Brief Flux run tonight.

[Ascender]

I got my batteries, charge leads, and balance block in today, was looking forward to some bashing, but everything here is SOAKED. So I threw the Flux in the car and ran up to the local track for their open practice.
This is the first time I ever had the thing out, so I didn't really realize just how much time it takes to charge two 6000Mah batts. I got about half an hour at the end of the night to play with it.
First off, I have ZERO skill. The truck spent more time on it's lid than it did upright. I managed to land a few doubles just off pure luck and persistence, and even managed a beautiful double back-flip off the big jump, but I'm not gonna be actually racing for a long time yet.
Second, I don't know what it was, but something was causing some bad glitches at first. I took it outside and played around for awhile, came back in and it was fine for the rest of the night.

After a few nasty cartwheels and nose-first landings, I did have a suspension pin slide out and drop the upper arm off the left front, dropping out the dogbone. The bumper mount with that flange that covers the pin twisted over and let the pin out. Fortunately, the pin didn't slide all the way loose, and some helpful soul found my dogbone, so I was back on track inside of five minutes. I put in a zip-tie to keep the bumper mounts from turning out like that again. Other than that, the only damage is to the shell. Lots of horrible scratches, and a weird bump over the rollbar.

 

[BIGDAN89]

thread is worthless with out pics or vid j/k lol sounds like you had fun there keep it up

 

[Ascender]

CRAP!!!
Well, strike the "no damage" part of that post. Both batteries are trashed!
Couldn't get to sleep, so I decided to read for a while, figured I might as well recharge the batts for tomorrow, pulled em out of the truck, and noticed the leads are cut up from the battery doors, and they'veve pulled out of the case somewhat and broken the solder joints in the case. I didn't even get one full run!

 

[Ascender]

Well, here's the damage, you guys tell me what you think:

EDIT: Well SMC has a nice little "Crash Protection" policy in their warranty, covers half the cost of the damaged batteries. I'll be making some MAJOR alterations to HPI's battery boxes.
HPI built a brilliant truck, but fell on their faces with the battery boxes.

It's starting to feel like something doesn't want me to get into RC...

 

[Ascender]

Bryan at SMC, AKA Snuffleupagus, is awesome.
That is all.

 

[Chadrob30]

Yes, the battery boxes suck, I've been saying this since the day I got my Flux. Take a dremel with a sanding wheel and sand some material away and you'll be fine there. Sorry about the batts. Next get some velcro straps and wrap them around your battery boxes to keep them closed. Finally, if you don't have it already, get the Castle Link software. You can tune the truck to be more user friendly, and less likely to be on it's top. I adjusted most of the settings on mine and it's a totally different truck, but if you want stupid insane power you can always set it back to default, lol.

 

[Ascender]

I've got the Castle Link already, I just want to get a feel for the stock settings before I change anything.
I talked to Snuff, and he gave me some suggestions for making the battery boxes more battery-friendly, and I already have velcro straps. I may pick up some stronger ones from So-Fro Fabrics at some point. Place is useful for finding that kind of thing.