Slash grinds to a halt...

Hopeful of a run at some point this weekend I headed out (in the dark!) to run down the batteries from the last run nearly two weeks ago when the shock tower snapped cutting my run short and leaving me with 1 1/2 batteries charged.

I was running on flat wet tarmac with a few tame jumps (and admittedly a few doughnuts!) thrown in. I finished off the first battery and was about half way through the second when it started to make a horrible grinding noise followed by a complete lack of drive.

Slightly miffed and expecting a dodgy slipper clutch to be the issue I packed up and headed home.

Here is the issue:

So it was off with the transmission cover.

Everything looked in order so I tried to adjust the slipper clutch but the whole shaft rotated even though the wheels didn't... odd...

So the only option was to take the whole transmission out and have a look from the other side. Everything at the back had to come off.

But after a while the transmission was out.

To summarise slightly (unlike me I know!) after much faffing about I found that I could rotate the input shaft to the transmission without either wheel spinning. Spinning the wheels also felt very 'crunchy' which could only mean one thing... the differential.

So, I had a look...

...and found two rounded off gears and diff oil that was full of shards of metal. The diff had basically gone into self destruct. Not bad for less than an hour running...

So in less than an hour I've destroyed the diff and snapped a shock tower. I thought these trucks were meant to be tough?! Oh well, replacement diff has been ordered so I can get some running out of this truck before I lose interest in the thing completely and I'll fight it out over a warranty claim in due course.