New to Gmade. Some questions about the GOM

[Hardcoretam]

I've just picked myself up a GOM.
Used only once and it's the "plus" kit with the grey cage.

Because i bought it used, i never had the fun of building it and apart from looking awesome i don't know a whole lot about them so had some questions.

1) I notice to get a 550 motor to fit you either need to remove the magnetic ring from the motor, or cut out the plastic from under where the motor sits so you can keep the magnetic ring on the motor.
Has anyone cut out this bit of plastic out and any problems doing so?

2) My friend has a GOM but hasn't had much chance to run it. Now and then when selecting gears his selector gets a bit sticky and puts the truck into neutral (maybe once out of every 10 times) and from high to low a few times gets it in eventually. He's using a 20KG servo and greased his trans and around his selector fork
The previous owner of this GOM had the same issue, but he used a dry teflon lubricant. Is there anything i should be doing to help the selector fork move as smoothly as possible?

3) Are the metal gears needed? Will be running a 12 Turn 550 motor on 3s

4) It came with CVD's i believe. The previous owner read about them being a weak point so he used "piano wire" which is apparantly quite strong to replace the standard pins and has held them in with shrink wrap. Does this sound like a good fix or is there something i should be doing with the CVD's to make sure they're as durable as possible.?

5) Any more tips / advice is greatly appretiated

[soze]

1. HumboldtEF I think has modified the bracket/frame to fit a 550. Check out his thread.

2. Admittedly, I don't use this feature often as I'm in low gear most of the time, but people have put spacers between the shift housing to make it a little more loose. Another solution has been to use a stronger spring for the shifting mechanism. One guy used a stronger spring from a ball-point pen. Having the aluminum Hi/Lo shift fork helps. I wish they released the aluminum Dig fork as well, but they scrapped that plan. Just keep making sure that the sliding track for the shift slider is lubricated, and keep that area clean from debris. I just 3M'ed some felt over that area so that no debris gets in the sliding mechanism.

3. I have bought the whole metal gear set, but I haven't installed them yet. Again, I mostly do crawling with my GOM, so I haven't run into any issues with the stock gears. That being said, I plan to stick a HH Puller Pro 3500kv in it and run 3S. So I'll swap the gears just cause I already have them.

4. Seems like the original owner did a good job strengthening the CVDs. It should be fine. I haven't broken the pins on mine yet, but I plan to try out the Axial Universal mod with Wraith knuckles. Haven't done it yet.

5. Pick up the sway bar, and both aluminum panhard mounts (lower and upper). The lower panhard mount is more prone to damage at the screw hole if you just want to replace one first. I haven't gotten the upper yet, but might sooner or later. The aluminum rear shock brace is a nice upgrade as well.