Lilredmachine

Dunno if anyone has pointed this out yet, but kits are more expensive to produce for companies than RTRs. With kits you need thick manuals, well designed boxes, loads of individual pieces in bags weighed to see whether they contain the right bits or not, decent box art, paints, option parts such as spurs, pinions, different suspension parts for camber/ackerman/toe in/toe out adjustment (my XTM Mammoth pro kit had no less than 6 extra 7075 alloy suspension pieces i didn't even use), glues, silicone oils, diff grease, (the last three, think how much you waste or keep back when you fill a cars shocks/diffs etc. up the first time... Then time it by 10/20/30 thousand, and that is how much the company doesn't buy for you to waste by having someone fill each one up at the factory from the same bottle). The RTR, much like the production line in cars, is a natural development because it is simply a lot cheaper and easier for companies to manage.

The cost of employing the staff, giving them basic tools and a mediocre wage to build the cars/planes/boats whatever is nothing compared to the costs i have listed above.

I like a kit, and I like it to be good, have everything fit and be enjoyable to build. Quite simply, for me to have that a company has to be seriously committed to high quality rcs, whatever the cost. That is why companies such as X-ray, Associated, Losi (though less so these days, also HPI) are considered higher up the scale than Traxxas, who only really care about profit margins hence everything is in RTR form.

Chris_RC

Thick manuals? I thought all RTR's are provided with a detailed manual that shows you how to assemble the car and not just a bunch one page of how your shocks, diff, etc. go together.

04DarkShadowGT

The box material, box art, and manuals are virtually identical in RTR and kit form. Most kits dont inlcude paint, option parts, etc. The only real place a kit would be more is in the plastic bags and weight systems. But the weighing systems are a one time deal, not a labor expense every day.

I just dont buy your argument at all, I know for a fact that my SC10 kit has MORE paperwork than my buddies kit had. It also has manuals for the radio and esc the other didnt. All the Sc10 manuals are the same. I got all the same tools, setup stuff, etc that he got. There is no more cost in the real world imo.

cumquat

i agree, i have never seen a kit with paint or diff grease. the most equiped kit i have seen is either a savage x or a tamiya that included the esc and motor. the only kit i know of that includes real hop ups is the o'donell racing z01b 2-in-1. the reason i think most kits dont come with shock oil, diff grease, tires and paint is because people that build kits are usually experenced in the hobby and have prefferences in colors, weight/viscosity, compond and tread (forgive the spelling).

Druss

Actually, many Tamiya kits will come with grease, shock oil... etc. They even tell you what parts to grease...

cumquat

[:@] i forget stuff.

Access

I don't think there's a whole lot in a kit that precludes it from mass production. For example those little sample bottles of some new perfume or skin treatment lotion they give out free in the larger department stores? Those are mass-produced and then sent to key markets to be handed out en masse. What stops a kit from being mass-produced is the business itself, there just isn't enough demand for a kit. No business is going to mass-produce a kit that only sells best case two to three thousand nationwide.

86waterpumper

cheaper for the company to provide a car in rtr form? Not hardly. When a car is sold in a rtr form, the sprue trees still all have to be molded just like they are in a kit, except then they have to all be taken off, and someone has to be paid to put the thing together apply all the stickers etc plus install the radio gear and test it. I've never seen a kit that came with paint, and a rtr usually requires a larger box, since the car is prebuilt and has the controller in there etc so there is more shipping cost for a rtr. Alot of race kits like the tamiya trfs and such don't even come with tires, wheels, or maybe even a body so they would weigh very little. You ought to see the box for the trf511x it is the size of a shoebox and tiny. rtr cars also come with hopup parts and extra pinions. The slash for example comes with extra pinion, several wrenches, shock parts etc. But anyway I can see hpi offering a kit hopefully they will with their short course truck they have been better than some other man. in the past about providing kits as well as rtr.

cumquat

i just remembered this http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXGA83&P=0 for racing perposes it doesnt qualify in any way but it is a sc style truck and it is a kit

flat6

My Feedback: (5)

If people hate RTR versions of short course trucks I got a solution.... Its called Ebay..... There are "kit" versions of all the sc trucks out there.

Tilux

Just my 2 cent.

I started in the hobby with a RTR HPI MT2 G3.0. Great fun, didnt break easily () and I didnt knew a single thing about nitro engine, diff, suspension, ect. The manual is has thick (or more) has my Tamiya DB01 and now I am able to change any piece on both of my car. I bought the MT2 because I was pretty much intimidated by those 400$-600$ kit, and they still missed piece to make it run! People getting in the hobby are scared of the price of the ESC, motor, radio and servo + INSTALLING IT! People just want to have fun at first, like I did. Maybe the hobby would have been smaller if there wasnt RTR.

Steve.

This hobby was on life support until RTR saved it. When I started over 20 years ago you started with a kit like the RC10, bought an ESC,servo, and radio system. You built your car, therefore you knew it inside out. My recent SC10 build was enjoyable however I plan on buying the RTR version for my son. Why ? He likes the ProComp body and it has an ESC, motor, and steering servo. Painted body, and electronics are certainly worth $35 more than the kit. Not to mention I'm putting the radio in my nephew's car and installing a decent receiver. RTRs are here to stay but it would be nice if more kits were available, especially if they include option parts that are not on the RTR version.

Lilredmachine

My Mammoth pro came with 3 extra 7075 parts for adjusting the pin angle each end (so 6 in total), 5, 7, 10, 20 and 50 thousand diff oils, three different shock oils, an extra set of unmounted rims for installing your own 40 series tires as well as the ones in the box, three sets of shock springs, a few different metal spur gears and a couple of clutchbells. The Mammoth RTR comes as a truck, in a box, with a transmitter. Admittedley the same manual, but all you get extra with the RTR is an antenna tube.

People here never seen a Tamiya kit? They include shock oil/damper grease, anti wear grease, everything is well presented and bagged and labelled, they always supply an ESC/motor so there is a manual for that as well as a comprehensive manual for the car, the box art is gorgeous and they have awesome metal parts in random places. I would consider Tamiya to be one of the last proper kit builders. Even their expert built series of RTRs is just a production kit that has been built at the factory and painted up properly.

Tilux

I build my Tamiya DB-01. It came with everything, except ESC, Radio equipement, Battery stuff and servo. The rest, (oil, grease, ect) came with it. I gotta agree with your post.

luvdisstuff

My Feedback: (2)

What a totally ignorant statement. You must be the ancient bitter guy I see . What the problem with progress.Just because someone cant build an rc from scratch they should be banned from the hobby. Have fun running your rigs alone. You should be ashamed of yourself I guess your the only one who should be able to play. LIsten uo pal. I have no idea how to build one of these but thanks to rtr i am getting a chance to learn how to build one. There are nort a bunch of places where i can go lkearn. The rtr is helpful to people like me who want to get involved in the hobby. Frankly you dont deserve to have a voice in these forums. Its people like you that scare away the nOObies. But you cant intimidate me with your ignorant opiionIm mglad you got your issue off your chest but you just removed all doubt regarding your ignorance.

Chris_RC

This is a public RC forum. He can post whatever he wants if he doesnt get banned. If you want to go on a private ($$) rc forum, go to SGrid.

Back in the 80s and 90s there were about 6-10 tracks in Southern California in a 30 mile radius. Notice that it is the 80s and 90s and RTR's were not even invented yet. With 6-10 track, there were over 1,000 racers in SoCal. So dont say the hobby wouldnt survive if there wasnt RTR's. The hobby just needs moore exposure. Put a 1/8 buggy or truggy race on ESPN and hundreds of thousands of cars will be sold. I mean there is fishing, pool, bowling, and poker on ESPN, and RC Racing is 100x more exciting than any of those other sports or hobbies. There are people who have had many RTR's and never tore it apart, those are the people I get fusterated with.

FoamyVictim

Go to ANY hobby shop, and ask the owner what he sells more of, RTRs or Kits.

Snaut Rocket

That would be awesome if espn showed say like the worlds at the farm or any other top race that includes all the pros. I would really like to see those races you couldn't go to.

FoamyVictim

They have RC Live, but it's not free to watch the big events. I think the best way to sell RC to the masses, is to show them what they can do... in person. Almost any guy had one growing up, and could still be interested. But the "Perceived Childeshness" of playing with "Toy Cars" really impedes that possibility. However, if they see a bunch of us at the track, they see that we're young at heart but not exactly childish.

Chris_RC

It's Live RC. They sell members for about $30 so you dont have a que (sp?). You can watch it for free, but if it is a big event like the World's you will get 10 minutes, then another hour or so of your que to go down. But still, Live RC is no ESPN.

I know that, even tracks that have hobby shops on the side sell RTR's more. What I was trying to say was in the 80s and 90s the hobby was thriving with race kits alone. Then Traxxas came in and instead of a newbie buying a T4/B4 team kit or XXX-T kit, they would buy a RTR rustler. Problem with that is they would go to their LHS every time something broke because they didnt know how to fix it. I started with a Losi XXX buggy, built the kit with minimal problems (small diff and shock problems) but besides that there is nothing someone new to the hobby would be imtimidated by.

FoamyVictim

Well, the other day I watched coverage of a SCT race. Several commercials were for Traxxas, and they even showed blips of an RC race. It was nice to see if on national TV, but I know it didn't draw as many viewers as something like "Dancing with the Stars"... []

I see this as a double edged sword. If they can't fix it, a "Smart" LHS owner would setup a repair program like this. $35 an hour, plus retail cost on parts. You can then explain, "If you read this often ignored little book called the "Manual" or "Instructions" you can save yourself $35". If they pay, you prolly just made $35 in 20 minutes. If not, you may have helped that kid more than you know.

SyCo_VeNoM

If you guys really want a kit so bad of a RTR go buy all the parts off ebay and download a manual I pretty much did that with my MT2 (I bought a used MT1 and replaced almost every part with a MT2 - transmitter and servos).

And all the stock transmitter hate I got 2 HPI TX-2's that are probably between 5-8 years old (came with used trucks) and just got a TG-1 with my new buggy and I have yet to get a glitch while driving and the range is so far I barely can see my vehicles when they range out. Traxxas TX/RX I'll agree is kinda crappy I bought one for $15 and it ended up in my savage eventually. For some reason if I adjust the steering left too far the steering goes haywire and goes full left as if I'm turning the wheel all the way left, it also occasionally inverts remote functions seemingly random(it does it without touching invert switches and eventually goes back), and the batteries kept falling out so I duct taped it shut. So in my book HPI electronics are decent they are no spectrum but they do the job fine. For the most part Traxxas controllers are almost on par with some cheap Tyco's I had as a kid. (My nephew has a stock Stampede and his controller acts up the same way so it just isn't me)

gman1

Lilredmachine nailed it right on the head, by providing the business/manufacturer's perspective as well as the customer's point of view in the sad and seemingly endless RTR Revolution. All in all i don't hate RTR as much as my introduction would suggest. If I had to choose ONLY one good thing, I would say that RTR is good because it gets a bit more people involved in the hobby as a whole, which creates somewhat of a competition between the companies who mass produce RTR's and therefore circulates more money into the life of the hobby. It's just hard for me to use the word hobby and ready-to-run in the same sentence, because when i imagine a hobby in my head I tend to think more of tools scattered around a table with bunches of things that pertain to a project (R/C Vehicle's in our case) being repaired, doing general maintenance, or maybe adding a simple upgrade. So now, isn't the fact that the cars and trucks that WE buy considered as well as referred to by 'hobby grade' for a reason? Yes, because those two words (hobby grade) was how we separated what was sold on Toy's R' Us' shelves and what you bought at your local hobby shop or maybe out of a magazine. Now I'm not an old fart like someone in this thread referred to me as(I'm 27) but i just keep seeing our society slip and it's because of thing's like RTR's. That's why you see thing's being done for people all the time without having to work for it. (Welfare checks for example, which aren't bad only if necessary.) It's just that in my head I see simple thing's such as RTR's and nameless other things start to blend in with society and in whole making our younger generation a bunch of lazies. Don't worry though ladies and gentleman, because there are much bigger things to worry about in this world that are already on their way and will soon make all of the RTR vs. Kit bickering seem miniscule. I don't know about anyone elses' country but mine has some obstacles and challenges that are already present with more on their way. Sorry for the rant, goodnight n' God Bless.

projct

Having purchased a used Evader ST and a hopped-up completed RC18T factory team, I have to say there is no way I would have gotten into the hobby if I had started out with pieces.

I'm learning how things work when they break, both by trying to figure it out based on the manual PDFs online and by asking when I don't understand.

I think that on both sides of this there is a missing demographic - those who learn by taking apart, and who learn by recognizing the differences between broken and not.  

I am one of those people, and my father is as well.  He has sailed his hand-built custom-designed RC sailboat (based on a boat he sailed for years in person), for a long time, recently it was as much as daily.

We inspect every millimeter when things break.  we identify the problem, and may ask when we cannot rectify the problem without a specific part.

Please don't put this demographic out of the way in this discussion.  We learn by observation, and when our observation does not come to a complete conclusion, we might chat up our LHS for other advice - and we remember it all.

I would never have gone anywhere near RC if it required several hours and several hundred additional bones for my first car, but that does not mean I wouldn't take it apart completely.

Don't underestimate us!

luvdisstuff

My Feedback: (2)

[quote]ORIGINAL: Chris_RC


This is a public RC forum. He can post whatever he wants if he doesnt get banned. If you want to go on a private ($$) rc forum, go to SGrid.

Back in the 80s and 90s there were about 6-10 tracks in Southern California in a 30 mile radius. Notice that it is the 80s and 90s and RTR's were not even invented yet. With 6-10 track, there were over 1,000 racers in SoCal. So dont say the hobby wouldnt survive if there wasnt RTR's. The hobby just needs moore exposure. Put a 1/8 buggy or truggy race on ESPN and hundreds of thousands of cars will be sold. I mean there is fishing, pool, bowling, and poker on ESPN, and RC Racing is 100x more exciting than any of those other sports or hobbies. There are people who have had many RTR's and never tore it apart, those are the people I get fusterated with.
[/quote
Do Not fool yourself. Hobby shops keep their doors open and their profits up by selling rtr. Than when the buyer starts messing around with the car he will start spending money on parts. Than if he gets enough knowledge through experimenting and these forums he just might plunk down some hard earned cash to purchase a kit.We are not all mechanically inclined or mechanical engeneers. Some of us need a fully built product in order to deconstruct it and learn. So keep buying your kits as it is a good thing. But dont put us nOObies dpwn for buying rtr.