RE: SERIOUS durability comparison...
I am actually pretty ashamed of how much I have spent on this truck G1GY....it's one of those things where you break the same part a few times so you upgrade it....then you break the next weakest link a few times so you upgrade that...etc, etc. Looking back, if I had known how much I was GOING to spend, I may have just bought a kit like bubba is talking about and been done with it....or if I had been really smart I woulda got a Savage and never looked back!
PS - In the carnage report I forgot to mention that I upgraded to the Dynamite kit when I smoked the concrete wall at WOT, and broke the chassis & tore the head screws out of the factory 2.5 block (oops!)