TechyJoe

Jay-Em

You are correct about the pinion gear reduction. If you use a 12t, 48p gear as your pinion, your motor should run cooler and you should get decent low and top end.
I purchased a set of axtra long 12t, 48p pinions for a heli (mini Titan E32 3D heli) from TowerHobbies (not used since I changed the pinion and idler to the 14t, 32p gears)

I changed my 4000kv brushless out to a 2300kv motor after I burnt the 4000kv one out from changing the pinion and idler gearing.

The 2300kv brushless gives pretty good low end power and top end speed (at least when in snow) with the new gearing.

As for removing the wheels in order to open the "track box", that was a little tricky. They are just pressed onto the axles but getting leverage on them is hard. I wedged a large flat head screw driver between the wheels and the track box and twisted the head to pry the wheel off. You need to be very careful when doing this and take your time because you can easily crack the plastic or crack the inner white spacer wheels.

It's getting late here so I will try and provide a picture of what I did tomorrow.

Also, I purchased a spare skidoo because I ripped my first gear box apart using the new motor and broke some other things along the way. This is a good thing to have because now I have "extra" parts.

I think I am going to add another axle/idler wheel set just above the final rear axle to try and tighten up some of the track slop. I have found that when cornering sharply, the track tends to slip off the rear axle wheels. I'll take a snapshot of what I am thinking here as well.