Nitro Dan,

dude.. you bought an entry level RTR truck.. there are going to be problems, if you build it yourself with top of the line components (i.e. servos, gears, etc) then your chances of failure are going to be less.. but it's going to cost you a lot more..

what I suggest is the following:

- build yourself a stash of spare parts (idler gears, a couple of diff rebuild kits, arms, knuckles, assorted screws, pins, etc)

- run your evader, when you break a part, replace it out of the stash of parts, send the broken part to Duratrax for replacement.

- read as much as you can of the Official Evader thread, there's a lot of good stuff in there.. but it's a lot of info, it'll take you a while to do..

- ask questions, the only dumb question is the one that is left unasked..

from my experience, the steering servo really needs to be high torque, there's no getting around it.. the stock one isn't good for the application that it's being used in, go high torque for about 50 bucks and you won't regret it. Also, until you get it down, you'll probably eat up a couple of diff gears, it's not problem to rebuild one, just takes a bit of time and patience.. it'll take you a few tries to figure out where to set it at but you'll get it.

don't let the breakdowns bring you down dude.. this can be a fun hobby but you will need to do some maintenance to your truck, there are people that will help you and share their knowledge with you, ask questions and have fun!!


edited to add: if you aren't willing to do all of this stuff, then the RC hobby probably isn't for you, I would strongly suggest a maintenance free hobby like badmitton