If the gears are anything like those that Tamiya puts in its cars, I very much doubt that steel gears are necessary. They’re not Heng Long plastic, so to say. Added bonus of plastic gears is the noise, or rather lack of it.. more sound from speaker, instead of loudly rattling metal gears.
Afa the tracks go, the DKLM tracks with the separate rubber pads are a LOT of work to assemble, and are a bit too ‘realistic’ for my taste, in, that they spit and split rubber pads like a real tank..
.. I use the plastic/metal hybrid tracks from Tamiya on the Heng Long Challenger, the Leopard and the M1, and have yet to break one, even with crazy powerful DKLM double gearboxes with huge twin 550 motors.
by the by, check rctankwarfare.co.uk if You réally want to go ‘off the deep end’ with modeling and detailing the M1