new rc10s junk???

[longboardnj]

my buddy grumbles just got a rc10t4.1... first thing, he opens the box and saw the body was a little bit smashed up in the front.. not that big of a deal but it is a new truck so it kinda stinks but hes a good sport...today he takes it out for his first time, running in a baseball field with a small 1 foot tall jump set up... not even 1 bat pack on the truck and it starts running slower ... seems like a problem with the gear mesh... the first thing i see is what looks to be a crack on the outer edge of the motor plate... turns out just looks like bad casting and not thee problem... take off the gear cover and the gear mesh is too tight..only 1 screw was in right the other seemed very cross threded (the screw looked like the leaning tower of pisa) .... how manny problems is ae having???? first the sc10 chassis snaping,then sc10 trans problems,now this... the worst part is i have an old t4 team truck so i recommended the t4.1 ... anyone else having trouble with ae???

[giggles]

ya thats not the first time iv heard of rtr problems first thing when you get one is to go over everything befor you run them. i bought a used but new never run slash of a guy for 80 bucks and took the thing went over all the critcal stuff like gear mesh trans ese. my wife bought me mini dt and i did the same to it. from what iv read is the t4 is fairly tough truck altough iv also read that the t3s that i have have been said to be tougher iv always had kits from the early 90's up until recently. i still like building my own

[LowClassCC]

i recently picked up a new ftb4. i think i spent more time cleaning up the edges of the parts on this kit more than every other car i have built/rebuilt. quality control is not what it was back in 2004 when i bought my first ftb4 kit. back then i hardly even needed the xacto knife.

[ROH73]

As far as I know, all the AE products are manufactured and assembled in China now and some quality is not what it used to be. I have an original US version B4 and a Mexico assembled RTR T4 and the quality seems so much better than the latest B4s and T4s I've seen in the hobby shops.

[SteveK]

I think they build them in Taiwan.

I've been forced to buy a few RTR trucks over the years, just because they weren't available in kit form, and except for the Tamiya Pajero I basically stripped them all down and rebuilt them myseld. Mostly because I wanted to see how they worked, but also to just make sure nothing was amiss from the assembly process. Nothing stood out, but the builders do so many, little things are bound to slip by. Plus they can get knocked around in shipping. It happens, but every company should include a simple and explicit checklist of what to look at before running the car.

RTR shouldn't mean these are toys like you get at Target, and the hobby companies would help themselves greatly by remembering to treat them as such. Maybe require the buyer to do some basic steps themselves, like install the radio gear, the motor, mount the (pre-built is fine) shocks, etc.

The quality of the parts is of more concern to me than the quality of the assembly. I just bought an SC10 kit, see the thread in the truck section, and had to shim the tranny case stop binding and grind the heck out of the rear arm mount to get everything to fit. I also easily split one of the servo link rod ends and one of the shock ends by threading them just a hair too deeply, because that plastic is so hard.

[tamiyadan]

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[SteveK]

I won't even bash the workers in the foreign factories; the product they make is only as good as the company will accept. The little $2 plastic toys in the bottom bin at Walmart are 'rough' because that's what the company distributing them would settle for. iPods are made in China and they are premium quality because that's what Apple wants (Make 300 million of something and even a minuscule percentage of them going bad is a lot). You move production to another country with cheaper labor because it saves money, but you don't necessarily have to do it at the expensive of quality.

Lousy tooling and lousy quality control would make a lousy part if it was being run by American workers too.

[rangerg]

SteveK is exactly right. I watched a documentary on manufacturing in China. China used to be known for high quality goods like plateware (in the US china came to mean high end plateware). Foreign companies wanted cheap goods and they pushed for cheap labor and cheap quality - and China accommodated. Today, each individual company plays a major role in what quality they instill, promote, and want.

[longboardnj]

lots of good points here... i like that the b2, b3, t3 were pointed out .... this bought up another thing i didnt understand.... i know b2, b3, t3 can be fun rcs... i was never a big fan .. the 1 major thing that made me dislike them was i cant stand that the chassis is a part of the rear bulkhead and shock tower mount... then the t4 came out i thought it was a great truck and i had to have one... it was a good truck,so good i bought an old b4 from a friend when i had the chance.... so the b4 and t4 were good ,but ever since the sc10 came out i hear about alot of problems... i wonder what happened????

[SteveK]

Assuming nothing about the production of the parts changed, the SC10 might just be too big and heavy for the parts it shares with the T4. The SC10 has a longer wheelbase, which will put more leverage on the rest of the components, and there is also now the stress of all those bumpers tied into the chassis and bulkheads. Everything they have added means more weight on the parts too.

Plus who knows that the guys are doing with their trucks, especially given how people want to drive a truck like the SC10 after seeing the Slash. You can't imagine the kinds of things people will do to their cars, then complain about them getting broken easily. I worked in a hobby shop for a short time, and a kid kept damaging his truck, and RC10T or something, I forget, this was like 17 years ago now. His mom was complaining about how easily it was broken, and eventually we discovered that it was the repeated jumps off a 10' deck causing most of the problems. I don't think they were convinced.

[pastimesteve]

I'm just wondering -- because I'm building one now -- what broke on the B2 all the time? I've heard the opposite, that it was one of the most durable and well made of Associated's buggies?

Thanks,
Steve

[tamiyadan]

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[SteveK]

The B2 was replaced with the B3 pretty quickly. At the time it was supposed to be based on performance, but maybe it was duability too. It was basically the same car, with a few tweaks to the geometry. The suspension arms, rear hub carriers, and front street knuckles and caster blocks were new. There was a conversion kit, which included all the new suspension parts and a new chassis. I don't know what was different about the chassis though.

[jwscab]

yeah, unless they changed the composite formula from one to the next, the b2/b3 utilized the same stuff you are mentioning that broke. the b3 arms were longer, and then the outer suspension parts changed.

they also changed some 4-40 hardware on the chassis side to 5-40, so I suppose that was improved.

[pastimesteve]

Thanks guys. Interesting information on the B2. I knew it shared many of the same parts with the B3. Like someone else pointed out, I always assumed the B3 came out so quickly after the B2 because of performance, but I guess my assumption was wrong in that durability issues were at play as well. Anyway, so does this mean the original gold/black pan-based chassis buggies are still the most durable and bash worthy?

Steve