If you read my post on 28-February, you might recall that I mentioned the purchase of a new 17.5T power kit,

I also said there would be a post about about what I planned to use that in. Well, so maybe I didn’t post up soon, but I am posting about it now.

The kit was ordered from TQRacing in Southern California and it arrived in 3 days! They shipped it within hours and the USPS had it on my door step in plenty of time to get it all sorted out before the next race!

What’s in the package? 3 things. A Speed Passion ESC (aka speed controller), Speed Passion 17.5T Club Spec motor, and the required mini programmer. And the thing at the top is a well worn Team Associated Factory Team B4 buggy, circa 2007. If there was a VIN on thing thing it would show many, many owners, me just being the most recent. In fact it’s quite amusing to run it at the track. Already two different people have come up to me and mentioned that they used to own my buggy at one point. So it’s not the freshest horse in the race, but it was well maintained by the previous owners, so it was a very worthy purchase:

• B4 Factory Team Roller: $90
• SAVOX High-speed Servo: $25
• Speed Passion 17.5T (Club Spec Stock) kit: $90
• Futaba 603FG 2.4 GHz FHHS receiver: $45
• 3 full tire and wheel sets: Included
  Total Cost: $250

Quite a savings over the $260 cost of just the factory kit alone.

Only one problem with this kit. The sensor wire is WAY too short! This kit is designed for on-road vehicles primarily which use mid-mounted motors, as opposed to the off-road designs that use the rear-engine (ala VW Bug) mounting. This was the only problem I had getting the buggy running that night. Time was short and I didn’t get to the track / hobby shop in time to get a longer sensor wire until race night.

This little hitch was not enough to keep me from getting everything else mounted up in the buggy. It’s a nice thing that the ESC is so small, the dimensions of the buggy are pretty tight!

You may notice that the batty wire leads are still bare. That was the 2nd thing I need to complete, was purchase of a male DEAN’s connector and adapter cable. Or, at least that was the plan! It turns out the deans connector costs $4.00. The adapter cable for my batteries cost another $12. BUT, for only $8.00 I could get an 8-pack of 4mm plated bullet connectors (good enough to do two vehicles) and eliminate the 2nd connection resistance in the DEANS, and go direct from ESC to battery. And that’s exactly how I solved the problem. Sorry, no photo of that at this time. I’ll try to add one later.

So.. finally, here it is. Ready for action. Most of the guys said I should practice my first few hours with the tires as is, before I go ahead and convert the to slicks, which our off-road cray track is best suited for. So, you see the worn Panthers in this photo.

Here it is ready for action, with it’s bigger team mate, the might SC10.

More to follow about buggies. I won’t say exactly what I have in store next, but it’s going to be one trick kit. I just hope the rumors of shipping to the hobby stores before the months’ end is true!