I have a red top os .12 and I pulled the cooling head off and the sleeve came with it. My question is, which way does the notch on the sleeve face. I know with hpi engines it faces to the back. Which way does it face?

nevermind, there is a little pin that sticks up for the notch.

speaking of which... are you rebuilding it? Duratrax has a ABC construction piston/sleeve setup instead of the ABN. I there may be a slight performance gain out of it too.

I only need to say this once. I rebuilt my os .12 cv with a duratrax ABC piston and sleeve and I'll never do it again. I broke the engine in properly and was very nice to it for 10 tanks. I didn't finish getting the quart through it and it had lost a good deal of compression. It's next to impossible to start now. When I do another rebuild, I'm going with the O.S. parts, the originals lasted for 3-4 gallons.

Well, you are the first one I will note that said the quality of it is bad. Did you NOT know that Duratrax gets their stuff from OS as it is? Maybe you snapped a rod? Lol my buddy did that on the truck i traded to him.

No, I didn't snap a rod. If I that were the case, the engine would even start. The cylinders where no where near alike in quality. The original cylinder has a v-shaped grove (like all o.s engine sleeves), and the duratrax sleeve has a rectangular groove. And I think only one of duratrax engines is made by o.s. (the DTX .18) but I'm not positive.

Yeah, but I mean they got specs from OS to make the sleeves and pistons. If Duratrax heard a bunch of issues with them, they wouldnt be selling them anymore.

Then I'll call them up tomarrow and see what they think about my piston and sleeve. They seem to have really good customer service and warranty on some of thier stuff. Maybe I can talk them into replacing it for me (just one more happy customer . I know I broke it in right and I wasn't hard on it, I has hard on the engine before it needed the rebuild.

hmm... maybe it was the abuse that added up? who knows... you'd have to tear that thing apart to figure out what went wrong for sure. Maybe it is indeed bad craftmanship on the duratrax parts.