The Traxxas Titan 550 motor is one durable motor with plenty of zip.  For a beginner, it has more than enough power.  For racing, it is a great “spec” motor to keep things as equal as possible.  Most “spec” class racing will allow you to change the gear ratio.  While the kit comes with a 19T pinion gear, what you should use will really depend on the size of the track and the layout of the track.  Don’t gear for top speed only down the straight away, but look carefully at the layout of the track.  Are there a set of jumps that will require a bit more bottom end to clear which can yield a lower lap time?  Or maybe the track you’re on is a big track but the layout is tight and twisting which have a lot of 180 turns?  Look for sections of the track that your truck seem to struggle over, and try gearing differently to see if it makes a difference in how your truck drive.   On the Titan 550, we have gone as high as 23T with the stock spur and as low as 18T, depending on the track condition and layout.

Usually at the track, racer’s will speak of terms like “gearing up” and “gearing down”.  Gearing up means to go up on the pinion gear size, which generally yield faster straight away speed, but compromises by giving up some bottom end “umph”.  Gearing down is the opposite, you loose a bit of straight away speed, but gain on the bottom end “umph”.

Changing the pinion gear (or the spur gear) is changing the gear ratio of the truck, which simply means how many times the motor have to rotate before the tires of your truck rotate one revolution.  Gearing down helps the motor in this process and gearing up makes the motor work a bit harder.

Usually upon arriving at a new track, we will look for sections of the track that seems a bit difficult to jump and clear and make sure we have our truck geared so that we have sufficient bottom end “umph” to get through these sections, as getting through these section efficiently will lower lap times.  Then we look at the overall speed of our trucks down the straight away to make sure we are competitive in terms of speed vs. other similar trucks on the track.  Since gear ratio is a compromise as mentioned before, we want to make sure we can negotiate the tough parts of the track, but at the same time notloose out too much (if any) down the straight away of the track.

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