SmartTech RC Monster Trucks

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I'll probably get alot of nasty emails about this one, so I'll go ahead and say "I'm sorry all you TMaxx and high dollar RC truck owners and hobby stores". I'm writing this from my personal experience...I DO NOT sell these trucks or am I sponsored in any way by Smartech....just my experience with this truck.
I picked this up off of okay about 3 years ago. I did a little research and after seeing the high prices of the Tmaxx trucks and other BIG name trucks, a co-worker and I decided to take a chance with these Smartech trucks. We paid $199.00 for each truck and that included shipping! We figured if price reflected quality, we might see 3 or 4 hours of run time with these. The trucks arrived in about 7 days and I couldn't wait to get them un-boxed and running. When we opened them, we felt like kids on Christmas morning....I couldn't believe how cool they looked. We installed the tire/rim assemblies with the supplied multi-wrench, installed batteries that were included and poured a little fuel in each one. After 10-15 minutes of decal placement and removal and the 15 minutes it took me to get my antenna wire through the straw (aarrgh!) we figured the glow igniter had charged long enough to at least get 'em going. After priming and about 10 pulls on the rope we had ignition! I couldn't wait to get mine going as well. We totally ignored the break-in period and headed to the street. He was the first to flip his over and we were scared to even see the damage. NOTHING BUT A SMALL SCRATCH! We run them about 5 minutes and shut them down for the night. We messed with them some more over the next few days AND read the owner's manual and started doing some tuning. We ran alot of tanks through them and we both were very pleased with the performance. We race them at a local BMX track here in Louisville and they are still holding up quite well, considering the jumps, flips and wrecks they have been through. I did have an issue with the radio in mine....after running it about 10 minutes, the throttle would stick wide open! If you turned the transmitter off and back on you could regain control. Otherwise, you watched it run around like crazy until a crash flipped it over. That's the biggest problem we have had and I fixed mine for $28 with a nice Futaba transmitter, receiver 2 servo package on okay. The geponents were used, but in new condition. Parts are easily found on okay...I have used Excel Hobby for most of my parts, but the local hobby store has quite a few Tmaxx parts that interchange with this truck quite nicely. (okay won't allow me to post their websitehere,but it has three W's at the front, excelhobby in the middle and a .ge at the end) Their parts are very inexpensive and they are great to work with. ( example: 8 piece A-arm set for $19.98, 8 piece shock set for $25!) If you do decide to pick up one of these trucks, here are some things to watch out for:


Purchase a used xmitter/receiver servo set from okay and replace the Smartech set.