I got my roller in and built yesterday, I have a RTR Gravedigger coming in sometime this week. I wish I had just gotten the RTR initially, the roller for the price just isn't worth it IMO given you have to source the motor, ESC, servo, transmitter/rx, and body. The $200 price difference is well worth it for the RTR, but I think the roller is over priced. There also isn't a ton of info on what bodies work and don't work yet, so I rolled the dice and ended up with one that doesn't really fit. Kindof a bummer. I thought the wheelbase would be the issue, but it is the width of the cage, some of the non-truck bodies get pushed out by the cage.
The truck seems well thought out, though. Everything is in a place where it's easy to organize and lay out the electronics, the rubber damper on the center diff is a nice touch also given how much abuse they tend to take. The roller aspect was quite literal, given that it had tires and everything mounted the moment you pull it out. The manual goes into fair detail on accessing / maintaining the diffs, which was nice given other pre-built trucks lacked a lot of details in the manual. They didn't really cover body installation though, which was kindof lame, but also not difficult to figure out. The servo mount being plastic was a little concerning, but it seems stout and doesn't flex under heavy loads. The servo saver does a great job, also, from what I can tell. The links are stout and I doubt they'll ever break, the chassis plates are really thick also and modular, which is nice if you do bend part of one.
I've only got a little driving time with it and it's a blast. I was able to nail a few backflips off a wall with almost no effort. It doesn't handle speed as well as my Maxx does, but I think it's more fun to drive given how easy it is to flip, jump, and do other tricks. It's actually surprising to me, not having a truck like this before, how easily it does stuff like that whereas my Maxx requires a ton of speed to accomplish the same thing. The LMT just wants to jump and bash off everything and it's easy to control in the air. I did try to enable AVC a bit to keep it stable at speed, but it made matters worse, I think it does better without.
I do have a few minor complaints, though. Access to the spur gear is via one plastic cover held on by a single screw, but the screw is in line with the chassis rail, so you have to sortof bend the rail down to access the screw which is a little annoying. They thought to leave a nice cutout above it, though, so you could easily torque down the setscrew for the spur gear, which was a nice thought. I do wish the receiver box was waterproof, not only does it lack a seal around the top, it's got a hole in the bottom of it. I think replacing it with a Traxxas or similar waterproof box would be a good idea, but I think given this truck's purpose, it would have been a nice thought from the get go esp considering almost no one makes waterproof receivers.
The biggest issue is the axles, it seems a lot of people are having problems with them breaking online. There are numerous reports on Facebook of broken axle housings. They seem stout at first glance, so I'm a bit surprised, but they seem to be breaking for a lot of folks, which is disappointing. There were a few Treal aluminum axles available, but they are sold out until Feb, and the only whole axle brace available sold out quickly, also. There is a 3d printed option, but given that it only seems to brace the inner 80% or so of the axle, I think it would make matters worse by reducing flex from the interior plastic pieces and result in breakages on the outer portion of the axle. There seems to be some speculation that these breakages are from a combination of cold temps and excessive fast driving, but they seem frequent enough that I think some improvement could be made there. I plan on getting next run of Treals, provided they don't sell out before I can.
I'll buy the first set of aluminum axles I can get my hands on...(hint hint @Vanquish...)
