With the electrical install all went well again, you just need to plan well as the space is probably a little bit less than other designs, especially those that use one 4S brick type battery like a RC8e.
I used a Tekin RX8 esc, Tekin T8 1900kv motor, Spektrum micro receiver and Savox high torque servo.
The Serpent website says that a motor of 68mm can be fitted, but the Tekin T8 is 71mm. No worries here though as the motor fits without problem.
The motor is installed with an adaptor plate which is bolted to the end, which then just slides into the motor mount. This means that only one bolt is needed to secure the motor in position. This makes removing the motor or setting the pinion mesh really easy.
You need to use threadlock on all of these bolts to nesure that the motor does not come out of mesh with the spur gear.
The chassis is also machined to allow the motor to sit a bit lower, and the motor sits nice and close to the centre line of the chassis. Someone on rctech.net also checked the balance of the buggy once built and found it to be bob on left to right.
The only issue I had was that the sensor cable can touch the steering post, but I just turned the motor round a bit so that the solder tabs were nearer the centre of the buggy and then the sensor calbe cleared the post ok.
When turning the motor end plate I found that the screws weren't very tight and no threadlock was used. In the Tekin T8 motor maintenance video Randy Pike says to use threadlock on the screws that hold the two end plates on and the sensor board, which to be honest sounds like common sense. So I removed all of these screws and refitted with a small amount of blue threadlock.
The RX8 fits real snug, almost as if the radio tray was designed to fit it. Other larger esc's will fit, but there is a small lip on the vertical back plate of the tray that allows the esc to sit back a couple of mm. This seemed to help in keeping the esc in place even with just foam sticky pads. I did use two screws to secure the esc to the tray, but this required the bottom of the tray to be modified slightly by cutting a small section of the original transponder locating lug.
The steering servo arm only just clears the radio tray, there are shims in the kit to ensure you can get clearance. The servo linkage did prove to be a bit of pain to work on once the top carbon brace etc is fitted, but if you remove this it does become easier.
I will have to see if the plastic arm, servo saver and linkage is strong enough but it appears to be meaty enough. Alloy versions of the servo arm and servo saver are also available.
With the radio tray and receiver box it does allow for a real neat cable install, with a neat entrance for the servo leads at the bottom of the recveiver box lid. There are also small holes in the radio tray to route cables. I cut a small slot in the bottom of the radio tray for the esc servo cable, so then I could run this cable under the radio tray and secured it with some shoe goo.
The only issue I had with the install was with the capscrews that secure the receiver box lid, they're M2 and need a 1.3mm allen key. I found that these rounded out very easily and then needed to be drilled out. I replaced these with M2 flat headed screws from modelfixings.co.uk