I thought about it long and hard today Jerry! Funny, I stripped the new tires off it, robbed the hump pack out of it, sat it on the shelf and told it to just think about it for awhile. Little time out for the XL might just do it some good. Then throught the lipos in the G3R right in front of the XL and took it out for some fun. Nothing like having a brushless setup to fall back on and forget your troubles with.


Thanks James, I can't get it to start at the factory settings. I will leave the lsn at the fact setting and start leaning out the HSN until I get it to start. Make a note of where the hsn is at and use that for my starting point from here on out. The fact setting must be too rich for the pacific northwest. I will seal it up before I give it another go though.

Yeah, start with the hsn, and you should be able to get it tuned for over half throttle, then adjust the lsn and idle screw to get it to idle and come off the line without bogging too much...

Tuning isn't too bad to get a mostly reliable engine once you do it a couple times. As said, reset everything to the factory settings. It is set to run really rich from fact for break-in. (have you broken it in all the way?)

I know on mine I leaned out the HSN at least one full turn from factory, and maybe .5 turn on the LSN. Leave the LSN for last. If its not starting, you are quite safe to lean it out on HSN at least .5 turn to help it out. Idle spd may need to go up to if it doesn't want to start, or dies on idle. You are fine to turn up the idle so far that it will just begin to drive forward after a few seconds still idling.

If you can't get to 200, you are way rich. Keep leaning out until you get 220-240. Watch out for the half tank lean on the savage. Best to keep the tank topped up until you get it sorted out to avoid this and add complication.

Once you get the idle and HSN reliable and tuned, then mess w/ the LSN. Easiest test is the pinch test. Pinch the fuel line close to the carb. If it runs for a little while, revs up and then finally dies, you are too rich. Lean out a tiny bit (1/8 to .25 turn if way rich) and try again. If it just dies as soon as you pinch the line, feels weak and doesn't smoke, its too lean. The LSN is not something you tune w/ every run. Just get it good, and then just adj the HSN as needed for the day.

couple more things... Some of the trouble you may be having (like bulkhead) will be just due to having a pre owned truck obviously, so don't take it as an indictment of the whole thing.

but, as far as the castor blocks/ballends go... Do you have washers and nuts thru the ballends? I have never had one of mine come out, so its suprising you are having so much trouble. The ballend could just be wore out and loose and needs replacement, but it shouldn't be coming out so much.

Cen diffs: Yeah, I noticed the ebay market price for the Cen diffs has gone way up recently. I got my diffs for less than $20 apiece, and the mod is fairly easy. I know some guys are doing premoded diffs, but they are $$$. Hopefully the prices will come down again soon.

Thanks for the help everyone. I am going to seal the motor up and wait until I get the new bulkhead in before I mess with it again. I have a few others nitros I've gotten to run well the Jato and an Axial .28 and a GST .18 but sometimes you need to just get back to the basic too find a solution. Reading your post Finnster I think I have started messing with the lsn too early. I will leave it alone until I get the hsn set right and get the temps up on it.


I found a bunch more Cen diffs on ebay. More reasonable bids on these. Must of got my search screwed up.