If I were you, I would suggest:

1. A spare ESC
2. Purchase the http://www.rcscrewz.com/product_info...oducts_id/3412 Kit.
3. And anything else of high failure or susceptible to breakage.

For me, I decided on this car BECAUSE it was practically awesome and no need to upgrade right out of the box.

#4 Done. #5 (front skid plate) otw.... #1, #2, #3, are coming only if the originals break.

If I want to pi$$ money away I'll give my lady access to my account.

It only comes in polished and it's the pinion you would change more often then not.

I'd be curious to hear this as well.

Actually, you will only use 4 bolts on it if you're running a tekin. You can use one more of the other 2, but you will have to bore out the hole a bit wider to fit a 4mm button head versus the 3mm's.... So, I'd just stick with using the (4) 3mm's.

And yeah, you can screw, unscrew, all day long if you want. But for convenience and simplicity, I'd just get an additional motor plate for your second motor. Thus, you can just pop off the pinion, pull the motor out, put the other one in and put the pinion back on. Mesh it up, you're off. It could be done in literally 60 seconds.

I dont have any experience with the rear skid. But the rest of the stuff is nice to have. Much better than stockers.

are you running the guards gregg?

with the rear skids you loose a few mm of chassis clearence, so the rear will bottom out sooner than normal with it.. but i've run 2 1/8 buggies with and without and haven't noticed a difference when racing..

if i was a pro driver looking for every advantage possible i'd run without them, but i like to keep my cars in as good of shape as possible and i'm not looking to go pro racing rc's so i'm running them for the extra protection..

your choice.. they are so cheap anyways

Rear skid plates are no good if you have a real bumpy track or a real bumpy whoop section. The skid plate will hit the ground and cause it to no longer track straight.

Looks good!

Not only that, but you can remove the diff riser with the Grid mount.

Im curious,

What's a few mm anyway? I can't imagine this addition of a skid plate would play this much of a factor in the handling of the car, despite what part of the track your on or current conditions.

Wouldn't one prefer the protection?

Great point. Mine is now a paper weight

Yes protection is well worth the piece but as far as track racing this will definitely be in play especially when suspension is not tuned correctly!!

I usually run a skid plate, but the track I run on once has a long whoop section that I couldn't go straight through. Tried a lot of things and found out it was the skid plate. Not as bad with the DE plates, and definitely worse with the Associated plates.

If you have a bunch of forward momentum and you hit a big enough bump causing the rear to bottom and you have a piece of plastic protruding as opposed to just smooth aluminum, it wil cause the rear end to be jostled slightly causing you not to track completely straight.

Yes, the majority of the times I run DE skid plates, but if I find myself getting knock around on a bumpy track, it's the first thing I remove.

I'll be running this season at a buddy's track (he has a lot of land, and build a 300ft. track on it.). Perhaps I'll used the skid plate there as it's kinda back yard fun and practice, and remove it for competitive events at other tracks in NYS.

Although, they do have transponders and time laps as well as put out rewards and trophies at my buddy's, so maybe the skid plate will be off more than it is on if what you say is true with the handling.

I'll have to give it a few go's myself and get a feel...

I don't have the mud guards. And I can definitely see where the rear skids could hit the bumps rather than sliding off the back of the chassis.

I run the de skids on my losi's and I have not had any problems with them. They are beveled enough so whether it's plastic or aluminum dragging, it's not going to be that much. I still set my ride height based on the chassis and not the skid plate. They do wear down quickly. As thin as those skids by de are made, if they are hitting, I am willing to bet 90% of the time the chassis is going to hit the same thing. In fact, because they do wear down so quickly, I am considering just running without them this year and making it an annual maintenance item to just replace the chassis.