Maintenance
No matter what you do, something on your R/C car is going to break sooner or later. Any driver has to know how to fix general problems, especially about parts of cars that commonly break. Also, good regular maintenance can help, preventing big problems from happening and minimizing smaller problems. Here I have compiled some tips for keeping your car in good working order.
Standard Maintenance
If you keep your car clean and keep it in good working order, you should be able to avoid many breakdowns, provided that you make sure that you do not drive you car in conditions that it was not designed for. First of all, keep your car clean. This especially goes for off-road cars. They can often get quite dirty, so use an air compressor to blow off any debris that gets stuck in between the body and the chassis. Also, Make sure that the moving parts of your car are in good shape and well greased, if they are supposed to be. This especially goes for gears. If one of your gears strips, you will have to disassemble your entire gearbox to replace it, and they can be quite costly and a hassle to find, sometimes. Finally, pay close attention to your electronics system. Make sure that your radio system's batteries have a good charge, and that no dirt gets into your ESC or receiver. With regards to NI-CD batteries for electric cars, make sure that you sufficiently discharge them before recharging them. Most good chargers have a discharge circut, or you could always buy a separate discharger to do the job, too.
BreakDowns
When something critical breaks on your car, it doesn't necessarily mean that your car will immediately stop working. However, an unseen problem can often complicate itself if or break other things if it goes unseen. Therefore, make sure that you listen for any new, irregular sounds when you run your car, and give your car a good inspection and cleaning every couple of runs. If you do this, you shouldn't have too many problems. When you do come across problems, you will probably need to consult your car's manual, and you may need to use a process of elimination to figure out the problem. If you still can't figure out the problem, you might want to ask someone at your local hobby shop about it. Every car is different, so there isn't much else to say about them in general in this case.
