doug, your kid will love that thing and so will you. But keep in mind it's kind of like a cruiser in that you are always going to want to upgrade and hop it up, so that's just a reality.
I have a NIB castle sidewinder micro i will sell you cheap. It's a ESC (electronic speed controller). In my opinion spend your money on a steering servo, motor and ESC. The rest you can trash, but you want those to hold up and work well. If you get a cheap steering servo you are going to wish you maned up and got one with some torque so it will actually turn. I say stay away from Novak stuff. They seem to have a lot of electrical gremlins... kind of like an old rover or a jaguar, just couldn't get the electronics to work right. I would say stay with either Castle or Tekin.
As for the motors, you really can hardly destroy them. Every so often they will say to turn the com but i would just drive one until it doesn't work (a few years depending on how often you run them).
I've had good luck with axial products. I have one of their xr10 crawlers now and i bet including the batteries, charger and everything i've got over $1000 in mine.... damn i hate to admit that.
LOL Alex, you should see the rc sailboats that some of the guys have that we race at Oak Hollow. I know of at least two that have over $4k in them.. This May, we are hoping to have 30 competitors at our regional event, and anywhere from 40-65 in November for the class Nationals event...
Doug, another great resource is rcgroups.com they have a ton of forum areas, reviews, etc.
Thanks guys - all will be kept in mind and such. He got it Thurs night. Right out of the box, it would not run right (I fully charged it the day prior to wrapping). We double checked everything. We'd already arranged to have all his Slash-owning buddies come over after school Friday. So first thing in the morning, I brought it to the local Hobby Shop and let them know "whatever it takes". They were great. Figured it out in 2 minutes. We had the ESC set up for LiPo batteries which is what the VXL 5807 is supposed to have. But this one...........................wait for it..................................came without. I called LargeScaleRC.com where I'd purchased and they explained that the early version of the VXL came without. So I'd done my research on the Traxxas website, picked the model, bought the model and got pimped by a switch I did not know about. They've promised to make good on it after I talk to my son about what makes sense to do. At this point, I think the truck is doing great with the NiCads and so does he. It will burn rubber from a stop, drift and otherwise display lurid power on dry pavement so we're happy. Plus no worries about the lipo battery issues and now they all have NiCad instead of him being odd man out. I saw lots of battery sharing going on, which is something I had not thought of.
So I thanked the local shop by purchasing a high output extra battery and fast AC/DC charger at full retail. Everyone's happy.
As I type this, he's been out in front of the house in his robe cruising around the street for a half hour. Good thing they're quiet.....
