mattnday

Maybe I am jsut jinxed but he quality of Redcat Vehicles is just not even close to that of my Traxxas vehicles.

I understand they are less expensive, but the QC and overall build is just terrible.

I bought 2 tornados several years ago. One came with a defective fuel tank and the other a missing dogbone right out of the box. Both cars also had issues with motor quality as well. I struggled so much with these cars i kind of gave up on nitro and waited several years before buying Traxxas Slash 4x4 and 2WD's.


After falling in love with my Slash's I decided it was time to have soem fun by adding a Monster Truck and a Stadium Truck.

First was the Ground Pounder. Out of thed box the transmitter was extremely glitchy and the ESC fried the first time it saw Lipo. Upon putting a brushlesss motor in it the drive trains lasted 2 minutes and the spur and pinion gears not much longer. I have repalce the drive shafts, pinion gears, motor mount and ESC and finally the truck was runnign OKuntil I lost the shock clips that hold the bottom of the shocks. Their are no replacements wothout buying fullshocks. These are poorly designed and should not just fall off.

Second was a Twister. Out of the box the battery would not hold charge, One rear dog bone was shorter than the other and an upper turnbuckle would not hold on to the threaded connectorthat attaches the wheel to the body. I got the replacement parts from Redcat, minus the battery,I am a Lipoguy, and the differential gears strip out in less than 10 minutes of run time with a 2S battery.

I am sorry but I will not be swayed again by the allure of Redcat or their suppossed quality and reasonable prices. I am keeping these vehicles and will eventually get them fixed but it is rediculous how poorly these cars hold up.

Dragonii

To each their own.

I had a guy try to sell me his Revo and Jato tonight for $100 for the lot. Said that he ran then a couple of times and now he can't get them to stay running for anything and that he got tired of replacing broken parts so they now sit in the closet.
My best friend bought a Slayer Pro last year and right out of the box he had to have Traxxas replace the starter motor and a servo (his new redcat Monsoon has given no trouble at all). I met a guy a few weeks ago that bought a Stampede on Saturday, broke a drive shaft on it's first run, bought the metal shafts to replace them and then broke one of those the next day.

I have two Redcats, both have had about a half gallon of fuel run through them and the only problems that I have had is a busted wing on my Shockwave and a bit of damage (slightly bent shock tower and one cracked plastic piece) to my Avalanche from a bad landing. But somehow I believe that just about any 1/8 scale monster truck would have suffered some damage if it flew 10 feet through the air, landing on one wheel and the somersaulted for another 10 feet.

My Avalanche ticks like a clock and only cost me $278, that vs. some dudes $500 Revo that he is now willing to sell for dirt cheep because it won't run... I'll keep my Redcat, thank you very much.

All-or-Nothing

LMAO........these threads always make me laugh.

Dragonii

Yeah, Iknow what you mean.

Unfortunatley I don't have a life and have nothing better to do at 12:30 on a Saturday night... lol

On the up side my life is not dull enough for me to mosey on over to the Traxxas forums to post about all of the negatives that Ihave seen with them.


And as for his "I understand they are less expensive, but the QC and overall build is just terrible.", is he kidding me? When Ibought my Avalanche XP the guy at the LHS tried to tell me that Ishould have bought a $450 T-Maxx. A T-Maxx that had all kinds of plastic parts. he tried to tell me "but you can upgrade any of those plastic parts to aluminum". Well, 90% of those parts are already aluminum on my $278 Avalanche.

masterhacker1989

I have a Earthquake 8E, and the only issue ive had was the diffs stripping out, redcat sent me replacements, and I shimmed, other than that Ive had no issues. I used to work at a hobby shop, every brand has defective crap (Hpi, Losi, Traxxas, Ofna) but I will say it seems redcat lets alot of that kind of stuff slip by their inspectors, but like I said, I saw a kid (15-16ish) buy a stampede, then the same kid came back like 2 hours later, the Esc didn't work from the factory, I saw a tmaxx with leaking shocks straight out of the package, A Tq radio that wouldn't turn on, All kinds of broken stuff on brand new vechiles

nitrosportsandrunner

my rustler vxl woudl bend shock shafts every other battery pack.
and the ESC eventually stopped working in lipo mode.

it is still a great truck tho IMO

my only compaints about quality with redcat would be some of the bodies(break easy) and some of the servos fail quickly(not all models, but some)

but for the price, those are things i can deal with.


again, redcat does not make any RC's. They import from chinese manufactures, stock parts and provide the customer service.
buy the same model from exceed(some of the 1/10s are the same) and see how lucky you are if the electronics fail right off!
for redcat to have a 90day warrenty on the electronics is pretty good IMO.
is redcat perfect, no. but then no RC company is. but in my experience they guys at redcat care about the customer being happy and will do what is needed to make that happen.

electricrc68

those two lines are true for me too.....

buggyboy2010

I owned a HPI Baja for about 4days.
first day: Rolled it broke the "roll cage"
second day: Just driving and the wheel sheered off
third day: Came slightly off a curb, Broke the chassis/skid plate in two..
fourth day: Sent it back to HPI and demanded full refund.... I got it

Every company has it's lemons, Some more than others, But it is no excuse to come in here and make arrogant assumptions on a companies overall quality, Redcats are an excellent brand and I will keep buying them for the rest of My RC days!

electricrc68

assumptions are a very bad thing for the mind.

mattnday

I am sharing my experiencewith 4 Redcat Vehicles.

Out of the box I have had either defective or missing parts on all 4.

I am happy that you guys enjoy your vehicles.

Hell, that is the reason I decided to give Redcat a try again.

For me, I am done with them.

Dragonii

And you just felt the need to come over here to the Redcat forum and share that?

Tell you what, where is the Traxxas forum? I'm going to go over there and dog them for being over priced.

electricrc68

haha +1 its the truth.

nitrosportsandrunner

guys, there is nothing wrong with mattnday sharing his exprerience with redcat.

he is not a redcat hater. those people who say "redcat sucks" but provide no reason for such a statement.

mattnday shared his experience with redcat. he presented facts.

and this is a forum, a place where facts should be welcomed.

to mattnday: i would add that redcat does try and address quality issues. if a problem is persistant, they contact the manufacturer about it.
i have bought from redcat 8 or 9 times now. i had 1 order that was missing a single part. redcat sent out the part quickly once i told them it was missing.
but there is nothing wrong with you sharring your experience. heck, the owner of redcat reads this stuff! a post like yours that details your poor experience can help them improve their service!

electricrc68

this is actually true. but in my previous post, i just said traxxas is overpriced since thats a fact.

and my post before that....had nothing to do with this topic.....

matt n rachael

I'm new to Redcat. Have had a Backdraft 8E for about 2 weeks now and I am impressed so far with the durability. Yesterday I had a dumb-ass attack and hit a tree at about 40mph! The only consequence of the impact was a cracked body and a scuffed shock. However, I did have to send a stock battery back due to it swelling after three days.

Matt

buggyboy2010

Agreed Yes, ANd Your point is vaild, But it get's so frustrating for the rest of Us, Yes Matt had a bad experience with a Redcat, But 4 of them? That leads Me to question His know how on NitroRC's, It seems to be more user error than anythign else.. And yes, Parts missing isn't acceptable, But Redcat has some amazing customer service and will help You with whatever You need.

Also adding NOTALL Redcats have these issues, Their first models have some issues I will agree and QC was terrible. But recently they have expanded and put a larger team into making these RC's high quality for still an amazing price. I have 3 Redcats now and NOTONE of them has ahd ANY issues, My best one yet is My origanal Tornado I got 3years ago, The only thing I have replaced was a spur gear.

Dragonii

Well I just got back from running a couple of my cars with my buddy Cesar.

We put almost a half gallon through Cesar's Avalanche and my Shockwave over the past 3 1/2 hours. Nothing broke, nothing burned up, nothing fell off... that is while we were driving them.
Our friend Mike showed up with his step daughter (9 years old) and she wanted to drive them. I let her drive my Tamiya DF02 but then she wanted to drive my Shockwave.


I gave in since Mike swore that he would replace anything she broke.

She did very well driving around a huge parking lot. Hooked some nice turns, pulled some cool doughnuts, everything was fine for almost a full tank of nitro.
Then she hit it full throttle (it has an SH .18 and a 2 speed tranny) and got too close to a concrete curb. It smacked the curb at full speed.
So Mike will now be buying me some new parts.
Not bad for hitting a curb at full speed though. I have seen my Tamiya and my Kyosho suffer more damage from lesser impacts.


By the way...
We met a guy out there with a Traxxas Revo that wouldn't move. He asked me to look at it for him because he couldn't figure out what was wrong. Engine runs fine but as I checked it out I discovered that his spur gear had no teeth, they had all been chewed off. He was ticked. He said he just paid $600 for it a few days ago. Other than the spur it was clean, shiny and looked brand new.

$600 for a Revo with a chewed up spur that he hasn't even collected any dust versus $150 Shockwave that took a 9 year old and a concrete curb at full speed to put it out of commission???

It's not rocket science.

JTuepker1

Ive had my back draft 8e for some time now. I have raced it modified it and only think i have had break was the rear pinion, my fault over shimmed it put to much pressure on the ring gear and broke. Then today after 3 qualifers, 2 motor classes. and then 2 a main, and about 100 more laps on it the screw finally broke on the right side lower spindle.The same one that other people have had troubles. Didnt get mad. Knew it was a weak point. i think i didnt change out the lower ones as my upper were the traxxas part # tra4859 is a motor mount screw flat head and same length works great will get me another set and make sure to convert the bottom.

Took second in 1900 motor class A main and 5th in 2200+ motor class as i limped 2 laps with the broken screw.

cheezer1222

My Feedback: (3)

I picked up a second hand aftershock 8e late last summer. Took it to the track to have a bit of fun with it. I made it almost an entire lap before one of the hub carriers broke. I can't say it was a good first impression for redcat, but it hasn't soured me on redcat yet. The aftershock will get a chance to prove itself this summer.

That's actually not a fact, it's an opinion. Whether or not something is overpriced is dependent on whether YOU think the quality of the product is worth the asking price. Mattnday's cars broke or had defects. Those weren't opinions, those were facts.

buggyboy2010

Well a lot of people share that opinion soo.... Think that makes it atleast the truth.

Dragonii

$450 for a truck that needs a new servo and starter motor right out of the box, $400 for a truck that breaks two drive shafts within the first two days, $600 for a truck that suffers from a stripped spur gear within the first week...  sounds over priced to me.

All-or-Nothing

EXACTLY

cheezer1222

My Feedback: (3)

LOL! I've heard plenty of people talking about the poor quality of redcat soo.... Does that make it the truth? I'm sure you'd argue the contrary.

It may seem like I'm some traxxas fanboy who has come into this forum to bash redcat products. Totally untrue. I have not said a bad word about redcat. I simply shared my experience and tried to weed out some ignorance in the process. I'm not defending traxxas, but at the same time I will not jump on the "bash traxxas products" bandwagon. Just like I would not jump on the "redcat products are crap" bandwagon which I'm sure everybody who frequents this forum is sick of.

I will also mention, I own a rampage. Once you hammer out the imperfections (which are numerous), it's a pretty nice vehicle.

buggyboy2010

You just had to add that didn't You? And You say Your not bashing?

cswtornado

I've already quoted my story so many times that I will just remind you. Again, leave the threads alone, you can't convince anyone anything and does it really matter anyway? Kill the topic.