upgrades

Dragman, before rebuilding with new parts try cleaning up. Coms, brushes, rest of electric, might bring things back to life. Don't forget a drop of oil for all the things that move. For some reason I can't remember I got magnets (poly) for my 440's from "Slottech". These magnets made a great improvment in performance. The armatures probably came from "Lucky Bobs" (listed bottem of main page). If you phone, you should ask for Bob, he can tell you what arms will work for different cars. He also has alot of things not listed on his site, so if there's something your looking for ask him about it.
...............good luck, PC

This reply is a bit late, but I might as well contribute with some info. Wizzard has a list of both stock & hop up parts for the Tyco 440x2 platform. I think BSRT has some as well. You can get both front and rear bulkheads that accept bushes/bearings - the plain bushless bulkheads has always been a weakness of the 440x2, having the option of adding bearings helps eliminate a lot of the heat generated by friction especially if you want to run a hot custom-wind armature. Wizzard also has a 'High Performance Electrical kit' for the 440x2 that has pickup shoes, double shoe springs, adjustable/threaded brush tubes /w screws & allen key, brushes & brush springs for about 10 bucks. I use this kit along with a BSRT G3R chassis and a Decosmo T+ bulkhead to build a nice all rounder racer. It's a bit out-dated in todays standards, but if something's good, why change it ?  I also use the Wizzard-Tyco threaded brush barrels in the old school G-plus (very little mod to fit) to dial in the brush tension on custom hot arms.

Yep, there were many ways to mix & match components from different manufacturers. Several years before Decosmo brought out his T+ bulkhead to convert the SG+ / G3 platform to run on tube-style commutator brushes, I was doing the exact same thing by modifying the Tyco bulkhead. I cut up a 440x2 bulkhead and graft it to the timing bracket from the SG+ to essentially make my own T+ bulkhead. All the Decosmo bulkhead did for me when that came out was saving me a lot of time having to modify the Tyco bulkhead.

Over the years, the manufacturers pretty much all copied ideas off each other, so it is no great surprise to see that their components would work on each others' platforms with very little modifications, if any at all. The idea of mixing & matching of parts from different manufacturers in full scale cars has been around as long as cars has been...I remember a few years back, we went through a stage of shoving Chevy's small block V8 driveline into anything from a 1976 Toyota Celica to a '71 Datsun 240Z ! Imagine the powerplant of the 1700kg Camaro under the hood of a 850kg Celica ? Power-to-weight my @ss !?! It was impossible getting the threads to hook up during launches ! Just think - there was no neo-magnets assisting traction either LOL   I just couldn't believe it when the engineer gave it the approval for street registration !?!  I went there thinking they're gonna laugh us out of the place.... and all he said was... 'Yep, all good, the ride height's fine and it's not too noisy...'   Was this guy blind ? Did he even look under the hood ? I didn't care, I paid and drove out of there as quick as I could before he changed his mind !  I was happier than the day my first re-wound slot car armature fired up without smoke !

Nice ! 289 into an Austin.....hmmmm.... inspired by Carol Shelby perhaps ?

The laws for modified vehicles used to be fairly relaxed here in Oz, but a certain clown started a business converting Escorts and Cortina with 302 & 351 V8s back in the late 1990's and made some noise with it, then the 'fun police' woke up which made the authorities changed the laws - in fact, they changed the laws several times playing cat & mouse with them, everytime the laws were changed to what we can't do to our rides, we worked around them...Now we have a similar registration that allows the modified ride to be used providing you notified them before hand. What a joke ! With me, under-cover is the technique - I just do it in such a way they can't even tell that it's been souped up - like squeezeing almost 650 hp to the wheels of my 3 litre powerplant, also low-mounting the turbocharger and keeping it hidden under the factory heat shields, which all looks stock when the hood is lifted.

Yeah, I heard the laws regarding mods have been tightened over there in NZ, but you guys are still getting away with a lot more than us here in Oz... I have friends that are too building high powered Japanese imports (like Skylines, Supras etc) over in NZ and the mods the Kiwis are currently getting away with is insane ! Even with some of the performance cars we're having difficulties bringing in from Japan as personal imports, they're all over the place over in NZ due to a lack of import taxes for cars.

    I just can't wait to see what BS they're gonna throw at my next project when it's finished - a VL Commodore with a R32 Godzilla AWD driveline, including rear suspension cradle + IRS.   I'm calling it the 'Comzilla'  lol

     Speaking of Commodores, a friend of mine is currently getting professional tooling made up to produce lexan bodies in HO scale of the VL Commodore and two different Toranas.... So it wont be too long before we finally get some bodies of Aussie classics to race in !   Imagine the '05' Brocky Torana in the Marboro colours... Stay tuned.