hi all
new here & new in general to RC
hoping to find some help in diagnosing a problem

have an sc10 4x4 that i built with my then 10yo son two summers ago as a "daddy camp" for a week. He used it periodically, but it admittedly sat for a good long while. It didn't get any maintenance in this time as it didn't really get used much. This summer he got interested in it again and i've been trying to support the interest but have next to no experience with these things (just the build effort following the manual).

The truck seems to burn through batteries pretty fast (<10mins); I can't remember what it was like the first summer anymore as we just didn't pay too much attention to it. So, this summer, at first we thought the batteries were bad or that our charging protocol was screwy, but a nice guy at a local park lent us a battery he knew to be in good condition and the truck burned through the battery in about 5 mins. So, at this point, I'm guessing that there is a ton of resistance somewhere in the system that is overburdening the battery.

Our current plan is to unbuild & clean the truck following the build manual backwards. But, before we do that, I thought I'd ask here if anyone had any thoughts that might focus our efforts. My loose target of interest in the unbuild is anything in the driveline.

Suggested checks from a few we've talked to locally: poor pinion gear choice, bad ESC, excessively dirty or unlubricated driveline

I haven't scrubbed through this thread yet (36k posts!) but i will start to do that.

i haven't itemized the build here, but, if specific parts are important to this diagnosis, let me know, and i'll post the best i know.

thanks!