Has this happened to your KM?

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Lan-Ed-Tul said:
imho, no matter what brand you get, each has failure rates, and parts that arent 100% that will slip through. its a fact, and thats one thing that isnt goin away any time soon i don't believe. i spent alot on upgrades on mine too, spent 1500 through DDM i know of and more through ebay off tulare.

various reputeble vendors reccommended off here and a couple other forums as well, not that the stock parts had failed, they hadn't,i didnt do like most do and when part fails upgrade, i upgraded before parts failed, so if i have to,i can reuse old parts in a pinch if upgrades fail on me. still got a full set of rpm arms i haven't put on yet, cuz stockers are still good.

its inevitable, that once in awhile someone will get a lemon, like LR did with his, or someone that got a KM, or MG or whatever one they get, itd gonna happen, out of the thousands of bajas sold, a few will be lemons, only thing we can hope for, is we arent the unlucky ones that get the lemon.
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yeah lan but here is the thing, those of us who get a lemon not only have to deal with the lemon itself but those that call us liars, and say it is all our fault, and make stupid comments and vids when they have NO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE with our issue (speaking of course about those of us who bought a genuie hpi). anyways, after i made my purchase an started seeing teh lemon freshness of it i was unable to get any responses to help posts and when i did get someone responding it was only to tell me to upgrade it to xx part. in the end i can offer the following advice, "no matterwhat you choose be it hpi, km, or rovan go into it expecting a lemon at least tehn you will not feel ripped off like i did which had high expectations based of individual comments" now looking back i see alot of the people i listened to had aftermarket parts on their bajas and werent running stock out of the box.
 
thats pretty much the same as i was getting at just said a diff way, stating it in a manner that hopefully wood not be misconstrued by the hpi fanatics.
basically tryin to keep it civil
 
pablo said:
think your wrong there bud , km are far from poor quality
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I don't mean to bash king motor
My experience with buying anything made from China has not gone well, includeing the rollsroyce of km's rtr 3.0 30.5cc km full alum

Only quality it had was in looks and price... cnc parts too many machineing issues....Only after i rebuilt it from bottom up and bought some new parts it was Excellent ;) But one would think paying good money for a so called quality item you would be able to use it with out rebuilding from out of the box

Troy
 
its good money yah, but also keep in mind its a few hundred less than stock hpi, that you would then go pay for upgrades, so payin a lil less up front, then using the money saved against a hpi buy, will get you quite a bit of upgrades right off bat that HPI will not and does not have stock. just something to keep in mind is all
 
Yes mate thats a good way to look out it but does'nt matter hpi or km you should be able to drive em straight out of the box with out spending any $$$$ on upgrades which does'nt seem to be the case

Troy
 
OuttaLuck said:
I don't mean to bash king motor
My experience with buying anything made from China has not gone well, includeing the rollsroyce of km's rtr 3.0 30.5cc km full alum

Only quality it had was in looks and price... cnc parts too many machineing issues....Only after i rebuilt it from bottom up and bought some new parts it was Excellent ;) But one would think paying good money for a so called quality item you would be able to use it with out rebuilding from out of the box

Troy
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yeah but when you look more into it you will find alot of stuff that is purchased is made in china anyway, as an axample i give you the walbro carbs. the walbro carbs that come on zen and cy engines are all made in china so i don't think it is the products made in china at all but more to the point the specs set forth by the individual companies that determine the quality of said parts.

lets give this examplefor the carbs on km, rovan, and hpi.

hpi specs a wt-668 carb as walbro makes it, while km and rovan spec the same carb (just an example since i don't know what km or rovan uses) and to get it a little cheaper they get one that doesn't have wt-668 stamped into the body of it, and/or they may have contacted walbro to build one with their particular specs for a certain reason. this doesn't necessarily mean it is inferior to the ones used on hpi at all it just means that there might be something that makes it easier for the total cost in the end of the overall product to be cheaper, and when you factor in the the total savings of the total parts count it would add up to end up cheaper in the end.

another thing that you pay for with hpi is the brand name which IMHO they really rape you on yet this is no different than anything else from any other company that has a "brand" name from laundry soap to home electronics ;)
 
OuttaLuck said:
Yes mate thats a good way to look out it but does'nt matter hpi or km you should be able to drive em straight out of the box with out spending any $$$$ on upgrades which does'nt seem to be the case

Troy
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this is what ticked me off in my case, after engine break in i ran into issue after issue with my hpi and only after replacing (not including the 7 parts hpi replaced under warranty) an estimated 50% of my baja it is finally of a quality i expected it to have out of the box. after the first few parts were replaced under warranty hpi should have accepted my offer to send it in to them for eval but they declined (they didnt care because they already had made money i guess), they also continued to acknowledge that it was possible for even 1 to have slipped through their QC which is highly unlikely and improbable and not only do i know that it is not possible for a 0% failure rate the local hobbyshop also agrees that hpi does NOT check 100% of the bajas off the line and it IS possible i got a bad one. the only reason you don't see to many people reporting a failure openly on a forum like i do is because most go ahead and replace a part with an aftermarket one when it fails or start hopping it up immidiately and never run into a failure because the part was replaced already.

my main reason for not wanting to purchase hpi again in the future was based more on hpi's lack to acknowledge the fact that i might have in fact got a bad one and instead (i think) expect me to keep buying hpi parts every time something breaks (which is NOT going to happen, any parts i have to replace will be with an aftermarket part unless there is nothing but an hpi part to replace it with).


peopel like to say i am bashing hpi or have a "hidden agenda" well if reporting personal experiences with a 7 month old baja that has seen a total (including engine break-in) of 1 gallon of fuel bashing i guess i would be guilty, if trying to get hpi to even acknowledge the fact that even they have a small percentage of failures is a hidden agenda then again i would be guilty but if you are simply wanting the "high quality" you expected based on reviews and comments from actual owners out of a box stock baja then i am not guilty yet if you notcie when you state you have xx problem and would like help on most forums you get (if anyone responds) "by xx aftermarket part and that will fix your problem" well i don't think anyone should be required to buy anything aftermarket to fix something that fails within the first gallon of fuel especially if the total time of ownership is under a year but i guess that is just me.
 
lordraptor1 said:
yeah but when you look more into it you will find alot of stuff that is purchased is made in china anyway, as an axample i give you the walbro carbs. the walbro carbs that come on zen and cy engines are all made in china so i don't think it is the products made in china at all but more to the point the specs set forth by the individual companies that determine the quality of said parts.

lets give this examplefor the carbs on km, rovan, and hpi.

hpi specs a wt-668 carb as walbro makes it, while km and rovan spec the same carb (just an example since i don't know what km or rovan uses) and to get it a little cheaper they get one that doesn't have wt-668 stamped into the body of it, and/or they may have contacted walbro to build one with their particular specs for a certain reason. this doesn't necessarily mean it is inferior to the ones used on hpi at all it just means that there might be something that makes it easier for the total cost in the end of the overall product to be cheaper, and when you factor in the the total savings of the total parts count it would add up to end up cheaper in the end.

another thing that you pay for with hpi is the brand name which IMHO they really rape you on yet this is no different than anything else from any other company that has a "brand" name from laundry soap to home electronics ;)
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sorry bro your wrong walbro are made in japan as its stamped on the carb body hpi is also japanese based company you must of bought a chinese walbro knock off

Troy
 
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OuttaLuck said:
sorry bro your wrong walbro are made in japan as its stamped on the carb body hpi is also japanese based company you must of bought a chinese walbro knock off

Troy
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sorry to correct you but hpi is an AMERICAN company and has been since it was started in 1986 ;), hpi stands for hobby products international and was started in california in 1986 (The company, originally an export firm, was founded in 1986 by Tatsuro Watanabe and a partner, each with a total investment of US$100 each. Their original office in Costa Mesa, California measured only 300 square feet (28 m2). A line of electric R/C motors called the Uno series were among the first products offered by HPI. Buoyed by the success of the Uno, HPI opened a small office in Japan that same year.) or link to wiki page here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hpi_racing

then for walbro i give you this taken from walbros own website (Walbro Engine Management is the world's largest manufacturer of carburetors and a major manufacturer of ignition systems, fuel injection and air/fuel management components, and fuel storage and delivery components for engines targeted at outdoor power equipment, marine, recreational and two-wheel applications. Walbro Engine Management has facilities in the United States, Mexico, Italy, Japan, Thailand and China. ) they have a planty in china and made in china was stamped on not only the carb that came on the cy engine with my 5bss but also on the wt-668 i bought from DDM.
 
OuttaLuck said:
I apologise i stand corrected

http://www.hpiracing.com/history/

Troy
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no worries bud and i didnt mean to come off rude to you at all man. you would just be amazed at how many people think hpi is a japanese company, as far as walbro goes they have plants all over and since the carb that came on my 5b's cy engine had china stamped on it and also the one i bought from DDM to replace it due to the welsch plug falling out also having china stamped in it i just assume that most if not all of the carbs used for large scale rc comes from china while those on chainsaws and such come from the other plants ;)
 
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