I recently purchased a Duratrax Nitro Evader ST and have decided to share a couple of my experiences with it that should help folks get it going quicker and solve some problems.

First off, the plastic diff gear is trash. Replace it with Duratrax's new hard anno'd aluminum one ASAP! It's only $16 and saves you a ton of downtime. You can overtighten the diff to heck and back and it will -not- eat the gear or anything else in the tranny.

This goes double for the steering servo! Get that stinking SX100 servo out of there! You -need- a nice metal-geared high-torque servo! You can get one at Tower Hobbies for about $40 (Hobbico brand [Futaba made]). If you need to rebuild your SX100 Servo, remember, it's just a Futaba S3003 Servo. Even though Duratrax doesent offer SX100 rebuild kits yet (Early Feb), you can use S3003 Servo gears. They're the exact same servo (I know, I have both.)

I noticed some people have had an absolutely horrible time with starting those .18 DTX engines. Just like the manual says, try starting the engine at 50% throttle! If your carb is out of tune, just turn the radio gear off, plug your glow igniter in, and use a finger to open up the carb by pushing on the servo horn. Another thing I noticed is that it totally -hates- slightly-going glowplugs or batteries. It's a very finicky motor!

I actually got around all of that by getting my hands on an old-school glow starter. It's essentially the tubular lock-on part and an almost lamp-cord like set of wires comes from the back, out of an orange plastic endcap. Pretty sturdy, just ugly. Well, I had a ton of luck using 6V Lantern batteries with it. It makes the plug glow HOT and BRIGHT and will quickly even heat your engine block! I figure it's a little stressful on the glowplug, but in my experience, you only need 3-4 tugs to fire the motor over. And at $4.49 per plug for a Duratrax Silver Sport plug, I'm willing to take the risk.

As for carb settings? I'm still fighting with mine, sadly. If you mess with the low speed needle, the default setting is "Flush". This means, the top of the screw for the low speed needle is level with the brass sleeve it sits in. Screwing it in 1/4 or 1/2 a turn helped my motor, actually. Default high-speed needle is 2 and 1/2 turns out. After break-in, mine actually sits about 1 and 3/4 to 1 and 1/2 turns out. Seems to be nice (but still spits a lot of oil/fuel?). The idle screw is easily checked, if you mess with it. Pop the fuel filter off for a second and look in with the throttle at neutral. It should only be open about 1.5mm. If you take a look at Duratrax's website and look at the Engine Manuals, some (I forget which) provide a nice diagram of what exactly 1.5mm open LOOKS like! Makes it very, very easy.

I hope this helps some of you Evader Owners out there!

As an addendum, the lamp-cord starter thing was actually sort of an oddball thing for me. I was surprised. I found two of them in a box of parts I got from a friend of mine. It was an old Kyosho Sandmaster nitro stadium truck (Currently rebuilding it. Should be running by 1/9/03. Ruined clutch bell/shoes and air filter. Could use new shocks and tires, and a body.). Anyhow, I tried it just out of sheer curiousity. I figured, hey, More heat from a plug = quicker starting burn! I guess I was right! That 6V cobble-job kicks the motor over every time I've tried it so far!, beats the tar out of the Duratrax starter from the RTR box.