Ou2mame, our stories are almost identical except I would have to replace your explanation of your Redcat experience with my experience with HPI. My HPI nitro MT2 was the biggest load of crap I've ever owned. This truck retailed at the time for $360. Everything broke on it. Like you said, many of the parts have been cloned by Redcat. I broke everything on that truck twice at least, I mean everything. By far the weakest truck on the market. My friend had a Redcat Volcano S30 at the time, this thing was an animal. It held up so much better than my MT2 that I decided to give the Tornado S30 a try. Your right about the shock towers, very weak, but the rest of the buggy was indestructible. The wheels were very cheap and brittle, but once I replaced them I had no other issues. I even ran it flat out into a privacy fence during a run away and broke $5 worth of parts.

I'm one of those guys that believes buying the right Redcat model for what you want it for, and doing your research and knowing what to tweak can go along way. Redcat has never marketed as a high end rc. They are great for people on a budget. I've been running Redcats for 3 years and currently have 2 sumo's "one of them was actually run over by a full size pick up and only needed a new diff and wheel", Volcano EPX, a Caldera 10e, and a Monsson XTR. The Volcano EPX is by far the worst one I've owned from Redcat mainly because the brushed motor overheats and self destructs very easily. I haven't complained too much about it simply because the rest of the truck is pretty solid for what I paid. I love the Monsoon, nothing less than $500 from the competitors can compete with it. For the over $200 I saved, I can deal with some issues now and then. My sons Caldera 10e is just awesome. I did have to upgrade the steering knuckles to aluminum because they kept stripping "something I also had to do with the MT2", but since then we've had no issues with it.

I value everyone's opinion on these threads, especially since your a former race, I'm sure you've scene a lot of things we haven't. However when reading your post it almosts reads as if your saying just rolling your Redcat down the street causes parts to fly off it. I did agree about the shock towers bending easily and even the diff cups will notch over time, but I've never had dogbones just bend for no reason and I can't even count how many times I've bent my Tornado's shock tower back into place without having the shock leak like your talking about. Same goes for the majority of the plastic parts, mine have held up pretty well. Sounds like you may have an axe to grind.