rc.com/product_info.php?cPath=27_141_142&sort=1a&products_id=562 This is the 4 bolt version of the motor HPI fit to stock Bajas. If you want to stick with RC Modelz choice of engines.... then save up a bit more and get this one https://www.rcmodelz.co.uk/engines/complete-engines/zenoah-g270rc-car-engine-4-bolt.html I've run a variety of motors in my time, and you really can see where the costs are cut to sell an engine that looks similar for nearly £100 less and still make a profit.

Kyosho USA 1 is basically still running the old Madforce axles. I have had a Madforce Kruiser for... a long time. Love the old thing. Converted it to brushless, and run it on 4S. But I do have some alloy axles in place of the stock plastic ones. Don;t think those are still made... but if anyone does start making them, it is worth the money. Handling was bouncy, and a bit quirky...but it is fun. Modded the steering to mount the servo on the front axle...braced the suspension arms and its good. Tempted to convert it back to nitro just for ****s and giggles.

No...thats the 4x4 Mega version. That comes with a brushed motor and ESC and a NiMh battery. The full beans version comes with brushless and a £400 price tag. You could buy the brushed version and upgrade later though. Depends if they reduced the spec anywhere else. If you look at the total cost after upgrade, you wont save any cash, but it does mean you can spread the cost. Of course, if you already have suitable batteries etc. that helps too.

Looking at the kit you got, I would say any motor over abouit 3600KV would be likely to just eat the diffs, assuming you can get it geared well enough to run nicely. A 4-pole lower KV motor will give more torque and smoother low speed running, which is what a rock crawler like this needs. The motor you have is more suited to running flat out on smoother surfaces in something like a stadium truck....and if you run this like that...it will spend a lot of time on its roof. Or broken. I get you want speed .... but....you bought a truck with a high centre of gravity, soft long travel suspension, and a diff setup intended to crawl. You also need to look at how you are going to gear this. Tamiyas are notorious for having limited adjustment on the motors to mesh the gears properly. This limits the pinion/spur gear ranges you can fit. As stock, its on a brushed motor with NiMh battery. A 5400Kv motor will need massively different gearing. I assume your mates are running similar trucks... so check what gearing/motors they are running. Otherwise you have a good chance of finding out the hard way what happens when you get the gearing very wrong on a brushless truck. I'll give you a clue..... it involves smoke, flames, and the smell of burning plastic. Last ESC I had fail like that got hot enough to melt the big fat power wires off their soldered connections. The ESC however, is fine as long as you do get it geared properly.

Could just have been old fuel residue clogging up the carb. If fuel was left in, the petrol evaporates leaviong the oil residue from the premix behind. You maybe got enough fuel through it to wash out whatever was there....and brrrrm! Now it's running ... it should be easier to keep it running. Especially now it;s had a proper going over! Hopefully now you can get the payback for your efforts and enjoy some playtime 🙂

Can be frustrating. I'm 55, been messing with engines since I was 12, and I still find ways to get confused Usually, it's down to an assumption I made, or a part I ruled out as being the cause without actually checking. If you haven't had the head off, do that next. Get a new base gasket before putting it back though. No silicon or other instant gasket. Will give you a good idea of the engines condition and likely amount of use. Is it a 2 bolt or 4 bolt motor? I had a few 2 bolt heads crack. One OBR ported head split clean through from the base to the exhaust bolt holes. Crack ran along a fin base and was very hard to see from outside. Blindingly obvious from inside....