Nitroholic

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....

Really, if you are going to use a drag brake for an onroad car, where the surfaces are pretty grippy... then it would be well worth getting a slightly better ESC that lets you control the level of braking you get. Having the brakes apply full on when you throttle off is going to make things a little jittery. I understand what you are trying to achieve, and thats basically just slowing the car into corners when you let off the gas. If you don't 'coast' but rather drive to the point you want to brake, brake....turn and get on the gas again.... being able to tune that braking is going to be something that will improve the experience.

Back to first principles..... motor needs 3 things to run. Fuel, spark and compression. 1) Fuel. You know you got fuel going in....but.... Check what carb you have. There are decent carbs ( Walbro) and some really quite nasty clone carbs that used to get shipped on some of the clone motors. They also had different baseline settings..not the usual ones you will find quoted everywhere. That would give you all sorts of issues. Also check the choke....and your starting procedure. Prime until the bulb is full and fuel is moving, choke on....pull a few times until it coughs...then choke off, and pull. Should fire right up. 2) Spark. It's possible you have a bad plug. Worth getting a replacement from a REPUTABLE supplier, as there are many cheap and rubbish copies on E-Bay. A bad plug may spark nicely when you test it out of the cylinder, but break down under load. Also check the plug lead is in good order, and the coil gap should be about hte thickness of a piece of thin card ( It was one good use of those taxi phone number cards I used to get through the letterbox before Uber was a thing) 3) Compression. Trickier to measure....but if you take the plug out and put through thumb over the motor, you should feel a decent amount of compression pushing your thumb off the plughole when you pull the pullstarter. If you don't you could have a blown base gasket, worn ring or worn out barrel. These are plated with no proper liner, so when the plating wears, you lose tolerance very rapidly and the compression goes. If you see any scoring or marking in the plating, this is not a good sign. The base gasket between the crankcases is also very thin around hte transfer ports. This can blow out, tear or otherwise fail...meaing your compression drops and your motor sucks fresh air in rather than fuel mix. These are fairly basic 2 stroke motors, but they can be fussy. Once you get to the bottom of hte issue, though, it should start easily every time. You just have to keep going until you find out what's wrong!

fail safe is going to come with all the radio sets these days. No reason not to include it. I'd look at something like the Futaba 3PV .... It's £121 , but when you look at hte specs, you get a lot of features and spec. The flip side is receivers are nearly £40 each, so if you plan on building a collection with a lot of cars....you will eaither need to keep swapping the receiver around, or bite the bullet to buy more.

Yeah .... upgrading is a potential minefield if you are not careful. Most 'strengthening' upgraders add weight. Weight saps hte performance...so you increase the power and fit a faster motor...which then eats the transmission. Sometimes, an easy path to upgrade exists. Like, for example, where the manufacturer makes a brushless and a brushed version, and you got the brushed one. Then you can upgrade the car with parts. Often, though, the options are more limited. In this case, you have started off with an entry level truck, enjoyed it ... but got to the point where you want more.

Yeah... I had one from new, and it was so stable and forgiving. Decided to get back into helis....and there isn't anything comparable out there that I could find. So..I got one for £25 in flying order, picked up a broken one for parts for £8 ( had snapped the flybar, and had one slow servo) and then a pair came up for £25. Untested....but looked in good order. As a bonus....one was the basic yellow....the other was the S300 version, with different skids, body and tail. The base model seems to fly fine...but the S300 wouldn't trim to a hover, and when I checked the swash I had no fore/aft control. Servo is dead. But I have enough spares to make 2 good flyers and still have skids, blades, tails, etc as spares. Total outlay is under £60.....and I have seen plenty asking more for one good model. And some tinkering fun to be had. Working with tiny screws through a magnifier on a tray to catch the things if one bounces!

Today...we attempted micro surgery.... Picked up a couple of cheap E-Flite MCX helis to play with. One seems fine, but the other has a failed servo. Have another chassis with parts for spares, so trying to tear down the thing to swap over parts. My old eyes are not liking the tiny tiny screws!! Still....will be good if it works. If it doesn;t.... then the MCX S300 parts on it are going on the stock MCX

I would recommend a variety of radios, depending on budget....and how many seperate vehicles you might end up owning to use with the same transmitter. 'Budget' brands like Dumbo RC, or FlySky work well, and don;t cost a lot of money. Receivers are cheap, so its easy to have multiple models bound to the one transmitter. Higher quality radio kit from...say Sanwa or Futaba...has better response and feels nicer in the hand. Plus you usually get more things to tune the setup, and that might be something you enjoy. Like I say, depends what you want and what you want to spend