I had some tin coated bits, but cobalt one would have been better. I actually like the slots, as they let the screw angle a bit, which aids in getting the nuts on. Not much room to work with, I had to use pliers to hold the nut as I screwed it. (can't wait to hear what everyone thinks of that last sentence)
I used a bench grinder to grint the teeth off, then put a screwdriver shaft thru the hole in the spur and held it against the grinding wheel. I used another plastic handle to slow the spin of the spur, and that evened out the area that I ground the teeth off. It is almost perfectly round, and that does not really matter, as nothing touches that edge.
There's an easy way to keep the spur round while grinding off the teeth. Put a large bolt through the out-drive hole on the spur and then thread a nut on the bolt to tightly bind the spur to the bolt. (The bolt needs to be very close to the size of the out-drive hole.) Then put the bolt in an electric drill and set the drill to spin the opposite direction of the bench grinder. Start the bench grinder, get the drill spinning and slowly grind the teeth off with the drill spinning. This will give you a very close to perfectly round part in just a few seconds.
Ran the truck for about 20mins, and did not have any issues with the plastic spur. I picked up a few more spurs, and will have my machinist accurately cut out the centers.
Much better in the noise dept, almost silent now. I am glad that I did this, and would recommend it to anyone. I am in the process of making a new battery tray, so that I can do some eagle tree testing with different lipos.
More runtime, no issues yet. I am really liking the quiter crt.5. I play with it more now, managed to break the rear body mount! Otherwise it seems like a good. solid truck!