Some time ago I upgraded my HBX Hailstorm or HBX 18858 with a brush-less motor and it turned out really nice and quite fast for this 1/18 scale rc car. I personally really like these little rc cars because they are quite durable and replacement parts are reasonable available. If you want to know more about the original car, just look on YouTube for a review, there are a lot! In this post i will tell you something about the upgrade i did for the HBX Hailstorm.
HBX Hailstorm brushless upgrade 
HBX Hailstorm brushless upgrade
Parts i have used for this upgrade and where to buy them:
HBX HAILSTORM: Order it here!
GOTECK GS-9025MG 9g MG90 Metal Gear Servo: Order it here!
MOTOR + ESC: Order it here! or here or here or here
SHOCKS: (make sure you get 4 of the same length): Order it here!
DRIVE SHAFT HBX 18858: Order it here!
TRANSMITTER + RECEIVER: Order it here!
WHY I UPGRADED:
I wasn’t planning on doing this upgrade, but I was driving it on the beach where i live and because of my bad driving skills i guess, it ended up in the sea. This is really bad for you rc car. I tried to clean it but the original 380 motor really started to oxidize and so did the other metal parts. After that i started looking if i could upgrade it to a brushless version.
PROBLEMS:
The two problems i ran into were the pinion gear and the length of the motor shaft.
The pinion gear i used is a 15t Kawada Carbide pinion (kawada pinion 15T
The shaft of the 2435 motor is 12 mm long and to be able to fit it in the pinion housing it can only stick out 9~10 mm. So to make it fit you need to use a washer to make the motor go backward a little bit. I used a steel 24x12x2mm washer. And of course you have to make the holes in the washer according to the holes in your motor.
VIDEO:
Watch my explanation on Youtube!
2020-11-27 Update!
After a long time of not using the HBX Hailstorm, I finally started working on it again! Because of the higher speed, I guess, one of the wheels came loose and therefor I lost the hex hub and pin. I’m planning to do a speed run soon!
2020-11-30 Update!
I went outside to do the speed run! The temporary fix of the wheel hub worked fine, but unfortunately I couldn’t get the top speed of 54km/h. Highest speed this time was 44.2km/h which is still ok for me!
Watch the video with the speed runs!
How are the plastic gears holding up.