The Everest is not the quality of an ax10 but at a1/3rd the price.......... Parts are available and cheap. Still nicer and better quality than the gearbest crawlers p401,p402and p601 etc.

Who cares? Are you having fun? Did the cars you already bought accomplish what you were looking to get out of them?

That is one of the problems with this hobby. A lot of people see everything that is not what they like as garbage or junk. Traxxas has brought more new people into this hobby than most other companies. The only company I can see being close to them in how many mew people they bring to the hobby is Team Associated with the invention of the RC10, and that was many many years ago. Any company that can manufacture and promote lower priced R/C vehicles that will get people into the hobby is better for all of us as hobbyists. You may have bought an R/C for one of the most naturally talented drivers to ever grace a drivers stand, but the price of top name models may have been keeping you from finding that out. That is where the brands like Traxxas, Redcat, ECX....... to name a few, really help the hobby grow, its just some of the "elitists" will never give that credit to them.

Aftermarket support is no reason to shy away from or choose a model, unless the goal is to build a model for racing. Bashing does not require many aftermarket tuning parts, some parts for reliability, some for bling, some for speed, but up until I started racing last year I never changed shock positions or camber link locations while bashing around parking lots and construction sites.

Buy what fits in your budget. Buy what makes you happy. You may find that some of who you are buying for does not enjoy R/C. You may find that one of them is a natural and then move that one on to higher quality kits and involve them in racing. But who would want to buy a $500 kit to find that out.



HAVE FUN. That is what this hobby is about. Bring the family, bring friends. Dont let anyone tell you that your way of entering this joyous hobby is wrong. It's YOUR way in, not theirs.

Yes redcat did indeed get 7 new people in the hobby. I don't see any other way I could have gotten into the hobby. I was hoping that people on this forum would back me up and I wanted people looking for information on redcats to actually see something good said about them. Thank you all for backing me up. I hope to see some of you in The years to come at some races. We may still be rocking Redcats!

Well said

Redcat, and companies like them, are a "double edge sword" for the hobby. Their price point tends to attract new people to the hobby, a good thing.

Their quality, and depending on the brand, parts availability can at times be a problem. Not many people research and educate themselves on what they're buying. Not realizing that these brands may not have the quality or parts support that the big names do. Leaving them with unrealistic expectations of what they bought. If they then have issues with a product, that in their mind they spent a ton of money on, they get frustrated with the hobby and quit. That's a bad thing.

You, Djackson, did some research. And even though you might not have found the user support for Redcat that you were hoping for. You at least educated yourself on what you were getting and set your expectations accordingly. The fact that Redcat, for you, has met or exceeded those expectations is a plus. The end goal is to have FUN! Your "fun" might not be the same as my "fun". But I'll help and support anyone who wants to be in the hobby.

What Racer said is spot on. Redcat is fine for your use case. Running it on a homemade track would be perfect. its really like a RTR vintage Tamiya to me.

A lot of people here have racing in mind so saying Redcat is good is like telling a competitive gamer, I'm a gamer cause I play angry birds.

Well said racer and quarter mile! I may not yet see a downfall in my redcats I do see a problem if I do get into racing them with aftermarket parts support. I ordered a blackout pro because my girlfriends son wanted blue and the only way to get blue on Amazon is to get the pro. That thing is waaaay fast! It may be a contender in some races! It has a 3800kv brushless and a 2s lipo from the box and it's ready for a 3s. I put the motor, esc, and steering servo in mine because her 11 year old would trash it instantly. It might do well on dirt I have no place to run it yet but on cement it rolls too easy. I have it lowered all the way and I'm playing with toe and camber to try and tame this beast. Has nobody seen these!? I want to start messing with it and I can't even seem to find a body. I completely destroyed my stock body the first time out with the brushless. Do I measure the width and length and go from there? When I was doing my research before buying I ran across a video showing the redcats are slightly different size than other 1/10. I also remember seeing somewhere "everybody has seen a volcano" and would assume there can be bodies bought for them other than the redcat ones. My blackout is the same length but not as wide. Anybody have any insight on bodies at least? I'd love to at least find a different body. Btw I've got a new motor ordered to put in his so it will still be new. I might give that one to my son and just leave the new motor out because he is more of a tinkerer.

Don't get carried away. Redcat is what it is. Good for entry level. Not so good for competition. Glad it's working out for you.

Hi Guys,

There are some good posts here, this is nice.

I have an XTE regular brushed and it's fun. I swore off RTR's many years ago, but this is different: it really actually, not-just-kinda, worked right; right out of the box. How cool is that?

The steering has some slop, but there's a guy on eBay that sells shim washers I didn't even know existed; mix with some cheapo offshore bearings for the posts and CA/teflon for the ball cups and...voila: more accurate steering. Even out of the box, though, it drove and tracked pretty well - I was surprised.

The tires balance easily and last quite awhile. It's noisy, but I haven't had any of the loose parts problems mentioned in some vendors' customer ratings areas. And, yeah, it's really waterproof! I haven't submerged it, but chugged through some pretty deep puddles and it keeps going.

The only thing I actually broke was a lower arm (buy more than a few extras when able) when I clipped a tire on a track wall corrugation. I also misjudged and ran it under the wheel of a moving trailer behind an SUV and all it did was bend the shock tower, pop a cap and squash a wheel - that's almost Traxxas tough. Well, the hood of the body needs some TLC, but...I massaged the wheel back into shape, refilled the shock and bought a new tower for $4.46 shipped - cool beans!

Motor temps on the street and gravel/weeds stay about 155-160F no matter the ambient temperature, but any grass higher than a groomed golf course shoots it up to 175 in about 30 seconds. It's a fan cooled 550, but I don't believe there's much air flow through the can-end inside the gear covers. For the yard, I'll probably go down at least one pinion tooth, maybe 2. These motors work real nice and barely break a sweat in 2WD trucks & buggies.

The radio is a very good budget system, too.

I think I want a different body mounting system for it, also, but haven't figured what would be easy & tough. I like reading these ideas about it.

One thing I did right off the bat was to carefully sand the hexes true, not axially, but to knock down some flash and warp; and to ream out the wheel holes very slightly. It was almost impossible for me to wrestle the wheels off when my joints flared up.

They ought to be in someone's Black Friday sale, like last year; so for $99, or so, shipped, why not? Also, Amazon has the RedCat/HSP/Himoto bodies on sale off'n'on through the year for like $10-15 each and I've gotten red, green & blue bodies, now.

One last thing until I can post some pics: the NiMh's that come with these are pretty good. Except for the old 3300's, rad shack & wally martoni packs never have seemed stout to me. These 3000's and the Racer's Edge 3300's are better batteries and are constructed accordingly, as mass packs go. Of course, making side-by-sides from them would be better, but I'm comfy just charging & running 'till they start to slow. They seem ok to sit in that state for a few days before using them again. If I ran them multiple times a day or put them in storage, I'd follow a more strict time-honored protocol, but they're fine as occasional use packs.

Bring on the stories,
Gene

I know what you mean gene! I really don't know what anybody could ask for especially for $129.99. Everything works and works well. I wish it was a bit wider but I read somewhere volcano wheels work well on them. You should see the pro in action. I'm having trouble getting the video of my first run with my pro uploaded but it's almost too fast! Especially with my lack of experience. I can't say enough good things about them. I may have caught redcat at the perfect time. They have a great truck. I can't wait until I get the last of Christmas done so I can get a 3s lipo for it. As soon as my video uploads I'll post the link but until then here's a video of the quickness of these. I can't post urls yet but if you search redcat blackout xte pro 3s street run you will see it.
This guy has a 3s in his but all stock except for the 3s and different wheels and the wheels are different because he didn't want to wear out the ones that come with it stock

Best post ever. FUN is the name of this game and it's too often forgot.

If you like Tyco, Nikko is better. If you like Nikko, hobby grade anything is better. If you like Exceed, Redcat is better. If you like Redcat, Traxxas is better. If you like Traxxas, Losi is better(I kind of disagree there...but the point is what I'm after). If you like Losi, Tekno is better. If you like Tekno, Mugen is better. If you like Mugen, XRay is better. And on and on the story goes. Sometimes it turns into a gigantic d/ck measuring contest.

The moral of the story; if you like something, you're happy and that's all that matters in regards to any hobbies!

Yup!

We just purchased a Blackout XBE buggy for our son for Christmas. He doesnt seem to have much interest in it, but we havent been able to use it yet. Somehow the receiver got thrown away in the after Christmas cleanup lol. Are your Redcats still doing well for you?

Mine are, but those top ears on the diff cases snap off if I catch a sign pole or brick corner. Luckily, they're cheap to replace, just a lot of wrenching.

Overall, I'm glad I got them. Unless you can snag a used AE or Losi RTR here on RCT, it's the way to get started in rc trucking.

One of them got the front run over by a car/trailer in the street on it's maiden voyage and I think that all that I've got to replace is the shock tower and a shock cap and a couple screws - how cool is that? (Ummm...not the accident, though!!)

I'm sending the nimh setup to my bro, 'cuz it's new and will be perfect in his on-road TC4 and putting a mild brushless in it's place. I feel it's worth that upgrade.

One of these days, I'll post up my slop-reducing for the steering.

The receivers are on there pretty tight...are you sure it got tossed? Maybe you are having a hard time identifying it under the black top holder? If you'll post a pic, I can ID things for you.

Gene

I got two inexpensive 1:24 Redcat Sumo RCs for my kids and they like them a lot. This was 1 or 2 years ago and so far no broken parts just one stripped gear (still driving like that). The only upgrade I did was to replace bushings with bearings. Kids being kids, drive those things into a wall, down from a steep hill (more of a tumbling down than driving) and the small cars just keep going. Recently one of them even drove it into a pile of water. Car stopped working but once I dried it out, it is back in operation. If I remember correctly, I paid something like $60 for each RTR car. They run on AAs and have 1+ hour of runtime on one set of batteries. This got both of my kids interested in RC cars. Older one is now considering upgrade to a bigger scale. So I have nothing bad to say about Redcat. It was a great entry into RC hobby without breaking the bank.