I had no durability issues with the stock carriers. Unless you are wanting to play around with +8mm mod or something similar, I think you would be fine starting with what you have. The exotek carriers offer the most adjustability since you can add shims, etc.

Me personally, based on discussions with those who I trust and my own testing, I found that the +8mm mod where you could see benefit from having adjustability on the carrier for linkage height seemed to give me more traction, where as the portion of the change where you also raise the tower took it away. It made sense, as when running indoors without the +8mm mod, to control traction rolling I raised the inner ball stud up to 5 or 6mm from memory and the vehicle was pretty much dialed in the rear. And as discussed with someone who tried the mod in a higher traction condition, he found he didn't have the kind of rotation he had prior to it on the rear that he needed, especially for a tight technical track. I can't directly comment on high traction (carpet for instance) conditions though as I didn't get to test it out.

What conditions do you plan to race on? I have a setup for loose conditions I can send you if you like, it uses the parts you have other than the exotek chassis that I believe you don't have.

To be honest that motor is going to be stupid powerful in the sc10 4x4 especially if you don't have the exotek chassis.. Don't be surprised if you go to a 540 4 pole instead, especially as you get a bit better weight bias with a lighter motor in the rear.

Make sure you have excellent batteries too and use Punch control on the VTX8 to help save your batts.