ASK Cub Reporter- Readers Write, I Make Up Bad Responses, Version 01.20.2011

Welcome to yet another trip visiting the tremendous depths of our email boxes….

I found your site just goofing around online and have really enjoyed it! I bought a Traxxas Slash 2.4 Ghz and upgraded it with RPM parts based on your reviews and info. It has withstood the abuse I put it through as well as being piloted on concrete by several children too young to read.The thing seemed indestructible until last weekend. It jumped a curb into some wet grass near the end of my 4 year old neighbor’s bashing session. I towel dried what I could access without taking anything apart and set it out to dry the rest of the way. Now I am having considerable range issues. The receiver loses connection about 5 feet away. I replaced the batteries in the transmitter three times and I’ve since taken the receiver box completely apart and inspected all the wires and connections. There are no signs that water ever got into the receiver box and the wires all look fine to me. There is no exposed wire and no crimping. The truck seems to operate normally other than the lack of range. Did some damp grass bring down the toughest piece of self-propelled plastic I have ever seen? I can’t think of anything else that happened to the truck outside the normal abuse. Can you use your interweb wisdom to solve my Slash sadness?

I’ve contacted Traxxas and they responded promptly and I think I will end up sending it to them for service. The guy at the hobby shop/track I shop at was less than helpful. He told me to change the crystals and walked away. I went into the shop with the intent to buy whatever they told me I needed. I guess he didn’t want to sell me said crystals.
Thanks, Tommy K.

Cubby– Yo thanks for the letter Tommy.
Ya know……….. I’m a big (HUGE) advocate of local hobby shops, but typically- when they are good, they are really good, and when they are bad, they are simply horrible.

First off, you should have offered the hobby shop employee two BILLION dollars to switch out the “crystals” in your 2.4 ghz Traxxas radio. 🙂

A good hobby shop could have resolved your problem within ten minutes of you being inside their freshly detailed establishment. First they would have had a charged stick pack sitting around and popped it in your truck. It’s amazing how even the best of us think we have a fully charged pack installed when we’ve actually put in a dead one. But, I’m betting you probably had that base already covered, so that would not have fixed your problem. The next thing the LHS guy would have done would have been to grab a Traxxas 2.4 transmitter and link it up to your truck. Yes, a good hobby shop would have done this for you, or any customer for that matter. This is super quick and easy to do, and will effectively narrow down the problem to either the transmitter or the truck. I’m also gonna guess linking up a new transmitter would not have helped, so the LHS guy would then have popped in a new Traxxas receiver and linked it to your stock transmitter. I’m guessing that would have completely fixed your range issue. You then would have cut the check for a new receiver and walked out with a smile on your face (and the hobby shop would have made some money!).

Ok, so your LHS sucks… is anything else you can try to resolve your range issue? Well first I’d try to find another local hobbyist that is running Traxxis 2.4 ghz gear and ask if he could help you figure out your range issue. If you don’t know anyone locally that could help you, then I’d try these two things…

1. Reset/re-link the receiver to your transmitter. The instructions on how to do this are on a paper that is located in the battery tray of your transmitter.
2. You’ve already had your receiver apart, so take it apart again. Try spraying it down with electric motor cleaner, let it dry, then give it a try.

If you have to send your truck into service at Traxxas they are known for being fair and for excellent customer service, so you should be dialed.

Lastly, be sure and let us know what ended up being the problem…. peace and love, peace and love…..

Hey i saw last week that my neighbor darren talked about his cars and a new car he wanted. I noticed that he has a bunch of cars though i only have to redcat racing nitros. Both dont run. They werent basher approved to my standards which i guarantee that my standards are much higher than most companies probably even yours. The only thing is if parts are discontinued and/or broken im out for a while as i am only in high school and a lot of money goes towards my large rc planes. Darren told me yall were searching for bashers. Well i tell you what yalls basher approval sticker is great i have seen yall throw the evader off from 20 feet high, down stairs, and everything, but getting air with Darrens SC-10 and almost hitting the fence 30 feet away and his trailer is epic and i must say that is just the least of what i do. If yall want a serious serious basher person that also can write some great review (which i do for rc planes) yall need to stop right here.
-Matt P

Cubby– I find it amazing that you have two Redcats, and neither of them actually run. I mean, isn’t Redcat known for their prolific reliability? All joking aside, I’ve seen quite a few Redcats put down on the track, but I’ve yet to see one in 100% fully functional operation afterward.

The BSRC crew spoke at length with the Redcat guys at the iHobby expo, they are quite affable and seem to be good guys, and perhaps more importantly, they know reliability is an issue for them right now. They say they are working on it, hummmmmm, we’ve heard that before….

Matt, you definitely seem like the BSRC basher type as you seem to like to huck your gear and pick up the parts later. But, and there is always a but, we need people who bash AND can write in English (not saying I’m any good at it, I butcher our language, we just need people that don’t butcher it as bad as I do). Submit a copy of one of your plane reviews and we’ll go from there…
And and tell your homie “Darren” I said “halló”.

Hey there

I couldn’t agree with you more when it comes to the RC snobs that take the hobby WAY to seriously. Ultimately it’s still a hobby; that’s why the places you buy parts from are called HOBBY SHOPS!!!

Traxxas has a great marketing dept. and it shows. They could show some of the car manufactures how it’s done. More noobs like me may be coming into the hobby but it will always be the noobs that ultimately pay for the research and development while allowing these companies the opportunity to cater to the ‘elite.’ Andy Weymeyer (sp?) from JBL said it very succinctly that without the common car audio guys their top end, low volume products wouldn’t exist. RC is no different. I’m a car guy at heart; always have been and RC cars allow me to express my love of cars with out having to sink sh!t tons of money into a race car or even my daily driver. It’s a great hobby and my kids enjoy it too. I hope they can continue to enjoy it without being torn down by hobby snobs.
Cheers Jon

Cubby– About the “hobby snobs” Cub Report, we received a lot of email about that one, most of it was pretty positive. I just hope people realize this hobby is 100% about fun, not about how tall your stack of T-35’s is, how much you can curse on the drivers stand, how many noobs you can run off, etc….

Traxxas is different from virtually every other “big name” manufacture in the fact that they don’t have a “race team” and…. while other manufactures could care less about the Average Joe’s in our hobby, Traxxas caters directly to them. For too many years the bulk of the people in our hobby had to buy gear designed strictly for racing. What these bulk hobbyists were really looking for was something waterproof, durable, and looked good. So not only has the mighty TRX provided a very desirable product for the masses, they’ve also made the ballsy move of cut’n ginormous checks to market theirs wares to the mainstream. Every empire eventually fails, but right now every other manufacture is basically a gnat to Traxxas, they are that far ahead, and for good reason.

You can read all over the net boards “hobby snobs” talking about how crappy Traxxas product is, and how it’s nowhere close to as good as “race orientated” product. It seems those “hobby snobs” haven’t driven any Traxxas product in the last 5 years, as now days it’s every bit as reliable and well designed as anything on the market, bar none. No, Traxxas product is not designed for “racing”, it’s designed to kick a$$ and bounce back for more.

Also….. it’s probably lucky for the “hobby snobs” that Traxxas has not set their sights on the racing crowd, because if they did, it’s pretty obvious with their resources they’d pwn that market as well, and pwn it in short order. I’d be surprised to see them (Traxxas) ever go after the racing crowd because it’s just such a small slice of the market. That’s one thing most “hobby snobs” don’t even realize. Sure the “hobby snobs” local track had 80 entries last weekend (that’s about 30-40 actual people, most race 2 or more classes), but they don’t realize there are hundred of “bashers/hobbyists” in their area running in the back lots and culdesacs every single day. Those hundreds of “bashers/hobbyists” are looking for what Traxxas has to offer, product designed from the ground up for them and their needs, not something from AE that gets around a bullsh!t bluegroove track real fast.

And with that I bring yet another quintessential ASK Cub Reporter to a close. Submit your comments, questions, answers, NIB HDMI cables, and anything else ya like to Cubby at BigSquidRC dot com!

YOUR Cub Reporter