Originally Posted by ghiro

I've finished to build my Cobra a couple of days ago. Nothing to do with the real Serpent kit i was used in the past. I've built a 950R, Impact 2wd and an Impulse Pro back in the '90's and those kits were way different. Don't get me wrong, this kit is beatifull, the quality of the metal parts is awesome but the pòastics sucks.
Here the problems i found out during the build
1) rear diff.l housing: the holes where the 25mm screws goes are conical, not straight. I found it out while wrenchin, the more i turn in the screwdriver, the more it became hard to get them in. This caused the screw to strip in place and got stuck inside the part a coupple of mm's before it's proper place, the screw is ruined and doesn't come out, the diff case doesn't close so i have to cut the whole thing to take out the diff.l. On a side note: when i've realized it was to hard for the screw to go inside i stopped, it was simply to late to screw it back for the size of the Allen screw.
This means i've to buy another rear diff. l housing and the 25mm screws

2) Shim's : how come i just got 0,2mm's shims when in the manual it's clearly stated that i've to use also 0,1mm's? I usually double check the shims with a vernier caliper and this is what i found out. Gotta buy shims too

3)Front bracket: put inside the bolt and started to wrench the screw from the bottom of the chassis i realized, after a coupple of turns, that the plastic where the bolt goes were chewed up so the bolt slips in place and do not allow me to close the screw since there's no way to hold the bolt while screwing. When i took out the bolt i've found out the problem was the bolt had some weird thread and locked the bolt after a turn and a half. Beside the stupid bolt, now i have to add to the list another front bracket.

The istruction booklet have a good print and designs but certain details needed more accuracy.

Now, sorry if my explanation isn't the best, it's not common for me to use technical terms, but i believe that this kind of troubles should not happen with a Serpent Kit, there's something wrong here. When i built the last one i wouldn't believe that such things could happen even in a cheap chinese kit.