Originally Posted by billdelong

Many years ago, I would agree that most 4WD buggies were fragile, but not so much these days provided you stick with fairly recent releases from TEKNO, XRay and PR Racing... generally these 4WD brands tend to see fewer breaks than the 2WD class in my area which is on a very unforgiving turf track surface with hard lumber for lane dividers.

Modern 4WD designs have come a long way to make maintenance a snap, I can pull every single bearing from my 401R in less than 30 min, way easier to work on as compared to the TLR22-3.0 that I used to run a few years back. I'm a huge fan of gear diffs, far easier to tune, absolutely no guessing for adjustment after a rebuild where most 2WD Buggies have a ball diff to adjust which is completely arbitrary and very tricky to know when it's time to rebuild the diff or not, definitely a pain for a beginner.

More to go wrong with 4WD? Only thing is having a front and center diff to maintain, which just requires a few extra minutes to maintain, cost is insignificant provided you buy a quality brand and properly maintain your gear.

2WD chews through tires way faster than 4WD on every track surface I have ran... that is the single most important factor why I have stopped running 2WD entirely.