Originally Posted by
dr_hfuhuhurr
First people don't want to build a kit so we get RTR's. Now people don't want to buy spares. What's next then?
Next will be RTRs that comes with its own driver so you can just sit back with your bag of Doritos and watch it drive around the track...
Seriously though, I think spare parts would be great but to what point and which parts would they include? I sometimes would stock on some commonly broken parts like the front A-arms for example, but many times I break stuff that I didn't stock up on.
As an example, on my BJ4WE, I've never stocked up on the rear shock towers since the wing mounts (with the wing) usually protected it.
On my B44, the wing mount gave, which made it swing out to one side, thich then exposed the opposite part of the rear shock tower, and bam, the rear shock tower broke.
I always have plenty of front arms (I've been breaking them less frequently), but this past Saturday, one of my rear drive shaft kept popping out, I finally figured out that it was because I cracked the rear arm on that side which made the drive shaft pop out...
Needless to say, rear Wing Mounts, rear shock tower, and rear arms were not something that I regular stock in my pit box...
But things like an extra diff balls, diff rings, would be a nice touch. How about an extra set of rims? That would be cool too, except that I usually never buy the kitted white colored rims and opt for the fluorescent yellow kind, or even better yet, the after market stuff like JConcept's Rulux wheels.
I'm kinda glad that many of kits don't include extras, since that would most likely jack up the cost of the kits. You gotta remember that kits aren't solely based off of what the parts cost them, the costs are marked up because of the "handling" fees of the middleman and distributors (hobby shops gotta make money or they close)...
I don't think it costs the "chinese children" in the factories to throw in extra parts, but by the time it funnels down to the end user, we could be paying five to ten times the extra cost (the price you would pay had you bought it separately). Except this would be a forced buy and not a voluntary buy.
Also, what guarantee do you have that you won't buy any more spare parts after you break your first set of spares?
Related to this topic, I do like the idea of how some of the smaller houses out there offer racing packs, such as the ones from TTech and RC Product, that offers a full complement of spares since their parts are hard to come by...
For stuff like AE, Losi, Traxxas, Tamiya, Kyosho, and etc., I rather buy them piece wise, buy them as I break them!!!