This Q&A section has general information pertaining to XMODS Evo Cars and Trucks. There are several Q&A sections and you will find an index of them at Q&A Central.

The Gen1 or Generation 1 was the original XMOD and was released in October of 2003. The Evo or XMOD Evolution is the newer design and was released October of 2005.

The Evo has some improvements as well as flaws. The electronics and the steering are both improved, but the driveline durability is not as good on the Evo. The Gen1 by contrast has a much stronger driveline. Once you have upgraded the weaker driveline components on the Evo to billet parts, it becomes a truly amazing car.

We have seen cars hit 50 MPH on the Dyno, but they have no bottom end and can barely get off the line. We call these "Dyno Darlings" because that kind of top speed is cool, but practically useless other than reading big numbers on the Dyno. A more reasonable speed goal for 1:28 scale cars is in the low 30MPH range. A car geared this way gives you blazing speed, and good torque off the line, but is still reasonably drivable. Even then, most people cannot handle a car this fast unless they have a lot of room.

Lithium power is the most bang for the buck by far. It will double the performance of your car. No other upgrade can make anywhere near that much difference.

That's tough, because it takes money to go fast, but there are a number of things that you can do that don't cost a thing. Check the tutorial section for the car you are interested in for more details.

I'm not sure, but the cart will add it up for you as you click away...

We have some EVO Videos posted on the Video Page.

The Evo is an entirely new design. Here are some of the new features.

Electrically they are the same and will work fine, but physically there are some space limitations. If you are determined you can do it, but you really have to butcher the chassis. You will also need to build a new wiring harness since you will need wires of different lengths to fit properly. If you have a Stiletto Chassis, you can use them, but again the wires are different lengths. An easy solution is to run the Li-Poly pack.

The trucks have plenty of room to hang batteries below the chassis, but you still need to build a new wiring harness since you will need wires of different lengths to fit properly.

We have developed a new chassis similar to the SwitchBlade called the Stiletto that allows the use of AA size Lithium Ion batteries. Note: now we have a Titanium version of the Stiletto chassis as well.

As a matter of fact we do. We developed the XMOD EVO Poly Pro Packs for the Evo. It uses flat cells that fit perfectly in the place of the stock battery tray.

Well technically that is possible. We don't like this method since it significantly raises the center of gravity of the car. The driving force of the Evo design was to bring as much of the weight to the bottom of the car as possible. If you mount your batteries on the top don't be surprised if your Evo flips over all the time.

Open your gear cover so you can observe the gears. You want a tiny bit of backlash, which means the gear will move back and forth a bit before engaging the pinion. If you don't have this, you may have the wrong gear combination or the wrong spacer.

There are 6 different shafts as follows:
Car Long - 88.5mm
Car Medium - 84.42mm
Car Short - 80.32mm
Truck Long - 95.43mm
Truck Medium - 87.37mm
Truck Short - 79.40mm

No the Evo requires larger bearings which we sell here.

Yes and no, see the XMOD Body Compatibility Info for details.

Yes they all fit the Evo, see the XMOD Body Compatibility for details.

It requires customizing the Autoscale body, and several of our customers have done this successfully. Autoscale bodies are an aftermarket part designed to fit Kyosho's line of Mini-Zs. The Mini-Z bodies (and therefore all Autoscale bodies) have a nose clip and two side clips which hold the body onto the chassis. On the other hand, XMODS, both Gen1 and Evo, have a nose clip and a tail clip, but no side clips. So you would have to buy an Autoscale body and then modify it by removing the side clips and adding a rear clip somehow.

Furthermore, you will have to experiment with different Evo chassis configurations to determine which length provides the best fit for your Autoscale body of choice.

Customers ask us all the time "Which autoscale body will fit on my Evo configuration XYZ?" Although this customization is possible, the parts (Evo Chassis - Autoscale Body) were not originally desgined for each other. The possible combiniations are extremely numerous and we do not have any plans to experiment with this ourselves. May the force be with you.

Yes, the chassis bottom is 2mm off the ground. The Gen 1 is 3.5mm for the main chassis with the differential shrouds drooping to 2.3mm.

There are 2 different Chassis styles for the new Evo: the Tuner Chassis and the Wishbone Chassis.

The Tuner Chassis has 4 different length options. The Driveline Case can be mounted in a front or back position, and the chassis can function with or without the extender installed. See the XMOD Body Compatibility for details on which body fits with which length.

The Wishbone Cassis can be configured short or long, depending on whether you use the spacer or not.

(Check out the Body Specific Questions section of this Q&A to determine which cars or trucks use which chassis.)

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* Curb weight is determined by taking the weight of the vehicle fully assembled, completely stock, and with no batteries.
** Suspension Travel is determined by how far the vehicle can squat from resting position before it is the wheels are impeded and rubbing of wheel wells begins.
*** Body Clearance is determined by measuring the distance between the ground and the lowest part of the body (usually the kick panels, aka the side skirts.)

No they will not. GPM has provided 3 screws that go into the edge of the Knuckle and hold the bearing and axle into the knuckle. It's actually a pretty ingenious design. Props to GPM.

The factory motor spacers must be trimmed in order to use this part. Just trim the upward extensions off about mid way up the curve.

Negative. Well…affirmative if you want to somehow fashion it on the H2 body. But then you’ll be driving around an H2 with a bumper that says “F150”…classy.

The GPM Aluminum parts are stock replacements. We’ve attempted to get longer versions cut, but GPM’s production lines have been full.

No, unfortunately there isn’t any hobby grade transmitter that will work with an XMOD.

The new board is greatly improved, we really like the heavier traces and the single board design which eliminates the extra wiring between the receiver and servo and MainBoard.

When the Evo first came out, we were shocked at the lack of servo jitter when we added lithium. We thought, "Could it be that radio shack has been watching us?" As we've worked with more and more EVOs, we've seen servos jitter almost as frequently as we did with the Gen1.

Yes, it works even better on the Evo as you have more room under the body and a good flat place to secure it.

Why yes we do, and its right here.

No they will not, the EVO uses a different FET for the front and for the back. One is a P Channel and the other is an N Channel. We have an XMOD Evo FET Upgrade Set that includes one of each.

Yes you can. They stack just like other FETs packaged this way.

Absolutely not, the Lithium cells provide more voltage, not more current and stock FETs do fine with the Lithium cells. The motor you run determines if you need upgraded FETs or not.

What are you lazy? Yes you could, but the stock FETs would fry at the first sign of a tough load and leave you with half a stack.

PBF means the FET meets is compliant of ROHS, an EU directive regulating the levels of lead, mercury, and other supposedly harmful contaminants.

Any 130 size motor will fit, but oversize motors will not.

Our initial tests showed the FETs to handle a 9 amps load, but we realized after more testing that this was a peak and the constant current handling is much lower. We are still doing more testing and will post the results here when we finish.

Update: We have had many customers report that they were able to run the FATBOY for a while, but it eventually burned up their stock FETs so the current recommendation is to upgrade the FETs before using any high current motor.

You will find the required FETs here: XMOD Evo FET Upgrade Set

Steering is much better with a bigger servo motor, in fact out of the box they turn better than a Gen 1 XMOD with tight turns.

Check that your motor wires are not broken. The wires are brittle and often break.

No, more than likely it is your radio that is bad.

Sounds like you reversed the servo motor wires. If you reverse them the servo motor will lock to one side and stay there. If you remove power and move it back to center it will move back to whichever side it is closest to and stay there. The black goes in front and the white is in back.