Radio is a big part of it but seat time will make a bigger difference practice practice practice

If you are still running the RTR speed control and motor that would be my first change. I tried to race with the RTR stuff for a while, the esc is just short of being an on/off switch. If you are running on a wet or dusty track good luck trying to control it.

You definatley need a transmitter...if looking for one with telemetry get an airteonics mt4..i bought mine on ebay from nitrohobbies and it came with two telemetry rx's!.. ur esc and motor are fine..if its a$$ loose first expo on throttle and also set the esc on very soft or soft( it doesn't mean u are!!!!)...i ran my rs like this for months of fun... but all the fancy electronics wont do anything for ya like PRACTICE!:D

+1 to the practice. I've driven the RTR motor/ESC and they aren't as smooth as my decent sensored stuff but they aren't that bad either. Don't just throw money at it and get discouraged. You need to practice and start to feel what needs to be changed/improved. Try driving some other folks' cars and have them drive yours too.

Trying to put a smaller pinion on my FT 2WD SC10 but the mounting holes for the motor won't allow for the gear to mesh correctly, too much space. Of course using a dremel is an option but I was wondering if anyone makes a plate already milled for running smaller pinions?

I'm trying to run 19:75 gears

Thanks

19t is too small to reach the 75 spur youll need to bump the spur up and run a bigger pinion as well.

New question i've got. Ive been running stock sc at my local track and I've finally gotten the truck to where i feel its really fast. I'm running what i think is a havoc spec esc and motor combo its the silver can motor with the puple band and yellow timing ring. I used to run this setup in my tc3 touring car and was amazing. It may be fine but i'de be looking to upgrade possibly once novak releases there new stuff. Is it really worth it? Am i crazy to want to go faster in the 17.5 class but not go to mod? I really don't want to dump the money if i dont have to but it just feels weak to me :( Who knows the motor might give up the ghost before long anyway and i'll be looking to upgrade.

19/75 it can be done

just listening to your gearing it sounds as if your are top speed after about 15 ft man to b honest, you may have better luck with trying pinions of 23-26 depending on your straight and and jumps and the layout of your track man and with these gears you should reach anywhere from 130-160 deg. with a lil advance timing on the can to help fine tune it and your truck should b plenty fast for the class.

So strange question, but the turn buckles are supposably titanium, right? Is there a method to removing the FT blue coloring off of them so that they are just the standard silver coloring? If they are titanium, treating them like aluminum and using chemicals might not work. thoughts?

Thats the thing its not topping out in 15 ft I have a 23 in there now i was running a 25 and it would cut the power after about 15 min. of practice with the motor temp at 130 kept driving me nuts. so i droped my gears to 23/84 and it made a world of a difference. Our track is going to be rebuilt here in the next couple weeks any way but right now its really tight so the gearing ive got right now may work very well i'll find out friday. But why novak says not to run the motor up past 160 is beyond me if the cut off is 130?

idk either man, the motor may be damaged idk

I'll run what i got until it stops i guess :) then i'll get some new stuff

Glad you found it. Some times it's just something simple like that. Just for that reason is why I like running the clamp type hexes. They take a lot of stress off those pins. Plus I use hardened roll pins instead of the stock ones.

So your ESC is shutting down at 130? I run my motor at 150 and have no issues. One thing to remember, the internal motor temp is higher than the external area where we actually read the temperatures.
I dislike 17.5 on Short Course. It's to low IMO. 13.5 blinky is borderline and even that is to slow to clear all the jumps at my track. I have to boost it to clear a certain section of doubles.They should make 10.5 the cutoff for stock racing.
How does your truck compare to the other trucks?

Since the gear change i'm not sure but it has not shut it down do to heat. With the old gear 25/84 it would be about the same top end wise but lacked the low end out of corners. So i figured ide drop a few teeth. With a fresh lipo charged it didn't seem like the top speed dropped at all and i was thinking maybe i just over geared it thinking it was fine because i could keep up with the rest. There are faster truck on the course but last friday i did run my fastest lap of a 22.5 witch was on pace for the fastest truck in my class who was behind me. Looks like i'll be racing again tomarrow so i can let you all know how it performs with other trucks with the 23 pinion

Our track is tight and smaller. The jumps are perfect if not a little small for the speed our trucks can carry so17.5 is working perfect for us but we'll see when they redo the whole thing in a couple weeks