[Thirdgen89GTA]

I had some initial head scratching about the calibration since no matter what I did the car ran in reverse with forward throttle. I swapped 2 of the motor wires like the manual said but it did it again. Doubly confused. Turns out I had an odd setting on my transmitter limiting forward throttle to 68% (not a normal endpoint setting but a global adjustable trim setting I forgot about). And this somehow confused the ESC during calibration. As soon as I put the forward travel back to 100% on the ESC and recalibrated all was well.

There is an initial Arc when connecting the battery packs, especially big if I connect the series connector last instead of the two individual batt. connectors. Overtime I can see this causing the connectors to wear out. Has anyone had experience with this? Is it harmful to the batteries/esc over time? I've read about it, and on some ESC's they put in a small resister and separate connection to "pre-charge" the caps. But I know the MMM manual specifically states against this so I wont.

The Maiden Voyage wasn't so much a voyage, but more like a hop, skip, and a step before returning to base. I was careful to tighten the set screw on the pinion because I remember stripping them out as a kid. Well, Guess I didn't have this one tight enough because the pinion walked forward on the shaft. Thankfully since I have the battery tray like I do, an unintended side effect is that the pinion is "captured". It bumps against the tray and won't fall off the shaft. I took it out, put some loctite on it and set the position again before tightening it down. Waiting for it to cure now. I'll try again in a little bit.

Initial Impressions: I need better tires, or rather tires more suited to the terrain I was running in. Panther Switch 2.0's do not make great grass tires, they are more like slicks at that point. I don't have anything good for grass really. Next best thing is a set of proline crimefighters but they are worn and really meant for loose dusty hard packed clay like most outdoor RC tracks. I had set the punch to 50% just in case, but even so it was wheel spin everywhere. How much of that is the wrong tires and how much of it is power is anyones guess right now. The track has Nitro practice tomorrow so I can't go, and its only for 2hrs so its not worth it. Next week perhaps. Or if there is open practice during the week I may head up and try it out.

I imagine this truck will be insanely fast. But I'm taking it easy right now. Next week when I go to the track I'll likely run it in 3S2P so I can get a ton of practice in, and once those discharge I'll switch to the 4S setup.