To answer your question Tom, I have bought 3 HL tanks, none of which has had any problems yet. I have 2 tamiya's now, (older 1/16 porche KT and a Full Functon tiger one) and as far as 500 dollers extra townards a tamiya goes, I DO NOT get my moneys worth of proformence over a Heng Long. While I agree that a Tamiya is a better built model, I do not agree that it commands that kind of mark up in price... To me its a just a rip of.