Hi guys, another newbie here...
New to RC cars, I used to have RC boats 20 years ago but my twin boys are finally old enough to start enjoying some real RC cars. I have had a dozen or so toy grade RCs so I recently bought a Redcat Racing XTE for one of my 8 year old twin boys. I have been thoroughly impressed by the quality, drive-ability, and serviceability of this car. It's the real deal for not too much more than I have been paying for toy store junk. I was a little nervous giving so much car to an 8 year old fearing he would wreck it right away but it has survived some unbelievable hits, some of them while dad was driving... After a couple times out, I bought a second XTE for the other twin so now we have two cars. I will soon be buying a third XTE pro for dad!
For me part of this experience is also teaching my boys how things work. The operable suspension, adjustable toe/camber, replaceable gearing give the opportunity for learning as well as playing. So far we have lost a couple of the shock collars. This allowed me to show the boys how the shocks work, pull them off, and replace the collars. To prevent this from happening again I drilled some tiny holes in the collars and pinned them in place with safety wires.
Yesterday I noticed the cars gear cases were making more noise than before. We had been running them in some sand and a few granules managed to get lodged into the spur gears. This gave me the opportunity to pull the gearcases apart, clean and re-mesh the gears. I noticed one of the cars probably had too much gear lash initially and was a bit more worn than the other car's gears. I took this opportunity to show the boys how a differential operates on a small scale. I also related the operation to the full size Jeep Wrangler in my garage.
I suppose I could complain about needing to do maintenance on this true hobby grade vehicle but I see this as part of the benefit, allows me to share and teach my boys something more than they would learn staring at a screen.