Gorgon 223S as a Gift: Battery, Speed, and What's in the Box

Two families buy the same truck in the same week. In the first house, the boy opens his Gorgon 223S on his birthday and then just holds it, because there is no battery inside and no charger either. That truck sits on the kitchen table for four days waiting on a second order. In the second house, the parent added a battery and a charger to the same cart, and the truck is throwing grass in the backyard before the cake gets cut.

ARRMA's page calls the 1/10 Gorgon 223S 2WD RTR Brushless Monster Truck 'ready to bash' and lists it as '2S - 3S ready.' That last phrase decides whether the gift works on day one, because speed comes from the battery you choose, and the box arrives without one. Buy the truck alone and you have bought half a present.

What RTR Actually Puts in the Box

A truck that runs and a truck that sits look identical on the shelf. Same box, same artwork, same printed promises on the side. The difference only shows up about ninety seconds after the wrapping paper comes off.

RTR means ready to run in the sense that the work you would hate doing is finished. The 1/10 Gorgon 223S 2WD chassis arrives fully assembled, the brushless ESC and brushless motor are installed and wired, the transmitter and receiver are included and already paired to the truck, and the body shell is painted and mounted. Nothing needs to be screwed together before the first run.

What RTR does not cover is the energy. The drive battery and the charger are not in the box, and that is not a shortage or a shipping oversight, it is the design. The page calls the truck '2S - 3S ready,' which means the pack size is a choice left to the buyer rather than a factory accessory. A truck sold with a fixed battery would have to be sold with one speed. A truck sold as ready for two voltage classes lets you decide how fast the gift goes.

The rest of the shopping list is short. Four AA batteries for the transmitter, because that is what the radio takes. A hex driver set, because the truck uses hex hardware throughout. And one or two common spare parts, which I come back to, because they decide whether a bad crash ends the afternoon or ends the gift.

Why the First Battery Should Be 2S

Pick the first battery as if it were the only battery, and pick 2S.

The reason is not caution for its own sake. It is arithmetic. Motor rpm comes down to voltage multiplied by the motor's Kv rating, so pack voltage is the single biggest lever on how fast the truck moves. A 2S LiPo sits at 7.4 volts nominal. A 3S pack sits at 11.1 volts. That is a 50 percent jump in voltage, and the motor turns roughly 50 percent faster on it. ARRMA quotes '50+ MPH brushless power' on the page, and by that math the number is a 3S number. A truck running 2S lands well below it, somewhere in the high twenties to low thirties, which is still fast enough to make any kid grin.

The second half of the argument is what 50 percent more speed does to a crash. Kinetic energy scales with the square of velocity, which means going from roughly 30 MPH to 50+ MPH does not add half again to the impact, it more than doubles it. The same kid, the same curb, the same mailbox post, hit with about two and a half times the force on 3S.

So the practical move is to start on 2S and treat 3S as a later upgrade. On 2S the electronics run cooler, the tires last longer, and a first crash is usually a popped ball cup or a bent body post instead of a snapped arm. The effect is a first month of driving instead of a first week of waiting on parts.

When the kid can steer, brake, and land small jumps without hitting the fence, hand over the 3S pack. That swap is the cheapest performance upgrade this truck will ever get: same motor, same ESC, more voltage, and the 50+ MPH the page advertises finally shows up.

Why 50+ MPH Reshapes the Whole Gift

Fifty miles an hour changes what else has to be in the gift bag.

Think about where the truck will actually run. A Gorgon at 25 to 30 MPH on a driveway is a fast toy. The same truck at 50+ MPH on that driveway is a missile aimed at a garage door, a shin, or a parked car. None of that is the truck's fault. It comes down to physics: at double the speed it covers a given stretch of ground in half the time, so the driver has half the time to react, the brakes need roughly four times the distance to kill the speed, and the suspension and tires take hits they were sized for a slower truck. Grass and a long open parking lot absorb all of that. A sidewalk does not.

Improvement one, then: budget for space, not just hardware. Find a field, a schoolyard on a weekend, or an empty lot with no cars and no kids on bikes. The effect is a truck that can actually use its speed instead of turning it into a repair bill. If the only place you have is tight, leave the throttle limit turned down, which the last section covers.

Improvement two: keep spare parts and the right tools on hand from day one. This is the difference between a crash that costs ten minutes and a crash that costs a week. A bent hinge pin, a stripped wheel nut, a snapped body post, a cracked arm: any one of those on a truck with no spares means the gift sits until a package arrives. The same damage on a truck with a small parts bag means you swap the piece on the tailgate and hand the controller back.

Neither move costs much. A handful of small parts and one trip to a bigger field come to less than a second battery. The point is that 50+ MPH is not a number you admire on the box, it is a demand the truck places on the ground and on the parts you keep nearby.

Splitting the Budget Across Power, Protection, and Place

With a fixed budget, split it three ways: power, protection, place. Each one is a separate job, and skipping one breaks the gift in a different way.

Power is the battery and the charger, one 2S hardcase LiPo and a charger that matches its chemistry and its connector. Without power the truck is a model, a thing that rolls when you push it. This is the part the RTR label leaves to you, and it is the only item on the list that makes the wheels spin, which is why it comes first.

Protection is the spares and tools: a couple of suspension arms or hinge pins, spare wheel nuts, a body post or two, and a hex driver set that fits the truck's hardware. Protection does not change how fast the truck goes. It changes how long it keeps going. Without it, the first real crash decides the length of the gift, and the answer is usually measured in shipping days.

Place is the ground you drive on. This is the part people forget, because it costs nothing and it is not a product. Without it, 50+ MPH becomes a repair bill, and the fastest setting on the truck turns into the reason it gets put on a shelf.

The three work in order. Power makes motion. Protection keeps motion possible after a mistake. Place keeps that motion from turning into damage. Buy them in that sequence and the gift works on day one and still works in month three. Skip any one and the truck's first bad afternoon becomes a dead end.

If the budget is truly tight, cut the 3S pack from the list before you cut any of these three. A second battery is a luxury. A first battery, a parts bag, and a field are the gift itself.

Set It Up Before the Kid Opens It

Do this the night before the birthday, not in the driveway while the kid waits.

Charge the 2S pack first, because a LiPo ships at storage voltage, roughly half full, and half a pack is a short first run. While it charges, put four AA batteries in the transmitter. Then power on the transmitter first, then the truck, and let the two bind. The light on the receiver goes solid when they do.

Turn the throttle limit or endpoint down before the first run. Most RTR radios can cap how far the trigger pulls, and setting it low means the truck tops out at a walking pace instead of its full 2S speed. The kid gets the feel of steering and braking with almost no risk. Raise the limit over the next few outings as the driving improves, and you get the speed back without buying anything.

Check the truck while you are there. Confirm the ESC is set for 2S, since the electronics are built for both classes and you do not want the low-voltage cutoff misreading a smaller pack. Squeeze each wheel nut, because loose ones come off in the first five minutes of running. Set the steering trim so the truck rolls straight when you are not touching the wheel.

Then pick the place in daylight, not on the spot. A patch of grass short enough to see the truck, big enough to let it run out, and far from parked cars and small children. Walk it once, find the posts and curbs and sprinkler heads, and decide your braking zones before the truck is moving.

None of this is in the box. The page promises a truck that is 'ready to bash' and compatible with two battery sizes, and both statements are true. Binding, limiting, and choosing ground are the parts the buyer adds.

Today, before anything else, build the cart: the truck, one 2S hardcase LiPo, a charger matched to it, and four AA batteries. When the boxes land, charge the pack, cap the throttle, and take the truck to the field once by yourself. Hand it over already set up, and the first thing the kid does with it is drive instead of wait. Save the 3S pack for the day they can hold a line through a corner; that purchase turns three months of practice into a real reward.