Total Failure, and Then Success...

After my dad destroyed a drive shaft on my Circuit the other day, I took it home and fixed it and then tried it out, and it turned out he'd done quite a bit more damage to it than I initially thought.

Somehow he mangled the center differential, and the truck was getting no power.

This mangled center diff caused the motor to overheat, and effectively melt it's wires to themselves.

The truck was a complete failure at that point...so I ordered a new one.

My logic behind this was simple. The parts I needed to get mine back up and running were going to run me right around $80, and that wasn't including $40 for a set of dirt tires. So I was going to spend $120 to get all the parts I wanted to get my truck back out on the road.

Well, a new Circuit on Amazon was only $120 with free shipping...so by buying the second truck, I have an entire other truck to have for when parts break. Example, break a shock mount?? Take one off of the old truck and put it on the new one.

I also figured that by having two, I could race with Cathy and have some fun, and I would have one to give to friends to use to try and get them hooked on them as well.

My plan was to order the new Circuit and build that one up to be my main truck. I was going to order the parts needed for repair after the new truck came, so that I wouldn't have to wait forever to get back on the road.

But tonight I ended up tearing the truck apart to get to the transmission. I cracked it open and the inside looked pretty good. All the gears looked fine, they were even pretty well greased. I then checked and sure enough, the diff was still locking up. So I took that apart and what do you know...it was fine as well.

I seriously couldn't find anything inside the transmission that looked like it was damaged, so I figured that being new I was just missing something obvious.

So I put the truck back together...and guess what?? It works fine now. Diff is unlocked, tires spin the way they should, and everything seems fine.

I charged a battery and ran it through the truck...and everything was fine. I even managed to get the slipper clutch set up correctly, which is something that had been driving me nuts trying to do.

Now, the 15 turn motor was still smoked...I can't fix that, but what I can do is contact Horizon Hobby and see about getting some warranty work on it. If not, it's only $20, so it's not a huge deal.

But now I have to decide...should I keep the one that I ordered and just have two trucks?? Or should I send the new one back and use the money from that to get more parts for this one I have???

The new truck cost $120, and it comes with a new body, new tires, and a new battery...all things that I can use or sell. I can sell the battery to Alex for $10, so that brings the cost down to $110. I need a new body, and the new truck has the body I want. Those are normally $30. So that brings the price down to $80. I also wanted to get a set of dirt oriented tires. The Electrix dirt tires are $40, so that brings the effective price of the new truck down to $40. I could probably sell the radio and receiver for another $20, so that basically means the truck cost me $20 to get a second one.

So I'll probably end up keeing it and just having two. That works for me. Maybe I can let Cathy drive the old one around and we can crash into things together!!!

Overall, I'm just happy I was somehow able to get everything working again!!!