New E-Revo - first impressions

[VintageMA]

I went by the LHS today and picked up the e-Revo. They had what seems to be a pretty good price @ $439.

Some pics to follow, but here are my first thoughts out of the box:

1 - Springs/shocks - comes with 40WT and pretty soft springs. As others have mentioned they seem a little soft. I am going to run it for a bit before adjusting and take it from there.

2 - Battery Trays - I don't think people are going to want to run pack that are 30mm high - they will just fit and with no air circulating they will be really high. I put a Neu 3900 3S pack in one side and it fit very nicely. I think the limits for a battery pack are going to be:
48-50mm wide - there is a little extra space in the battery door when it closes
25mm high - This is the highest I would want to go for the pack to be snug but still allow airflow.
160mm long - if you stick with the 25mm height there should be no problem fitting a pack this long.

I think and 3S 5000mAh Neu or TP pack will fit very nicely on each side. I am going to be getting the TP eXtreme V2 3S 5000 mAh packs that measure 25x48x160 and run one on each side for 6S total.

3 - Motors/ESC/Radio/Receiver - Haven't even run them (and never will) - pulled straight out within the first hour out of the box.
-Motors are brushed motors and seem beefy, but I just have no interest.
-ESC - seems solid, but once again no interest.
-Radio/Receiver - AM radio - crap - replaced with React right away.

4 - Radio tray - very nice design for an electric vehicle. My Nomadio V2 receiver was a snug fit but it went in there perfectly and there is a nice cable management system going into the tray - I'll enjoy my receiver not getting filled with dust and dirt. Ran one servo into CH1 and the other to CH3 and just bound them together on the radio - very simple to accomplish.

5 - BL motor mount - the only pinion I have is a 24T 32P pinion and I had to dremel out the lock nut area to allow the motor to move far enough away to lock it in place. Once I can figure out all of the gearing I will pick up a few more pinions of more appropriate sizes. I'll be keeping an eye out for when the single BL motor mount option part is available.

6 - Servos - hey they are digital and waterproof - I'll stick with them for a bit until they die or prove to not be strong enough at 125oz each.

7 - Diffs - Haven't pulled them out yet, but they are definitely not filled with oil out of the box and will need to be - will have to search the threads here to figure out what to try out first for front/rear diff oils.

8 - Transmission - it's a 1 speed tranny from what I can see with motor braking.

This is my first Traxxas and I am definitely concerned about the plastic CVD driveshafts - they just seem pretty cheap and I expect them to break very fast - I will be surprised if I am proved otherwise.

I expect to have a lot of fun with this truck, but am still craving to do a 8T or XT8 truggy that I feel will be a more "precise" instrument.

More to follow when I get batteries to run it - might not be until later next week.