I found an old receiver battery that I thought was busted in a mixture of HW electrics waiting to be reassembled and it seems to be a vast improvement. I still have to nurse the throttle up to full whack but it does get there after a few seconds, but that might be something to do with the battery not being charged for the last 10 years. I did also try the 2 motor thing and it worked better, but not properly before I added the receiver battery, it would go faster than with the 4 motors before it began to stutter but still stuttered before getting to full throttle.

Will probably look at getting a better receiver battery and getting it tried out with that as it seems to have fixed the problem. Is there anything specific I should be looking for in a receiver battery? I have never really had to use one before.

The failsafing is still not playing though, I may have to rebind the transmitter and receiver and see if that is the problem. Also only getting forward and reverse drive at the moment, but i'm sure thats a problem thats easy to fix once its all working.