BigGinge

I've used wago terminals plenty at home for mains wiring and in some of the wiring I've done for work without any bother. Not sure that they would stand up to the 100 amps, or more, you might push through them with a big brushless setup but I suspect they will be fine here.

Did it make it go any faster?

Do they do that for all orders now or just the ones under the £135 (I think) threshold where foreign companies are supposed to sort the VAT out?

Unlucky. the full size ones are still only £3 a pair though. https://www.plazajapan.com/4950344504763/ Unless you go for the fancy soft compound ones: https://www.plazajapan.com/4950344548613/ They are much more expensive at £4 a pair! Edit. Just looked closer at your picture, the tyres look like they are the 50476 parts which should be the standard rally block size tyres that fit the “normal” 10th scale models. Pretty sure that’s what I’ve got on my XV-01 at the moment (got a set of the soft ones on the TB-05 too).

I've had a similar thing happen before; currently it seems to default to Russian when I go to try and log in which makes things trickier than it should be to work my way around.

Have you got one of the prairie wolf bodies, or is it still a surprise?

I think if you're going to be running on a loose surface you do want a bit of resistance in the diffs so you don't end up just running drive to one wheel on each axle. I've heard some advice to say running the front slightly stiff can help with performance (I did this for my LC racing truggy build) but in my XV-01 and TB-05 I've just got front and back set up the same and they seem to be going reasonably well.

I ended up buying a second one. For me it feels a bit nicer than all of the other RTR radios I’ve tried (including a Traxxas unit from the TRX4) and offers all the channels/controls/features I’ve needed so far. At the same time they are very reasonably priced and you can pick up six channel Rx units, with a gyro, for well under £20. I was almost tempted to try something a lot more expensive when I was looking for a second radio recently but I ended up sticking with what I had. The GT5 doesn’t do anything wrong and means I’ve got two radios I can use with any of the current cars if I want to go out with the lad for a bit.

I suspect for a nimh powering your brushed motor you’ll be fine with what’s there. The bit of wire you’ve scavenged may not be too far of 16 AWG either if it came from something with a 13 A fuse (1.5mm squared is about 15 AWG ish). You would need to be running some seriously undersized wire for it to be noticeably slowing your car down and it would be getting very hot in the process. So if the wire isn’t burning hot after a run there might be something else causing the slow down.

Do you know what the wire guage/area was that you've used to connect the motor?

I was very tempted by those shells when I was picking mine out. Any idea what you’ll need to do to get it running yet?

If it’s an actual organised MTB park they would probably take a pretty dim view of somebody turning up and running a massive RC car on their trails. At the very least it’s going to go against the terms of their insurance and put their, presumably, paying audience at risk of harm. If it’s an unofficial spot then that’s probably less clear cut and would probably depend on the attitude of the land owner and local riders/builders. Assuming anyone is about to see of course.

It might feel scarier but I’ve definitely found using a scalpel to score the body and snapping off the excess the easiest, and cleanest, way of doing things. I doubt I’ll ever go back to trying to do this with scissors now, and haven’t needed to sand anything with this method either. For the last couple of shells I’ve done I’ve just started with a new scalpel blade (so nice and sharp), gone over the trim lines once with a reasonable (but not heavy) pressure and then folded along the score line before peeling the two sections apart. I’ll often cut up to the score line, from the edge of the excess, to make things easier if there are any tricky bits but not as often as shown in the video below.

I think all the Tx/rx combinations I’ve looked at would require you to bind the two whenever you wanted to switch a car between transmitters. Having said that binding does only take a few seconds if you have easy access to the rx unit. If all of your Tx/rx units are compatible you can keep all of the model settings for each of you cars in their own memory spot on all of the transmitters (this is what I’ve done for my five cars on my two GT5 transmitters). This would mean you could easily switch a car between any one of the associated memory banks on your controllers by quickly pairing them when you stick the battery in.

Ta. Might have to give that a go at some point.

@Kpowell911 how are you doing those embedded videos?

The things that will likely limit how fast a motor you put in are the motor temps that you get when running through your gearing and, possibly, cogging if you go for too high a speed. If you can’t find anyone who has tried out different motor speeds in your car before you might need to experiment a little to find the perfect option (fast without causing overheating or cogging). Having said that with a small light car like this you might find that going straight for the fastest option isn’t the best choice overall as it might be a bit of a handful or eat the drivetrain. A sensible place to start might be to try and copy the stock motor speed for the brushless versions of the truck. Looks like that is probably a 3800kv 2840 motor, which might mean you can fit something a little larger than the 2435/2440 suggested above.

The other thing that might be worth a try is looking at replacing the ESC that got all wet, new ones from the FTX tracer (which I think is the same truck) can be had for not too much money from model sport. Might get you up and running again as the water is unlikely to have killed your brushed motor (though it might not have done the servo any good). FTX Tracer ESC and Receiver FTX9731 (modelsport.co.uk)

You should be able to pick up a 2435 or 2440 brushless motor fairly cheaply from AliExpress. A quick look shows there are plenty of people selling motors in this size from surpass who I've had decent luck with in the past, though you will have to work out what speed/kv rating you want to try and aim for as I'm not sure what comes in your model as stock. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001604983874.html A decent ESC to pair with that sort of motor would be a Hobbywing 16BL30, which is what I run with a 2845 motor in my LC Racing truggy. So it should be more than enough for a 2435 (or 2440) in your truck. Hobbywing QUICRUN WP-16BL30 BL ESC HW30105030001 (modelsport.co.uk) You'd then probably need a new servo as well as the original is probably a 5 wire type that won't work with the new ESC and reciever. Not sure what size you would need but I think this is what I bought when I upgraded my XLF F16 so could be about the right sort of size for the 18859e https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001896408684.html You'd then need to add new reciver and transmitter as it's pretty unlikely you'll find anything that is compatible with the parts that came with the truck. There are quite a few decent budget options around but people do seem to like a few different models from Dumbo RC and Fkysky. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002805991289.html The only thing I would say about going down this route is it might be worth checking out how much you can pick up a new, brushless version, of the truck before you go ahead with upgrade of the one you have As you might find the price of the whole new truck isn't too far off the price of the individual bits I've listed above. FTX Tracer Brushless 1/16th 4wd Monster Truck RTR - Blue FTX5596B (modelsport.co.uk) HBX 16889 RC Car RTR Sale - Banggood UK HBX 16889A Pro 1/16 2.4G 4WD Brushless High Speed RC Car Vehicle Models Full Propotional Sale - Banggood UK

AliExpress is a bit of a broker for loads of different sellers so delivery can vary quite a bit depending on exactly who you buy from. But the estimate on the page for each item is normally pretty accurate and you can often find sellers who will get stuff to you in a couple of weeks. All of the money stuff seems fairly safe and the one time I had an issue with a missing part in a delivery they refunded me without any real fuss. The VAT collection depends on how much your order is worth. For orders under some new threshold introduced by our government (possibly £135) international sellers are supposed to collect and sort the VAT on the and AliExpress seem to be doing this. I’ve not had any extra charges on anything I e bough since the new rules come in. Above the threshold they won’t charge any vat but you will (or at least should) get a bill for vat and duty from the courier once the goods arrive in this country. I’ve not tried this yet so don’t know how well that all works. I’ve not got loads of time on it, and I’ve never tried to submerge it, but so far it’s done everything I’ve asked of it. I’d happily get another if it broke and I couldn’t find anything beefier for similar money. I probably should say at this point though I’ve only ever had relative low end servos from Savox to use as a point of reference for these so don’t know how they would compare to the proper high end kit they sell.

I’ve had a few from AliExpress now that seem pretty good and work out a fair bit cheaper than an equivalent from one of the more established brands. These are the ones I’ve been running in my XV01 and TB05: 12 kg, 0.09 s (on 6V) SPT 4412 (I think I went for the 180 over the LV ones but I’m not sure if there is any actual difference between the two): https://a.aliexpress.com/_mtAAsyq 25kg, 0.05 s (on 7.4 V) GX Servo X25 https://a.aliexpress.com/_mMowBFu The X25 is very nicely made and seems plenty fast/strong running off road. The SPT really isn’t too bad either, especially considering it works out at less than half the price of the X25. Edit: also run one of these in the TRX4, probably complete overkill for a touring car but still surprisingly quick. JX HV7032MG 32kg 0.07s https://a.aliexpress.com/_mtUEQl0

The 1080 seems to be one of the better brushed ESCs out there. Can’t think of anything I’d rather run in its place off the top of my head. If you have a spare channel on your transmitter and receiver you can even set the G2 version up so you can control the drag brake force remotely. Wish this was about when I put one in my TRX4.

I'm pretty sure that teh 1060 is just a simple on/off setting as it just has the jumpers to configure it like your current carson. The 1080 comes with a little LED programming box that lets you configure a few parameters for the drag brake one of which is the drag brake force which can be set between 0% and 100% in 9 steps. You should be able to get an idea of the different configuration setting from the manual here (the older, non-G2 version looks to have the same drag brake setting as the new version linked below): https://www.hobbywing.com/en/uploads/file/20221206/8b87f6b7ce53b31e7b5fbd3a4c6c149c.pdf

If you go for the TT-02s rather than the TT-02D I think you get quite a few metal drive cup parts rather than the plastic ones in the other kits and some fairly different (more adjustable) suspension arm parts. Still has oil shocks and bearings too.

It might be worth trying them again with freshly charged batteries. When most ESC units hit their battery low voltage cut off they will stop driving the main motor but do still send power out to the receiver and servo. So you'll still be able to see the steering move even though the battery voltage is too low to get the main motor running. Of course it could be quite a few other things causing this as well.