CRT .5 seems weak

[Unsullied_Spy]

I've had my CRT .5 for a while now and it has spent more time broken than working. At first, before I could afford a 3s lipo for it, I was running it on 6c NiMH and managed to shear a turnbuckle in one of the upper A arms. I tried tapping it out to 4mm and using a spare 4mm Lunsford turnbuckle but it was too long and I'm not sure that I want to shorten it. After messing around with different turnbuckles nothing worked so I used a zip tie and it worked great. I ran for about 10 minutes and accidentally crashed into a tire on my car (not very hard) and bent the front center shaft fairly bad. Am I just having bad luck or is the CRT really weak? Any tips for toughening it up or should I just sell it off and spend the money on Baja parts?