Hey guys, been away from the forums for a few years due to dropping out of the hobby for financial reasons. Now I am back, ready to purchase my first ever "pro style" 1/8th scale Truggy KIT rather than an RTR. Now I want to power this thing correctly, so of course I will be headed to Team Tekin for an ESC and motor, and to Protek RC for the 170SBL servo (450 oz-in at 0.08 sec on 6V wow!).

Last time I left the hobby was after major disappointment when my barely 3 month old Serpent Cobra 1/8th E-Truggy went up in flames when the RX8 Gen 1 ESC just decided "Nope, I'm Done". I had run the truck through maybe 5 charge cycles and the electronics showed no warning signs of issues at all. No studdering, no power loss, no smoke, no heat problems. Just driving along, maybe 30-40% throttle just to test out new tires, and it suddenly stops and erupts into flames. I didn't even jump it, at all, I was in an empty dirt parking lot trying out city-block tires! After this catastrophic failure and basically loosing $1000 in just 3 months, I parted ways with the hobby. I want my next RC to be bulletproof (and I mean .50 cal triple Kevlar type BULLETPROOF) as far as wiring, batteries, and connectors are concerned.

Ive heard that the Gen 1 RX8's went up in smoke alot, but I wanted to check with some more experienced members of the community to see if I may have done something incorrectly on my old rig before I continue and move on to build a new rig.

My old setup consisted of 10AWG wire and Deans Ultra Connectors from Amain Hobbies which I figured was plenty, but the fire started on just 4S LiPo power. This new setup will be capable of 6S power, and while I dont plan to run so much power, I would like to configure the wiring and connectors to support 6S power to have quite ample protection for my new RX8 Gen 3.

I am thinking of upgrading the wiring on this build to 8AWG and I want to run the biggest and most powerful connectors available to support the immense 300 Amps Per Phase that the RX8 is capable of, not to mention the added load of that insane ProTek Servo (My new favorite servo over all other servos including Savox!).

So tell me guys, what sort of connectors are you using on your 1/8th Scale 6S setups? What kind of wiring are you using? Should I go so far as to use even special solder to handle the high amperage? Should I have connectors between the ESC and motor for convenience? If so, what connectors? Are my Gens Ace 5000mah 40C 2S LiPos (I have 4 of them) good enough, or should I upgrade? What batteries would you recommend that are decent priced? Is there anything else that I should consider?

One final question, I still have the melted RX8 lying around in my toolbox. Do you think I could send it in? Im doubtful as its been in there for about 2 years and any warranty it had is almost certainly expired. Also, I wouldn't be interested in a straight swap, only if they gave me the new Gen 3 instead. Otherwise, I will simply purchase a new setup.