I bought this RC car for my son and I to have fun with. I liked the fact that it was capable of high voltage torque from the optional 9.6V battery pack, plus the option to use regular AA batteries at a more manageable power, 8.4v. The car was great fun for a few months of limited use. However one day the motor was spinning freely with no movement. Luckily i got the car to work afterwords by moving the car manually and getting the gearbox to engage the motor. So we lived with that for a while, but used the car seldom. After a long winter, we brought the car out again. It was working fine for the first minute but it just died. The motor speed slowed to a crawl then stopped responding completely. I changed all of the batteries in the car and controller, and that woke it back up for only 30 seconds, then dead again. I've test all of the voltages; they were fine.
I am a mechanically minded guy, and tried to open the drive unit, but it is not meant to be serviced. Now I have extra batteries and a cool looking dead RC in my garage.
I am very upset.
it was an awesome toy.
-extra note: We were very careful not to abuse the RC, by crashing it or running it while it was wet out.