nowinaminute

I second this. I really didn't have a lot of fun with mine till I enforced an off road only policy! The body is just so heavy it will tend to cause traction rolling on-road. Especially bad if it's weathered tarmac or concrete etc where the wheels have more stuff to side grip on.

In all honesty, I wouldn't expect it to tone down wheelies too much. Even with the 18t pinion, the Lunchbox will hardly cause a 13.5t to break a sweat. You'll definitely gain a lot of top end though.

Killed my DT-03 Neo Frog at the beach! Did an almighty jump almost vertical on 3s and it came down on one of the rear back wheels and made that familiar cracking sound because it managed to hone in on a bit of rock hiding in the sand! Just my luck! Snapped the suspension arm mount off the gearbox so now it's guts are showing! Not mad though, I'd already had a good hour or so of bashing by then so it didn't spoil things. The funny thing is I always thought if the car was going to break it would have been near the motor where I cut tons of plastic away to help cooling but that part is fine. Repair cost is looking to be an eye watering £8

I just remembered one potential pitiful of lipo too that has nothing to do with their volatility. Now and then, you'll come across a vintage RC that is running right on the raggedy edge in terms of motor temps when using a NiMH/NiCad. Presumably because it was geared to work just within acceptable limits with the available batteries at the time ie: NiCad and capacities around 12-1600mah. This can either be by design or user upgrades but the end result is the same. If you use a lipo in vehicles like this, the motor suddenly has access to a much greater supply of current which wasn't originally factored in. The motor suddenly has enough rope to hang itself and can overheat. While it's true that lipos don't "push" more current into a motor, if you have a setup that is capable of drawing more current than NiCads could supply at the time and suddenly give it the ability to draw all it wants, things can get very toasty. This is compounded by the fact that lipos will have a higher voltage for the duration of the run and typically come in much higher capacities too. 4000mah+ is typical. I've killed a couple of motors this way.

Just use whatever gives you the least stress! I haven't had any lipo issues so far but no doubt that the risks are higher IF you have a failure or make a mistake etc. NiMh/NiCad still do the job perfectly well. There's some who will claim that NiMh are no good for brushless but I've never agreed with this personally. Neither battery type is inherently more suited to a particular motor. Lipo has more punch but that's true regardless of motor type. That doesn't automatically mean NiMh is any less suited to brushless than it is brushed. If anything, all else being equal, a brushless will be more efficient and draw less current which could actually give a NiMh an easier life than a comparable brushed motor. I seldom use them now but I think they are still perfectly valid power sources, especially for 1/10 scale stuff.

Looks pretty capable for a scale vehicle but, as anticipated, the over firm tyres steal a considerable amount of it's potential. Easily solved though. Even cheapo Chinese crawler tyres as as soft as play dough these days!

There's a narrow front arm design for 3d printing too. They are fairly chunky and simple so are quite tough if you print high infill with something a bit stronger than PLA such as ABS or PET. I dont have a printer but there's some vendors on treat stock who give pretty good results for very reasonable prices. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2640371/comments

I have ordered tons of small things and not had any problems. I haven't ordered any kits or other large items though.

It's not mounted, just dangling off lol. I've seen it done though, by spacing the top of the shocks outward a bit more. Only problem is that it creates a dodgy shock angle. That might be less of an issue with the CVA shorts though as they have softer springs. I might have to try it.

Same here on windows 8 and 10 using chrome.

That's awesome. At least 2 easy ways to achieve this then! Want to take mine out to try but it's peeing down with rain as usual. Trying to decide what to do at the front of the Hotshot now the red mono shock has gone, it's a bit bare looking now. Super Hotshot shell maybe because it's designed to smarten up that area. Or maybe a mock radiator or intercooler......hmmm

Just made a start putting this Monster Racer back together after a full strip and clean..

I though that too. I expected it to be better on the harsher terrain but maybe not as good on the relatively flat but rough surfaces compared to wishbones but it seems really supple and responsive.

I got around to trial fitting the HP kit tonight. I can confirm the buggy will bottom out with the newer shocks fitted. There's only a small difference in shock travel but it's enough to make a considerable difference to the articulation because they are mounted so far inboard. I dare say if you took the nut off the bottom of the stock shock and just put the plastic eyelet on, you might just about manage it with the standard shocks too. The shafts are shorter than the bodies so there would be no risk of the pistons hitting the diaphragms. Haven't tried that yet though. I put a shock of each type on each side to give you a comparison: Standard unit: Modern CVA Short: That's as far as I got today.

There's double link conversion on thingiverse which I tried and it worked well but had some design flaws and it broke after a few runs. As you can see, it integrates nicely with no alterations: But after a few runs I suffered this breakage: To be fair, I was hammering it ruthlessly at the time so it could have been a one-off but it definitely broke at what I already suspected would be the weakest part, an area where there just isn't much material holding the thing together. I haven't written it off altogether and I do have another set that I will try out at the beach at some point but I think the design definitely has a weakness in that one area. If I only had a brain I would try and beef the design up but I'm useless with 3d software. If you search these forums, there's a thread somewhere and a few people tried different approaches and there was one guy who managed to do it with a few Tamiya parts that seemed to work well and is probably the toughest solution. In all honesty though, I dont think the stock setup is all that bad really, it at least articulates well and tries to follow the terrain. It might have crazy camber changes but I don't think it really hurts it in the typical usage scenario. The rear end is the weak link really because although Tamiya made a lot of changes with the DT01 to try and make the rear end work, it still locks up under throttle just like the Grasshopper/Hornet etc. I would suggest the DT03 CVA kit as a first step just to settle the ride a little then maybe look at the double wishbone type front end. Edit: This was the conversion using Tamiya parts that stood out to me as simple but effective: