davido666

Tower hobbies has discontinued the RTX, the Firehammer MT, and they have reduced the price of the Raze ST. What next?

04DarkShadowGT

Also the Rio 51 which is aquacraft but same company as duratrax. The Cliff Climber and Raze are next imo since they are really low priced right now.

My guess is they are getting rid of the cars that dont sell and either designing new stuff or sticking with what does sell.

davido666

I thought the cliff climber looked cheaper.

NitroVette

I had a ThunderQuake so I'm not one bit surprised that Tower is dropping them. Duratrax has poor R&D and quality control compared to HPI, Associated, Kyosho, etc. I would never buy another Duratrax after owning what was arguably their worst creation, the TQ, what a turd.

Moongoose

Perhaps they are discontinuing the old to bring in something new?

dacaur

I can say that duratax's minis are bulletproof, but i have never had a bigger duratrax...

08hondacivicsi

yea i had there nitro buggy they use to have. i hated that piece of crap buggy.

derrick05

Exactly

04DarkShadowGT

Most of the older stuff was pretty crappy, the warehead/EVO/RTX-27 was a descnet truck and a bargain at 200 when it was on sale. The motors are kinda junky but other than that not bad.

I bought a Raze ST since it was so cheap, havent started it yet. But it looks nice and well built. I am no racer so I dont need a losi. I paid $165 shipped plus there is a $15 rebate on it. Its quite a bargain for $150 shipped.

$200 - $35 tower coupon - $15 rebate + free shipping = $150

It also has a roto start, fuel bottle, glow igniter, and all that junk with it. All it needs are fuel and batteries.

But yes their minis are imo the best on the market right now. They are so freakin durable, I used to jump the crap out of my old Vendetta ST off a ramp getting 6ft of air and it never broke once.

Matt_Gruizinga

My Feedback: (1)

the evaders are really cheap too. i hope they don't get rid of them since there isn't really another place to get that stuff. they have evader st going for under 100

mufflerbearing

I wonder if Duratrax is going out of business??? I know they are owned by Great Planes who also owns Tower. Maybe Great Planes is going to shut down Duratrax because they aren't profitable??? It seems like that to me. Why would they all of sudden stop making the RTX?

I agree with the above posters though, their stuff leaves a lot to be desired. They do have some good stuff, but a lot of it is crap IMO.

NitroVette

All I can say is that I have owned cars and trucks by HPI, Associated, Losi, OFNA, & Kyosho, and none have gone through parts like the TQ. In fact the Duratrax TQ was the only vehicle that I didn't love and get a long life out of. It ate drivetrain parts and self destructed after the addition of a O.S. 21. I gave it to my buddy and he and his son put a single speed OFNA tranny in it to bring it back to life. Just think of how many people bought a Duratrax as their first car and hated the hobby because of it. I'll be glad to see them go, I felt ripped off after owning their product.

dacaur

Just remembered, I owned a duratrax overdrive ST in the early 2000's, I would give it a D-... When I was breaking it in, there was some problem with the carb where it would close the idle gap when I gave it throttle. I ended up having to put a spring on it to hold pressure on the throttle arm to be able to run it. Before it was even fully broken in, it stripped both spurs (two speed) and that thing would spit out rear dogbones like a kid spits out liver.... The engine was terrible to tune... The worst part about it was that I sold it to my friend and bought a T-maxx.... poor guy....

SAVAGEJIM

Like everyone is guessing, I too am thinking the same. My guess is that Duratrax historically has had a bad record, and Great Plains might be going for a fresh look. Probably they are getting rid of the brand name and creating a new one in its place. Or they could be eliminating the name and redistributing the assets amonst the existing names (much in a similar manner of how GM obliterated Oldmobile, not that Olds was bad, but because it was a really redundant car series and the others were performing much better anyways. Buick could do everything Olds did, and Buick sold better.)

Another possibility, and this is only a guess also, not fact, is the RCs that Duratrax resold could be in the process of being discontinued. For example, Smartech (a sub-company of Perfect international group) could be in the process of being disbanded and rebuilt under Nutech (or Smatrech might be in the process of being broken into two smaller companies such as Smartech and Nutech, I do not know, again, this is only a guess). Since the Firehammer is really made by Smartech and Duratrax only resells it, it could be that the Smartech/Nutech move could include the Firehammer being discontinued by them; thus Duratrax might not be able to resell the Firehammer anymore once Smartech/Nutech ceases to make it.

There are many other possibilities, some of the previous posts already expressed my other guess: Duratrax could simply be getting rid of existing stock to make brand new totally designed from the ground up RCs. Or, Duratrax is not a profitable name, thus it could be phased out.

There are so many guesses. Too bad no one form Durtrax is able to post here and let us in on the real reasons. (I hate guessing, there are too many posibilities; but ironically, I love to dwell on what the possible reasons might be.)

mazdaprotege4

My Feedback: (32)

If you look at Tower it does look like they are releasing a new car in late April (DuraTrax 1/18 Vendetta Rally Car RTR w/2.4GHz) so do you really think that they are going to stop making them even though they are still releasing new stuff?

transam388

I do have to say in DTX defense that at least for me they have had great customer service. I mean anything that broke I would call or send an email and always got a polite answer very quickly, and for me every time they sent a new part.

Now as others have said though I did make the mistake of getting the Warhead as my first RC. Seemed fine out of the box but after a month it seemed like every time I ran it something would break. I am a hard driver but not insane where I go out and try to break stuff. Many of their products are not bad so maybe this is a re branding attempt. Drop the bad reputation name / products and re badge under a new name without so much baggage.?

Guess time will tell.

The Hedgehog

I cashed in on their crawler when it was cheap, I love it.

Vendetta is great too. I am sure the Evader sells well. Anyone notice tower's coupons are really good every month? Never happened before. R/C industry is taking a hit guys. People don't have money to spend on luxuries.

Dale Gribble

My Feedback: (4)

Duratrax is a very valuable brand in the RC community and has been around for going on 30 years. I think they are just adapting their product offerings to best fit the new market. Corporations don't put valuable brand names to bed.

redfisher1974

will just have to wait and see....

Barber420

My Feedback: (1)

I agree. I've seen Duratrax stuff around for as long as I've been into this hobby(21 years) and I'm sure I'll keep seeing it for years to come. I've never owned any of their vehicles, but I've used ESC's and batteries made by them. The batteries were, eh, alright, but nothing special. However, I have a Tazer 15T ESC in my Lunchbox and I love it. It works great, never gets warm, and was super easy to setup and work with. I also know a few others that have this ESC and have had no problems with it. I gotta say, I don't think I will ever really by much Duratrax stuff, but whenever I need a cheap ESC I won't hesitate to buy a DTX.

Edit: Sorry, when I wrote this I was having a brain fart. Dynamite makes the Tazer and I know Dynamite makes quality stuff. I guess my only real experience with Duratrax products are the couple of batteries I've bought, and they left some to be desired. Not the worst stuff, but far from the best.

Dale Gribble

My Feedback: (4)

The Vendetta platform is my favorite hands down. I also had an Evader ST Pro that I really liked.

devast8r

My Feedback: (17)

I agree Ive got a Evader ST that I got back in the late 90's and still love it. Their electrics seem to be great but nitros are lacking. As stated earlier Ive got a Raze ST but the engine was lacking. But hey thats why aftermarket engines are so popular right?

dacaur

Ive been thinking about this, and I have decided that here is no way duratrax is going away... Thinking back, I have seen more cars come and go from duratrax than any other MFG i can think of... Unlike other MFG's that will make a good truck and sell it for 10 years, updating along the way, Duratrax tends to bring out a model, and then suddenly its gone and then something else comes out, like maybe it bombed, and instead of updating it, they just get rid of it... The tried it with the warhead evo, which I dont think did too well since it was only out for a pretty short time, so I dont think they will try the update route to save a vehicle again...... Just off the top of my head, there was the Overdive ST (had one, it sucked), nitro demon, thunder quake, Maximum ST/MT, warhead, warhead evo, RTX-27, and now maybe the raze and raze st... though the last two dont make sense really because from what I hear, they are pretty good.... and there there were a few onroad cars in there too.... Any way you look at it, thats a pretty impressive list of discontinued vehicles, and that just in the last 10 years..... On the other hand, I can only think of 2 or 3 traxxas vehicles that have been discontinued (without an updated replacement).....

warheadforever

It's because no one is buying them because every one knows they are not very good for the price.

DTX charges a high price, for a low quality product.

The Hedgehog

I disagree, for the prices of some of their vehicles, they can't be beat.

Cliff Climber is a lot of fun, Evader is a great introductory vehicles, some of the best chargers around for the price.