That is my biased opinion. I do know that even running the thing on my bench, with the tracks off, the board got uncomfortably hot to touch in a couple of minutes.

My fear is that in no time at all I'll be changing over to Heng long boards out of necessity, and at that point, I will have a Heng Long tank with a plastic gearbox. Of course if I change that over to Heng long then I will have a Heng Long tank!!!!I might as well have bought the Heng Long to start with!!!!!

Maybe this nylon gear box is tougher then I think. I will run it and see what happens. No heats sink in this board, so maybe I'll wire up a fan and see if I can get some use out of it before it smokes.

Don't get me wrong. For the money it is a decent tank. You do get a correct bbl, pistol port, and mantlet right out of the box. I just personally don't think this could be upgraded to metal tracks and have the ESC stand up. So you will most likely fry the board, lose the differnet sounds, and replace everything with Heng Long components, if you try to make it more then it is. Bottom line is, you will be able to keep it running with stock Heng Long parts, so don't worry about it too much.