[RC-Monster Mike]

Poor man's shock fix for the stockers is to put small hose clamps around the caps to keep them from blowing. This work quite well (although it looks ghetto!) and costs about $2. A simple upgrade to the big bore shock caps will also greatly improve things for a low cost as well. Both the Pro-lines and the Traxxas Big Bores are worthy shocks. Soldering battery packs is fairly easy to do, but a pain to explain. The 7 cell sticks on this site work quite well and all you would need to do is put a dean's plug on the end (replace stock tamiya plug). They won't work with the stock chassis, but work great in the G-maxx chassis.