Opinion: I have a couple of early HL Abrams from IMEX Taigen, both are very nice and am waiting for the Taigen Metal Hull Abrams to do a Tamiya TBU conversion.

Ordered in December 2014, the first HL Abrams tank was converted to a Hen Long - Tamiya TBU Hybrid and a local guy bought it before I could joy it! I have a second HL Abrams, also from Taigen, that is stock HL 2.4 with the 4 to 1 black gearboxes and it amazingly worked great out of the box! Couldn't believe it! No issues months later, so I have left it alone for all to drive & enjoy, which I won't do with my Tamiya's, loan them to others to drive.

I did not find metal sprockets or metal tracks necessary, yet. The very light weight Abrams TBU tank works OK on grass, running the plastic track setup (as compared to the much heavier Tamiya Leo 2).

The Abrams is way to slow running the 4 to 1 black gearboxes. Lacking scale speed with a battlefield infrared tank is a major issue for me and I believe that should be corrected in the Taigen metal hull version and hopefully they have addressed that issue. The Abrams is a 45 mph (72 km/h) on paved roads and 30 mph (48 km/h) cross-country main battle tank and many crews have operated it at much faster speeds on good roads.

John