I got my new Monsoon XTR this week. I've heard this before but...THIS THING IS MASSIVE! I couldn't believe the size of it. I've only had 10th scale trucks before, and smaller one's at that. As far as the quality goes I have to admit I was expecting far less, more of a blown up Volcano. But this truggy is very impressive. The thickness of the front and rear arms as well as the steering links and rear up-rights looks very durable. The only weak spot that looks obvious is the rear camber link ends at the rear uprights. I will probably mod these from some Traxxas Revo parts.
Did a Loc-tight tear down and checked everything out before running it. The gear mesh was perfect. When I removed the engine screws to add loctight they had some form of Chinese loctight already applied. I only found 1 screw that I felt could have been tighter on the whole truck. I also wasn't crazy about how the fuel lines were run so I re-routed them. Removed the single stage covered air filter and replaced it with a two stage filter that would breathe. Also added some zip ties to the head for rollover protection. I finished up with some heat reflective tape inside the body.
Startup was a breeze. To prime I could just pull the pullstart gently just enough to feel the piston make one revolution while holding my finger over the exhaust tip. 4-5 pulls and you could easily see the fuel had made it's way from the tank to carb. Put the ignitor on and in 4 pulls it fired right up. I actually turned out 1 turn on the high speed needle once it started, it didn't seem rich enough when it was running. 1 turn out gave me fuel sputtering out of the exhaust. It ran it's first tank at idle no problem.
This thing is super loud! It almost hurts your ears and crackles just like a 2 stroke bike.
I completed 5 more tanks of break in today. I've since turned in the low speed needle about an 8th of a turn. The high speed needle was turned back to it's stock position on it's first figure 8 tank and since then I've turned it about a quarter more, it's still running very rich. It's ready to be leaned out a little. I'll go over the truck again once more and start seeing what it can do tomorrow.