Out of the box part quality from different manufacturers
 

I recently bought a B5M on travels as it was £20 cheaper (hardly a saving) in the US.
I bought a ZX6 in Japan where it was half a price of UK in most hobby shops in Japan (not joking)

I am just interested on different peoples experience on part quality and whats included in kit

For example - ZX6 was outstanding quality in my opinion vs a B5M where there was a ballstud with no thread and the fitment of the plastic parts was nowhere near a kyosho. Surprisingly I found the kyosho instructions better then Associated. Everyone is biased and on the plus side associated included some shock oil which Kyosho does not, and also included loads of pistons and different various spring cups

For example I assume a schumacher kit is pretty good and XRAY when i bought touring cars was always top notch.

Any different views out there. For example I was disappointed that associated did not include any grub screws to reduce the slop on front and rear hubs - they cost hardly nothing.Where as kyosho included a pinion and sway bars. I know there are differences in prices but was more interested in what people thought.

Ups and downs for different kits

Cheers

what you have found is quite well known sadly, AE's quality noticeably declined when manufacture moved to china back in the days of the B4. The Kyosho kits are in my opinion the very best quality they may cost you a few quid but the wear rate is low, to the point that you can easily run one for a season possibly only replacing the odd ball cup (wear rate not breakages). In 8th if you could afford it the MP9 was a wise buy as in the long run it was far cheeper to run than a TLR that was half the price.The other thing I always love about kyosho is if you buy a kit they don't bring out loads of costly upgrades and then another kit 6 months later:thumbsup: Not sure on xray as never owned one

It's generally quite simple in rc you do in most cases get what you pay for in quality

I do think its getting harder for manufacturers, at this time we have possibly the biggest choice we have ever had for competition kits must make the market place harder for those insisting on quality and holding a higher price, must be so tempting to cut costs and go for sales.

I also noticed it with Yokomo vs Losi. I had a BMax and the tollerances were non-existant. Everything went together snug. Losi was better then the associated in my opinion. I just think it may be a Japenese thing, everything they done is amazing. I even bough snap poly bags in a 100 yen shop there on holiday and they surpase anything i have ever bought on ebay.

You are right about the quality and sales thing, the bottom line is important. I just am frustrated that associated did not include 6 grub screws for the slop on the hub carriers, but include a big bottle of shock oil (that even Kyosho do not include).

I think i will always stick to Japense now.

I've only had 3 brands since I came back into it, but I suppose I've been lucky in that the only one with truly dire quality was the car I bought first to try it out (again). And was bought cheaply.

The others have had good (TD) and excellent (X-ray) quality, and except for a couple of little design niggles have been excellent.

The first car, the b4.1, was utterly shocking. Some of the parts looked like test pieces from the first run of a new tool, porosity, stepped seams, incomplete runners/risers , really didn't inspire confidence. Unfortunately, many of the features/assemblies (and probably part numbers!) were recognisable from when I left the hobby ~25 years ago!

The reliability was so bad I sold it as soon as I could.
Snapping the front off a brand new chassis (60 seconds run time, give or take!) when landing an almost flat 15cm jump, was the final straw.

I had a feeling about Team Durango being a good build although never got my hands on one. I guess its stereotyping Germany with quality, but most stereotyping are generally correct. I am starting to wonder not getting the latest kits but realising that you should just pay more and suffer it. I looked at a secondhand yoko BMAX2 and the standard car looked amazing without any hops. Does not say much about quality but I just imagine Yoko are generally good.

Does anyone have any experience of Team C. Where are they manufactured (assume China) but wonder if they were better then associated

I think thats a good point though that if parts are from the previous model thats generally fine, its just if the parts are outdated and were good 15 years ago, things moved on. I guess its expensive to mold new parts

Having originally raced in the 1980s, its probably worth noting that the quality of all the major brands today is exemplary compared to what used to pass for acceptable.

It is for this reason that I worry about racing vintage kits - they were fragile back in the day so the intervening 25 years won't have helped...

That said, the original RC10 was a cut above the rest - by a long way. Except for the rod ends which were well made, but too small…

My past few kits I have assembled new:
Durango DEX210- In my opinion pretty poor overall, cheap, soft plastics on trees like a model car.

Schumacher K1 Aero- Great quality overall.

VBC Firebolt DM- OK, but some of the plastics are cheap feeling and the instructions could have been a bit better, included lots of extra screws, fluids, etc. Lot of Carbon fiber/anodized aluminium bling

Yokomo BMAX2 V3- Amazing tolerances, high quality plastics, easy build, not very "flashy"

If only Carling made KITS .... Kyosho are quality ....

i came back with an associated 44.2 and thought the quality was good, used it for a race or two and already had massive play on the front wheels/wishbones.

after a year i swapped it for a schumacher k1 aero and building that kit made me realise how poor the associated was. the schumacher as miles ahead in quality.

wouldnt touch associated again now... - have heard quite a few say it was down to them moving production to china though...

not used kyosho for 1/10th but have an mp5 and mp6 1/8th and they were very good quality - not tried running them for over 10 years though so not sure how they have held up :)

Best quality kit I have built is the recent Tekno 410.3 Shortcourse truck, by far the best build I have ever had. Have not tried Kyosho or Yok yet but tried pretty much all the others. I like AE cars but agree the plastics quality is not great and they do slop about a bit.

Funny that, i'd prefer to have the parts on trees rather than loose, keeps them together. And neither of the two 210s i've had have had soft plastics. If anything, some of it was a bit on the brittle side!

Carisma 4xs 1/10th 4wd buggy
 

A new 4wd buggy is due to be released at the end of the month from a company called "Carisma" and Its called the 4xs

Carisma are big in the micro nationals with their GTB and have dominated for the last few years.

This new 1/10th buggy has been in development for a couple of years and was designed specifically for competition.
UK racers Craig Harris and Phil Sleigh have been working with Carisma to get this buggy ready for worldwide racing and iron out any issues and improvements, prior to its release.

As far as quality goes, this is top level, starting with extra thick carbon fibre towers and mirror finish chassis.
The drive train uses captured cvd's and is very much like the Huddy sprung steel and coloured the same. The geared diffs are quite substantial as are the crown and pinion gears, which are mounted on large bearings and should last a very long time.

The chassis can be built to accommodate both saddles and shorties and comes with both a multi-plate slipper assembly and a geared centre diff, which can be swapped by just undoing the top plate.
You also get a set of front and rear roll bars and hexed wheels with cnc hexes.

The rear wing is the toughest I've come across to date and the whole chassis feels solid and the well bolted together.

The chassis components are all well moulded and the wishbones come with carbon fibre inserts to tune the flexibility.

The adjustable front and rear hinge pin braces,shocks and spring cups are all cnc, as is the motor mount, which is designed to make pinion mesh the easiest yet.

The whole chassis can be tuned massively to track conditions, which Craig Harris did to good effect, winning the Mendip round of the OOPLE invitational.

I'll be putting my Losi 22/4 on the shelf and running one of these for the foreseeable future.
More details available here

www.tracksidespares.co.uk

And here it is, first Review i have seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knYFKB9irtY

More info and tech tips on Tracksidespares facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/4177...89112/?fref=ts
and Carisma's page https://www.facebook.com/carisma.com.hk

Atsushi hara will be racing one at an event in Hong Kong

The guy in the video ain't wrong about those clips in the diffs. They're hideous!

Your quite right there. Certainly not the easiest to fit but at least they fit nice and snug unlike some of the other manufacturers attempts. The gears look well made so shouldnt have to go through it again

For quality, the YZ-2 was by far the best kit I ever built. Nothing went wrong, everything was so precise. Amazing job by yokomo.