ORIGINAL: goodmanje
My son got a Volcano EPX for Christmas. After charging the battery for 8 hours we took it outside to try it out. The thing ran for about 5-10 minutes.... Hmmm... Something must be wrong I thought. We checked everything charged it again and the same thing happened. It ran for about 5-10 minutes and thats it. Thinking the battery must be bad I called Redcat Racing to report the problem. The gentleman on the phone informed me that 10 minutes was about what you get from that battery. Huh???
I'm totally new to this hobby so I'll admit I know nothing about the equipment. I'm just wondering why anyone would want something that can only be used for 10 mninutes every 8 hours? That's ridiculous!!! I've read you can buy different batteries and maybe get 15 minutes out of it....... every 8 hours. Complete and total crap!
I'm done with this hobby. I could buy my son a really nice bow or high end pellet gun for that kind of money and they can use it all day long every day.
Just had to vent my frustration....
When you buy an RTR vehicle, particularly a low budget one, you will get low budget equipment. The charger here is the problem. I can understand why you would think that nobody would run a car for 10 mins every 8 hours, and of course we don't. Nobody is still using the equiment that came with the car, particularly the crappy battery and charger (bear in mind 95% of RCs are not supplied with any kind of battery or charger, so really you are complaining about stuff you got for virtually free). Only about 20$ of your purchase price was for the battery and charger. Really its just equipment to get it rolling, it's not expected that you will never want to upgrade it.
If you wanted a car that you will never have to upgrade, you should have added a '0' to your budget.
For $40 you can buy 2 batteries that will run that car for half an hour each.
For another $40 you can buy a charger that will charge them in an hour each.
For $120 you could buy 2 batteries that would run the car for 40 mins each AND a charger that would charge them in 40 mins each, so you would never have to stop running.
For another $60 you can upgrade the motor and speed control to a brushless set which will give you a lot more torque and speed as well as improving runtimes further.
I don't know if the volcano is fully equipped with ball bearings, but if it isn't, then that will again increase runtimes and speed dramatically.
Hopefully you are starting to realise that if they had included all this stuff to make the car great right out of the box, you'd have paid more than double what you paid. It's a simple case of managing your expectations. Why on earth would I pay thousands for my cars and equipment if I could get the same result for $200? I can't, that's why.