rs4lola: sorry for not getting back to you on this before, busy buying a house...YES, change that rod. If you don't do it soon, do it before you get to a gallon. I had almost 2 gallons through the motor before I changed mine. As for the choise of pipe, toss the RD pipe, go get yourself an Ofna X-12 pipe, and run the restrictor in the carb, it won't hurt. The restirctor doesn't effect the motor that much, you will be breaking loose the rear if you don't, trust me. Oh, when you do switch to the x12 pipe, it is going to be A WHOLE LOT MORE POWERFUL.....If you know Ravi from Fast and the Furious R/C, he can vouch for the motor, he has been watching it, but like I said, I need more track time.(working on that) I just took an old rossi pixy black and modded the heck out of it, and it isn't even close to the RR, but this rossi is an experiment. I still have some work to do on the crank. Although, I havn't even touched the RR, it doesn't need it.