Just one opinion.

People like Daryl Turner are amazing and brilliant at designing and machining excellent solutions to fix Tamiya kit part errors, lazy in-house staff engineering and or suspension running design flaws.

Daryl has the skill to take a Tamiya kit to the next performace level and beyond.

Vendors like ETO,Impact, KH, Schumo and several others around the world can supply many different parts to make your tank look and run better.

But as you reckon, not all the Tamiya kits or HL builds require all or even any of those performance and detail parts to put together an enjoyable, good looking and running rc tank.

The powerful motors, stronger gearboxes, reduction gear setups are all useful and can be important tools for harsh action fights, hilly terrain battlefields or grass fields, but are really not required.

Just a couple of hits should make your tank slow.

Several years ago, I purchased from ETO gear reduction with black long can motors, 10 or 12 tooth pinion gear setup, and even at nine hits, it would still motor way from the fight. LOL. No one liked that that Porsche King Tiger, but me.

Past all that, most model tank and real tank combat is on pretty flat terrain, where they operate best for a variety of reasons. If you aren't interested in long drawn out tank engagements, stock gearboxes work just fine for me with stock motors.

For instance, my completely out of the box built Pershing running on flat terrain, or even in grass, works pretty good and only slightly less efficient against a fully decked out Pz4 or Jagdpanther.

But without gear reduction and 400 plus motors and correct gearing the stock Pershing won't climb well if it has hits on it.

So, I guess one way to look at it is build and tune your tank for the terrain your most often going to play on even if it just your wife's carpet.

John<br type="_moz" />