I have the steel 3 shaft steel gears with bearings from Hobby Raw and they are great. Smoothest gear boxes I have ever operated. The tank will coast down hill with them, so I am not sure why you are telling people to stay away from them?
Not the 3:1, the 5:1 aka the dual ratio gearboxes. The gear material was changed from brass to steel which increased both weight and rotating mass. To account for this I was changing out the motors and making sure the gearing was strong enough. During all this I was not that concerned of the bushings as that was going to be changed last. There was a miscommunication with the factory and they produced these before I was done with them. So these gearboxes (dual ratio only) will need new motors to counter the extra mass added to the gearboxes. It also lacks the bearings as the molds all had to be redone again. So this refers to the dual ratio gearbox only. The others are ok. IF you choose to get one early, be prepared to change the motors as the current gearing is weak in the 3:1 and there are no bearings which was the big reason for the revamp. Thats all

The other gearboxes are all fine and were simple to fix. Sourcing a low RPM high torque 360 motor was a bit more difficult than I expected.