Sold my T-Maxx.  I'm going to pick up an T1M.  Expect to see a small, dedicated T1M site on my server shortly.  This T-Maxx page will no longer be updated.  It was a fun run, but it was just time to move on to bigger (or smaller) and better things.

I'm selling my T-Maxx on eBay.  Stop in, check it out, and bid if you're interested.  Thanks.

After 1 gallon of gas, these are all the parts I broke:

• Rear Skidplate #4939
• Front Skidplate #4937
• Front Bulkheads #4930
• Steering Bellcrank #4943
• Popped Rear Shocks (fixable) Twice
• Rear Body Post/EZ-Start Mount
• Engine Mount
• Chipped Spur Gear
• One Front and Both Rear Drive Shafts (half shafts) #4952
• Both Rear Turnbuckle Rod Ends #2742
• One lost Bellcrank Screw #3185
• Lost the plastic protector for the cooling head
• Shredded the Glow Igniter Wire
• And the body is absolutely torn and busted in every location possible

Today was an awesome run.  I went down to the Maxx Playground and burned through 3 tanks in about an hour and half.  I managed to not break anything this time, but one of the rear body posts.  This truck gets more and more fun the more and more I drive it.  I'm learning how to hit jumps so I actually land on the wheels on not the bumpers or the top.  It lands so softly when it hits all four wheels at the same time.  I can drop into the bowl off the top ledge and it falls about 6 feet into the pit and just cruises on its way down.  Then I turn around and come flying back up it.  I also hit some sand and pealed around for a while.  There are an endless number of places to launch this thing and the fun part is finding each one and trying them out.  The T-Maxx hits each jump differently and lands differently and the challenge is to always keep it on its tires no matter where I'm at or how high it gets.  I got nailed by a rock flying from the tires as I floored the throttle with the truck right in front of me.  I got showered with dirt, dust and rocks.  That wasn't all that fun.  But the truck has got some awesome power.

At one point it rolled over into a pile of mud that was so dense I couldn't even get out to it.  I thought I would have to leave my Maxx for dead, or until the mud dried out.  I threw a couple of huge boulders into the slush pit and walked on those till I could reach it.  All in a days drive.  When I got home I spent 2 hours cleaning every nook and cranny, inside and out.  I pulled off the wheels and scrubbed them with soapy water and a toothbrush.  I took rubbing alcohol and WD-40 to just about everything else.  Then I lubed up the bearings with some Trinity high performance bearing oil.  Now I can spin the wheels and watch them spin round and round like a roulette table.  That is one free spinning drivetrain!  I love it, it feels so silky smooth, and now my T-Maxx looks just like it did when it came out of the box.  Everything is ready for its next run, on another day.  Check out the before and after pictures which shows that no matter how dirty your Maxx gets, you can always restore it to its original factory luster and shine.

My wife finally decided to come watch this truck-thing go around, as she's had to listen all about how awesome it is for so many months now.  We walked down by the smelly river and I showed her the Maxx Playground.  She was impressed.  I fired the truck up and went jamming down the path leaving a trail of dust in its wake.  We were just moving over to the good spot, when it happened.  I wasn't even a half tank in when I drove it about half throttle into a bed of huge boulders.  Not thinking it would damage the truck I pressed forward.  Somehow I nailed the protruding edge of a big rock square on the center of the front skidplate.  It snapped the skidplate in half.  But the energy was so strong, that it also snapped the front bulkheads right where they mount to the aluminum chassis.  This is turn also caused one of the servo linkage arms to snap as well.  And lastly I bent one of the shocks.  My wife looked at me and said, well it's off to the hobby shop!  I carried the thing home in two pieces - the front wheels in one hand and the rest of the car in the other.  A trip to two hobby shops and $25 later, I had all the parts I need to fix it up back to new.  Including a new spur gear, which I didn't really need, but thought I should get just in case.

The directions for putting a T-Maxx together suck.  I guess that's what you get when it comes RTR. I watched as I pulled stuff apart, but once I had 20 screws and 15 pieces and parts sitting in front of me, I suddenly got lost.  Luckily I managed to get everything back together and took one more trip to Competition Hobbies to pick up some screws (and to take a peek at the T-Maxx they had sitting on the counter, just to make sure I put it together right).  

Well it was 12:00 P.M. when we started driving for the day.  And it was 5:00 by the time it was ready for another go.  This time I just walked up the street to the empty dirt lot where I've driven my Maxx a few times.  It's fun, but not much to do.  My wife came out and watched as I jumped a few times and jammed up and down the dirt a few times.  The engine died on my a couple of times and the last time I went to start it the batteries in the EZ-start were dead.  That was it.  I called it a day.  And I barely made it through one tank.  Oh well.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have better luck.

Got my skidplate today.  It put me out $3.75.  It's nice to get parts for cheap and nearby.  I also got a set of glow plugs to have on hand.  I ran into John and Tim who were racing at the track.  I had totally forgotten they'd be racing today.  We talked for a while about our new Micro RS4 setups and made plans to hook up for the races day after New Years.  We should have about 6 guys racing that night.  Should be fun.  I popped on the new skidplate and drove around in the front year a little bit.  I let my Maxx rest mostly for the day.

I went to the most awesome spot to drive my Maxx today.  Down my the smelly river, there is a huge plot of land that is all dirt.  It's more like a landfill because there are mounds of dirt the size of small houses.  There's a huge bowl that I drove my Maxx around like a massive burm.  There were jumps around every turn.  It was a T-Maxx's paradise.  I busted my first part doing a double front summersault off a 10 foot launch and landed right on the top.  Engine kept running of course.  Tomorrow I'll go to the hobby shop and pick up a rear skidplate.

I was more excited to wake up this morning than I was yesterday morning.  Because I knew that all day long I would be able to run my T-Maxx full out, full throttle, full bore, and really tear it up.  And that I did.  I got to jump off my first large jump and launch my truck right onto its back, its front, its top and just about everything but its wheels.  Okay, so I need to practice on the launching.  For now I'll stick with the little 1 foot jumps.  Nothing broke today.  The stock glow plug died on me.  I replaced it quickly and the engine fired right up.  I'm beginning to understand the different sounds the engine makes and what it means.  I enjoy cleaning it up afterwards and running the WD-40 through it before putting it on the shelf for the day.  I always do my after-run treatments, and I've been cleaning the air filter and re-oiling it after every long run.  I want my 2.5 to last a long time.

Opened up my T-Maxx for Christmas.  I glued the tires and read the entire manual from start to finish while the glue dried.  I popped in some fresh batteries, did a servo check, and dumped in the first gallon of fuel.  It was 40 degrees outside, so I threw a piece of cardboard down on the tile in the entry way and got ready for to fire up the new 2.5 for the first time.

I plugged the EZ-Start in and waited.  I sat there looking at the truck, the engine, the servos, the fuel and then I waited some more.  I was scared to push the button.  I didn't know what was going to happen, and it was in my house, and my wife was sleeping.  Finally I just pushed the button down and the engine chugged over a couple times then stuck.  Nothing.  I tried again and the engine garbled and froze.  The EZ-Start couldn't turn it over.  I tried again and again and the thing just clicked and clocked, but no more turning over the crank.  I thought maybe the batteries weren't charged enough.  So I plugged in the battery back for another half hour to juice them back up again.  Then I tried starting the engine again and it turned over a few times, and the then stuck.  It wouldn't turn over any more.

So I read the manual again, bummed thinking I got a bad starter, or I busted the piston and crank or something crazy.  Then I decided to see if the engine was flooded, which might cause it to not turn over.  So I pulled the glow plug, turned the truck on its top, and ran the EZ-start.  Gallons of fuel just poured out of the head.  It was completely flooded.  Feeling relieved, I put the glow plug back in, and tried the EZ-start one last time.  This time the it turned over, and over, and over.  I waited and watched and listened.  I let the starter go for about 20 seconds when finally the engine fired up.  It ran for about 10 seconds then died.  I fired it up again and it ran for 10 seconds then died.

I repeated this process several times till the engine started getting a little warmer.  I actually leaned out the HSN about 1/32 of a turn (which is basically nothing) because I got the feeling that the engine kept dying because it was flooding.  This actually did the trick.  It was soon idling quite nicely without dying for several minutes.  I dropped the truck down on the porch in the front yard and began giving it some throttle.  I drove up and down the street like clockwork 1/4 throttle for 3 seconds at a time till the tank was done.  It probably died on me 1 or 2 times during the hole process.  I was getting excited.

2nd and 3rd tanks went smoothly.  By the 4th tank I had to adjust the idle screw as the car would jerk forward violently and frequently.  The idle adjustment fixed the problem.  5th tank was awesome.  I got to do my first full throttle runs, and I really began to feel the power of the TRX 2.5 engine.  And it felt good.  6th tank was all I could get to that day.  I left all adjustments as they were and hit the dirt.  It was the funnest 15 minutes I'd ever spent driving an R/C car.  It was so fast.  It has so much power.  I could peel out, and do wheelies, and dirt and debris went spewing out from all four tires every time I gave it even a little gas.  The engine ran smooth.  I may have died a couple times on me, but the EZ-start would get it running again within 1 second.  I was very happy with my new Christmas toy.  The T-Maxx is one awesome truck.