Redcat Racing Volcano EPX

[Munchbox 100]

This sort of meets all my criteria for a new rc - Monster truck, 4x4, modern design, cheap and cheerful, highly moddable, plentiful repairs/upgrade parts.

Searches turn up a lot of folks saying "I'll take a Stampede (or other similar truck) over that crap any day" but little explanation as to why the Redcat is supposedly so inferior.

Does anyone have any experience with these trucks? Any thoughts on specific weak points in them?

[Darat76 265]

I haven't dealt with that truck directly, but I have dealt with a couple of it's sister brands being HSP and hobby wind.

those brands are cheap for a reason, all the plastics, and I mean all of the plastics, are weak, after seeing what you have put your lunch box through, I know your runs with it will be stopped by a breakage of some form, or the loss of a part.

Parts are plentiful, as are the alloy parts for them. The monster truck I had got fitted with a lot of alloy parts, it did help to reduce the amount of parts needed to replacing a dog bone or 2 every run, the uni's are of such bad designing and poor quality that the pivot pin grub screw won't hold the pin, which would then start to come out, which cut grooves in the axle hubs. The alloy upgrades themselves are very soft, and the leading edges on the lower arms will get a lot of nicks and dings in them when running over gravel, particularly the rear ones, and although the alloy parts don't break to easily, they do bend stupidly easy.

The only part I didn't replace in the MT I had was the gears and prop shaft, but I had it for about 6 months before swapping it with a mate for his nitro short course truck to get him out of nitro into electric, and then sold that with a nitro stadium truck to get out of nitro myself. He found the problem with the uni's, and also found that the shells tend to shatter instead of flex from just tipping over onto the roof on the back lawn, he was not happy when that happened to his brand new body on it's second run.

In short, if your planning to run it with a silver can, on a nimh, at no more than half speed, with no jumping, and running on grass or dirt only, then the truck should do ok. If your after 5-15 minutes of fun with laughs before having to order in and wait for new parts, then go with the brushless version on a lipo and have at it.

 

If you do go ahead with the purchase, just remember, it will never ever handle what a lunch box can handle, just like the lunch box will never ever handle like those MT's

[Munchbox 100]

Point well made and taken.

It was about the time I was mounting my rebuild gearbox on my Lunchbox that I realized I'm pretty tough on my cars. My dt03 has mystery crack in the front of the chassis after owning it for less than 3 months and the Lunchbox has a freshly rebuilt rear end because I blew out both rear shock mounts (both the mounts and where they attach to the gearbox). I've had it just shy of 6 months.

This is on NIMH for both cars too. I've had a 2400kv brushless in both cars but nothing faster than that. Gearing has always been tall however (19t dt03, 18t hornet pinion on Lunchbox).

I've considered other brands (ecx, Losi) but they don't seem as robust as my simpler Tamiyas. The DT03 takes a beating every time out getting run over by SCTs and trying to keep up with trucks 4-5 times it's price. Then there's the nigh on bomb proof Lunchbox... 

[Darat76 265]

If your hankering for something more, pick up a competition spec SCT, they come in 2wd and 4wd, so long as you stay in the 1/10th scale it will survive even more than the lunchbox can.

the 4wd sct's are mostly based on 1/8th scale buggy chassis's, so they are quite heavy, and generally tend to bounce off stuff rather than break parts.

 

I'm feeling like a broken record the following statement, get down to your nearest local club track on a club meet day, there you can pick some racers brains to find out what websites they frequent regarding racing, from there you should be able to find people that are upgrading to a new kit and selling off their old one. it does pay to look over anything you find, as there are some racers that don't look after their gear, but most will put new fluids in the shocks and diffs, and replace worn or broken parts before selling.

A mate of mine has 2 nephews, he sold his team associated 2wd RTR SCT to them almost a year ago, the boys have been having a blast with it, so far they have worn out 1 pair of front tyres, and 2 pairs of rear tyres, no other parts have been needed. that said it's on my bench needing the plugs re-soldered on both the battery and esc, as both boys don't listen and pull on the wires instead of the plug.