Installing electrics in the old super-narrow prototype Durango cars was a real feat - and fitting a modern brushless system might well have been next to impossible or at the very best - quite messy.  Those [prototype] cars needed the smallest electrics and a low-profile servo (which also needed to be attacked with a Dremel to clear the drive shaft!).  For hard-core racers, ease of use isn't the overiding factor but to be commercially viable the DEX410 needed to appeal to the masses - and at the same time not compromise the unique design and handling. 

Jorn Neumanns prototype car from the 2007 European Championships. Would you want to deal with that? didn't think so.

Compared to the prototype cars - the DEX410 actually has a bit of room for the electrics.

I won't lie - there's not acres of space in the DEX410, but the designers have done a great job and it's possible with a little time and effort to fit most race-level electrics in the DEX410 without too many problems.  We chose the Tekin RS brushless system for the car - it's smaller than most of its competitors which makes it absolutely perfect for the DEX410.  The Tekin RS doesn't use a large heatsink or fan - instead relying on quality design and components to do the job.

At first I thought there was a lot more room than there actually is - the alloy side pods extend the chassis area by a good amount but not all of this space can actually be used.  The bodyshell sits right down around the side pods meaning you can't butt-up a large ESC or receiver against them.  Team Durango supply a soft plastic 'radio tray' in the kit - something I've never seen on a modern 10th off road buggy.  The tray, or plate if you prefer, screws down flat against the chassis with a couple of counter-sunk screws from below and providing you attach your ESC and receiver directly to it, it makes removal of electrics for cleaning incredibly easy - what a brilliant idea!

There's plenty of room under the body shell for high ESC's - the Tekin has bags of room

We used the Yuntong saddle pack in our test - at 4600mah its got all the runtime you'd ever need and the 35c discharge rating helps them supply the power when you need it. At 286 grams they're a decent weight also - the heavier the better! The cells fit in the DEX410 perfectly without sliding about. Oh, and they look cool with a simple square black design. not sure about those polarity stickers tho! :)

We planned to use the Tekin in a different review a while back but the post being what it is - it missed out by one day. Still, we knew some bright not-too-distant day there would be the perfect home for the svelte champion that is the Tekin RS Pro. This Brushless controller is without doubt one of the smallest on the market and somehow does without the huge heatsink or fans of its competitors. Sort of..... Well, the tall gold solder posts which rise up from the lower circuit board and pierce the second before rising up just proud of the top of the case - they also act as a heatsink of sorts we're told. The Tekin 'Redline' 6.5 in our combo pack We got the 6.5 turn combo - a nice quick motor for the 4wd car but without being stupidly fast - ideal for me. The motor has a ribbed can and a brightly anodised-red front cover which looks rather tasty. Installing the motor was easy - it has 6 screw holes so you can achieve various angles. After soldering some black wires (we didn't use the included ones for the motor since we were going for a 'look') we attached the motor screws loosely and slid the motor in. We chose to point the solder tabs horizontally inward - there was plenty of room under the DEX410 driveshaft so it was no problem. We wired things up with very short motor wires and used a 3rd party short sensor lead to help with the neat install. Since we were goin to use various different types of batteries we kept the battery leads long. I failed the read the manual properly (hey, it was late, ok!) and once I'd finally found a nice location for the ESC and wired things up - I quickly realised I'd forgotten to take into account the small 'power capacitor' - damn! Luckily I managed to attach it without disturbing anything else or detracting too much from the looks. The only thing I regret is all the wires going over the RS - thus hiding its cuteness, bless.

We'll have a seperate review for the Tekin system soon - with our findings from running it in the Durango (which can also be read in this review).

Cooling - big scoops sit directly above the motor and ESC	2mm Allen key works for fitting the motor	MRT PTX fitted in the middle of thecar

If I were building the DEX410 for myself I'd slap the electrics in and not really care about looks - but to give the impression I'm a professional in this review I wanted to make a neat job.  I began by laying out the Tekin RS, MRT PTX transponder and Sanwa receiver in various ways to get an idea of what was possible before deciding on their positions.  I did the same for the wiring and kept the motor wires to the minimum length. 

Installing the motor appeared initially like it might be real hard work - a hex driver simply won't do it due to a lack of space. I had a dig in my box and found a simple 2mm allen key which worked perfectly for the job.  I went for a 21t pinion - no pinion is supplied in the kit but the manual rather helpfully has a list of ratios with various sized pinions. The 21-tooth pinion would give me an overall ration of 10.74:1 - which sounded like a good start for the 6.5 motor.

I found I could shift the electrics up to the edge of the radio tray / plate and clear the slipper unit by approximately 1mm - but........  Installing the wires on the Tekin was exerting force on the ESC and pushing it toward the slipper - the soft plastic of the radio tray was bending upwards in the middle and allowing the ESC to slightly touch the slipper.  I re-mounted everything about 2mm from the edge of the tray - further to the front of the car.  If you're mounting directly to the chassis you don't have any problem like this and can mount much closer to the slipper without fear but I didn't want to risk damaging anything.

MRT PTX
I've had an AMB Personal Transponder for a while now and with cut-off tabs it's a fairly small unit but quite pricey to buy.  The DEX410 deserves the best so we fitted one of the very latest personal transponders from Team MRT in the UK.  The MRT PTX comes in various flavours, both a waterproof cased version like we have here and heatshrunk super-lightweight option.  Since the MRT transponders are designed to work with the AMB system then all the transponders use the usual 7-digit numbers like AMB.  MRT can't just go make up their own numbers and dominate the market it seems (shame)- so the next best thing is to include several pre-set stored numbers (which MRT own the original AMB transponders for) which the user can choose from using a button on the transponder itself. Any conflict with a fellow PTX user using the same number can quickly be resolved by just adjusting the setup and choosing another number. 

Half the size of the AMB - perfect	The PT can be serviced by the user if needed - to change wires for instance.	With the optional 3-hole bottom plate attached.

MRT recommend laying the PTX flat on the chassis for the best signal. It would fit no problem but we chose to mount it sideways onto the ESC. It worked flawlessly.

If you already own an AMB PT like I do then things get even better because not only will you already have your own unique number but MRT can clone it onto as many PTX's as you desire - so you can get additional PT's for all your various vehiciles without the need to buy the pricey AMB's, and with the bonus that they'll all have the same number.

The PTX we chose had the full works with 20 pre-set selectable numbers & our cloned PT number (21 numbers total). The cloned ID number was the default setting from the factory so apart from a brief look at how to setup a different number we put it back to the cloned number and left it which I suspect many will do if they've opted to get their AMB's cloned, it makes sense.

The PTX comes without any fancy packaging, just the unit itself and a sheet of instructions.  MRT also included an optional bottom plate which when attached gives the PTX the AMB style 3-hole mounting, which is most often used on nitro vehicles to give a secure mounting, but increases its footprint so I didn't use it here.

Various options are available since every PTX is custom made for the end user - lead length, type of base plate and even LED colour can be selected (I'm not kidding!).

Despite mounting the PTX vertically (against the advice of MRT) and sandwiching it between lumps of machined aluminium, motors and various electrical components and wires - the unit never missed a lap, can't say better than that. Hey to cut a long story short - the main thing is it's small, it works, it's cheaper than AMB, and you can get your existing PT cloned into multiple copies for all your cars! Bargain.