I'm five or six battery packs into my "stock+" clod build. This is my first one, here's what I've learned so far:

-Clods have nowhere near the ease of build, strength, or reliability of modern cars. Temper your expectations accordingly.
-Stock tub chassis cracked majorly on first run with 4 link suspension, during light bashing only. It is seriously weak.
-With aluminum reinforcements now on both sides of the chassis I can finally drive, but this thing vibrates bolts loose worse than an old nitro car. Even with blue loctite on everything, I can't make it a full battery pack without something coming loose. Very frustrating.
-For as straightforward as CPE upgrades seem, their four link kit, hub mounts, and hardware are really quite ill-fitting. Everything is tight, and riding at its limit. Shipping is slow, communication non-existant.
-The suspension of a clodbuster is an illusion, or mirage, designed to make you think about soaking up big jumps like a modern bashing truck would. In reality 70% of the truck's weight is unsprung, meaning most of the suspension is really in your tires, and the shocks and articulation don't do much for you. I have an axle-mounted servo in front and it spends most of its time banging against the bottom of the chassis.
-3S on stock silver cans is really quite zippy! On a high traction surface it will wheel over backwards or forwards with no problem.
-Stock tires and diffs make very little traction for climbing compared to a rock crawler. I don't know why I expected this giant truck to be able to go up small stairs but I was wrong.

Here is me breaking my servo horn by stupidly smashing into an immovable object:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMhiCCCbGo8