My KV had been plagued with low torque issues since the day I bought it. I remember that day like it was yesterday. It was the third tank I had bought and the smell of new plastic was still fresh when I gutted it like a German Tiger at Kursk. Then I added the SLU and speed controller in time for our first summer battle .To my disappointment, with a fully charged battery, it was not able to climb even a small hill in the “Shoot and Dash “competition. Curtis provided 2, 480 motors to solve the problem and to be safe I swapped out the speed control board before the next battle day, disappointment again, same issue. OK so I resigned myself to a KV with no guts.
I mentioned this Dean, a champion of all things Russian, who suggested perhaps its not the KV electronics !, but the gear train. Soooo , I pulled the white metal gear set, replaced it with a Walterson Brass drive train, upgraded the final output drive shaft with a 38L mm SSTL version and lubed the heck out of the whole thing.
The result was impressive, problem solved . Now if I could only learn the art of shooting.

Bingo! Yep, this is the way things go, especially on tanks with large diameter drive sprockets like our favourite KV's, Tigers & Panthers hauling around all that extra weight. 

The grey metal gears also inherently have a ton if internal resistance that further slows em down  They aren't built with extreme precision!

Glad you have made the jump Ed, we will now together be unstoppable! Speed means nothing if you can't climb the hill...