Originally Posted by
SerpentCT4S
With the nice weather coming, me and a friend are thinking about each getting a Spartan.
We are both new to RC boats. We've watched videos and we love the boat!
I have a few questions though before buying:
1 - Does anything need attention out of the box?
2 - What batteries should I run? I already have 2 identical 2s lipos. Do I run them in series or parallel?
3 - I know the boat is plenty fast, but what are some good upgrades? I've read that most people start with adding the aluminum cooling sleeve. What else should I look into?
Hope you guys can help, I might buy the boat tomorrow depending how much info I can look into today.
Oops. I didn't fully grasp your original post. It seems you're dead set set on the Spartan and just wanna know about it, not potentially better boats for the money. So:
1) I would only be guessing here, but I would assume people would ditch the plastic prop for a balanced and sharpened metal prop. I wouldn't call this an necessity, but a strong first upgrade.
2) Just saying 2S is not enough. What capacity and discharge rate are they? You would want to run a minimum 25C 5000mah setup. If you go with less capacity, you'll need to go with a higher discharge rate. Series doubles the voltage shown on one battery pack. Parallel doubles the capacity shown on one pack. The over priced Spartan that come with Lipos comes with two 3S packs to run in series, so if you run your 2S packs it would be like watching a pig swim. two 2s packs is plenty for a Revolt though
3) Check threads on the Traxxas forum or Offshoreelectrics for upgrade ideas. One thing you'd need to get if you do not already have one is a good charger. The Spartan comes with 2 chargers, but they are likely very slow, have no readouts, and no versatility.