Definitely it's over geared for anything other than speed runs. I wouldn't run it like that for off roading. But if it's noticeably different now versus before, then I'd say whatever has been recently changed may affect it now. Unless the motor is showing it's had enough of that high gearing all of the sudden. I don't own a vxl, so I don't know what kind of low end power it has when geared that high. My mamba setup actually has pretty good torque when Im geared high, though I've never been geared that high. If you're using a 2s lipo rather than a 3s, that would be noticeably weak off the line when geared high and would make it struggle and heat up.