I had a set of Duratrax SC tires on hand, so threw them on the TT-02B one day and went to see how it worked. I'd say it was pretty speedy for being NiMH:
And here's a video I took of the Top Force bashing around a bit. Would be quicker is using LiPo, but I'm not going down that path any time...
Heck, yeah, you can put brushless motors in your Tamiya kits. I installed a Tamiya TBLM-02S 10.5T brushless motor in my Plasma Edge II Black Metallic (TT-02B), and a bunch of other Tamiya and GPM alloy bits (including the GPM metal dif gears front and back) and it's a blast. The Tamiya motors...