Revoslot Quality Issues

[HO RacePro]

Not so very long ago I was persuaded to invest in a Revoslot car. Folks in the IHSR club were running pickup races with them at the end of our racing events. I was told that, yes, the cars were expensive, but they were of such high quality that they could be raced out-of-the-box without the traditional race-prep parts upgrades and tuning.

So I bought one of their Toyota Supra models, and for a while it lived up to the hype. I had a lot of fun racing it in those informal runs. And I wasn't too put off by the recent failure of its sidewinder spur gear. Unusual, unexpected, but fixable. An isolated quality issue.

At the recent IHSR race I hosted on my new 1/32nd scale track there was a discussion as to whether we should make Revoslots a formal class for our events. During that discussion I heard several very disturbing reports of serious quality issues with the latest batches of Revoslot cars, including a protracted series of efforts by our arguably most skilled set-up wizard to make his newest Revoslot car functional, let alone competitive. There were other similar stories. Enough that the idea of making Revoslots a formal class didn't get much support.

I really like the idea of being able to buy a race-ready car, and willing to pay a premium to do it. And for a while Revoslot was delivering on that. But that seems to have changed.

I'd like to think that Revoslot has heard the complaints and will get on top of the issues. For now I'm not willing to invest in any more Revoslots until the quality reviews get much more positive.

Ed Bianchi

[SouthShoreRacing]

What problems are people seeing? We've been running a Revo series with no problem for the past 6 months. We have one guy that has bought a significant number of Revo cars, as well as people who have bought cars within the last month with no major problems. The only things we have seen is the motor pedestal screws being loose and axles and gears that need some minor adjustment.

[MrFlippant]

Yeah, that's not very fair. Just saying "lots of people had lots of problems" is tantamount to trolling.

Please list the other issues so that they can be appropriately addressed.

[Scaleracing]

As the Importer for RevoSlot and BRM I am stunned by this statement Ed.
I work very hard to check RevoSlot cars we Import before Distribution into sales channels here in the USA.
I am not aware of any serious problems at all.

As to Race Ready, while RevoSlot come close I would never suggest they are built to be so.

Here we would look at interior clearance which can hurt performance as can limit body float. Also we aggressively recommend you align axle uprights and loctite them in place with blue loctite. Carefully mounting and truing both Front and Rear Tires is also important as well as setting gear mesh.

We have not see gear failure such as you documented. Having raced RevoSlot every weekend since they were released onto the market ( except during Covid shut down) we have not see failures in gears here at all. I have replaced 1 gear for poorly formed teeth, and will work with anyone who has a problem. All they need to do is reach out to me.

Not only are the gears used on RevoSlot, but also on the much heavier BRM Mini cars, and no failures there either.

Of course anything mechanical can fail. But this has not been reported to ScaleRacing to date.

I am always available to help anyone with problems with any product, especially ones I am the Importer for, but anything Slot Car related.

So shocked that you report this, please have anyone with RevoSlot problems contact me directly.

I will service, repair or replace any defective items.

I support RevoSlot 100% and am proud to be their Official Representative in North America.

1-253-255-1807

[HO RacePro]

You can read up on our Revoslot quality issues as reported on the IHSR General Discussion Forum. Title is "Revoslot: Beware (rant)".

Sorry, I can't give you a link. Links aren't allowed here.

I bring this forward in the hope that legitimate complaints will be heard and addressed.

In one of my many engineering management training classes it was stated that 94% of customers do not complain when they have a problem with a product or service. If that is true -- and I suspect it is -- it means that you could have a 100% failure rate and only get a 6% complaint rate. "Only 6%? Heck we can live with that! 94% of our customers are happy!"

Not.

Ed Bianchi

[Wet Coast Racer]

You can read up on our Revoslot quality issues as reported on the IHSR General Discussion Forum. Title is "Revoslot: Beware (rant)[COLOR=#000000]".
I bring this forward in the hope that legitimate complaints will be heard and addressed.

Then why don't you come up with a legitimate complaint?

All you're doing is brand bashing.

[NicoRosberg.]

In one of my many engineering management training classes it was stated that 94% of customers do not complain when they have a problem with a product or service.

If people don't complain, how is the 94% arrived at?

Hope you get your issue sorted, regardless of how big/small it actually is.

[HO RacePro]

There are legitimate complaints. I have already reported mine with the anglewinder spur gear. Others can be found at the IHSR forum as mentioned above. I'd rather you read the first-hand reports rather than me rehashing them -- perhaps with inaccuracies -- second hand.

Ed Bianchi

[NicoRosberg.]

I'm not sure why you are mentioning this stuff here then.

You, and the other IHSR guys, should phone Alan on the numbered he proffered.

[SouthShoreRacing]

With what is posted here, this is just brand bashing and of zero help to those of us running these cars. How about cut and paste Ed? Should be easy enough and then we can all get a sense of what all these problems are.

I have a Supra that I bought and started running in Feb. I've adjusted body float, pan float and gear mesh and put silicone tires on it. Recently replaced the braids. I have a Viper I received for Father's day. I've done the same thing to it that I did to the Supra plus glued a mirror back on after a crash. As I said before we have a group of 10 - 15 people racing them every other week and the group continues to be very enthusiastic about the car. Oh yeah, we did have 2 guys loose a couple of body screws and a couple of the screws and nuts that hold the pans together. That was because they loosed them up to get more float and didn't apply any locktite. I don't think that is the fault of Revo.

[Scaleracing]

I 100% stand behind RevoSlot and given the chance with service and support. But it is impossible to help anyone who just wants to complain on a Forum I do not frequent.

This is why I publish my phone numbers including my cell I will answer unless on the other line or asleep.

If anyone wants support on RevoSlot or any other product for that matter call me or email at [email protected].

I am very accessible.

Sincerely

Alan.

[dinglebery]

I agree with the lot of you wanting to roast Ed for not providing the complaints here, and making us visit another website to find and read what he's posting about. SUPER D!%$ move on your part Ed!!! At the very least, you don't know how to copy and paste like SSR mentioned???? How the heck can u get that wrong? You tout yourself as being a smart engineer?!?! Cop-out answer too.

Me and the couple guys I know that've purchased more than 10 Revos in the past couple months have had no issues with any.

[Wet Coast Racer]

Not so very long ago I was persuaded to invest in a Revoslot car. Folks in the IHSR club were running pickup races with them at the end of our racing events. I was told that, yes, the cars were expensive, but they were of such high quality that they could be raced out-of-the-box without the traditional race-prep parts upgrades and tuning.

I don't know who told you that, but the fact is that most good slot cars will perform better after a little tweaking and tuning. Many of the threads in this forum are about that very subject. Companies like Slot.it have built themselves on producing both rtr cars, but replacement parts for both their own cars, as well as other manufacturer's. A large part of their website is dedicated to explaining how to set up, and tune up, their own products.

So I bought one of their Toyota Supra models, and for a while it lived up to the hype. I had a lot of fun racing it in those informal runs. And I wasn't too put off by the recent failure of its sidewinder spur gear. Unusual, unexpected, but fixable. An isolated quality issue.

I don't own any Revoslot cars myself yet, but I recall that thread. Frankly, the probable cause of failure for the original plastic gear probably comes down to misalignment of the bushing; as has been mentioned already, gear failure is very rare on these, just like most good slot cars. I'm surprised you couldn't hear it, and identify the issue once it happened. Pushing a bushing back into place (and securing it there correctly with a bit of glue) isn't that challenging for most of us.

At the recent IHSR race I hosted on my new 1/32nd scale track there was a discussion as to whether we should make Revoslots a formal class for our events. During that discussion I heard several very disturbing reports of serious quality issues with the latest batches of Revoslot cars, including a protracted series of efforts by our arguably most skilled set-up wizard to make his newest Revoslot car functional, let alone competitive. There were other similar stories. Enough that the idea of making Revoslots a formal class didn't get much support.

Sounds like a lot of gossip to me. I noticed recently that these cars seem to be performing very well in the current Race Across America.

I really like the idea of being able to buy a race-ready car, and willing to pay a premium to do it. And for a while Revoslot was delivering on that. But that seems to have changed.

This just puzzles me. I cannot understand how you were unable, with all your apparent expertise, to figure out what changed with your Revoslot car, from the time you first put it on the track to when you discovered that you had stripped the gear. Maybe you smacked it into the wall, maybe you never checked the basics of chassis setup?

I'd like to think that Revoslot has heard the complaints and will get on top of the issues. For now I'm not willing to invest in any more Revoslots until the quality reviews get much more positive.

Well I must admit, I don't spend a whole lot of time on other slot car forums; I have a life outside my computer (I keep telling myself that). But tell us please, what happened when you complained to Revoslot about the car you bought with the 'defective' gear? Or did you contact the retailer directly? Or what?

[Wet Coast Racer]

You can read up on our Revoslot quality issues as reported on the IHSR General Discussion Forum. Title is "Revoslot: Beware (rant)[COLOR=#000000]".

Sorry, I can't give you a link. Links aren't allowed here.

And yet, you deliberately used the Thread Title as a direct link to the IHSR Forum, hoping we wouldn't notice. We have now fixed that. I shake my head.

[Wet Coast Racer]

Meanwhile, after bashing around on the internet, I realized that IHSR didn't actually refer to the Institute of Historical and Social Research in Karachi (you think I'm joking?) but your own local slot car club. If they wish to gain greater exposure, then I would recommend that they list themselves on the SCI Race Track Directory It would be fine to place notifications in the Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia subforums there (but no links of course). I encourage you to add this information there, Ed.

So having tracked down that there thread, and being as the IHSR want a $10 fee to post on their site (whereas SCI is free to all members who follow the rules), it only makes sense to respond to some of their statements on this site. The first item comes from Mark Tutton:

As most folks know, I love to build "White Kits". If a new car comes out I want, I buy the "White Kit" so I can paint the body and make it truly unique ... The latest craze in 1/32 seems to be Revoslot cars. This group seems to be intent on making it a dedicated class in the future as these cars have so much going for them. I was unimpressed with the Viper I bought. However, it didn't do too badly in the IHRS Proxy, wining a round via the Handicap and seemed to get better every round. I bought a used 333sp car as the price was good and liked the paint scheme. It's a nice car but slow. Not impressed. Finally Revoslot issued a car I want, the Porsche 911GT1 used during the BPR/FIA GT-1 series in the mid 1990's. I got the white kit as I really wanted to paint one up in the Lowenbrau markings. Took a long time to find a white kit, as no shops stocked them, so that left buying one from 132slotcars. the sole importer.

The kit arrived in a bag, not a box. Body parts were loose in the bag.

Well the first thing that Mark should understand, as a purchaser of white kits, is that most of them don't come in a box; sometimes you get a lexan cover, sometimes a plastic bag with a cardboard label on it that can be hung up on a shelf peg. Why would you want a box, so long as the product has been properly packaged to survive the USPS? But also, why would anybody be 'unimpressed' with a Viper they bought, that then won a round of the Handicap, and 'gets better every round'. What is this guy's problem, exactly?

As it happens, I was chatting on the phone with Alan this afternoon, and we discussed this thread. Mark Tutton is indeed a customer of 132Slotcar and has purchased various items there over the last couple of years. But guess what? He didn't buy that Porsche 911GT1 from them - he got it somewhere else. Probably his 'favourite overseas place'. After all, who would want to support the US economy when they spend their hard earned dollars? He also states this:

I cleaned up and painted the body and it looked great. Try to mount the glass and saw the window posts were bent. Try to install the photo-etch, and it doesn't fit. Needs to be bent ever so slightly (thankfully I have a tool set for that). Then I thought it was strange that there is no interior. I go look online and sure enough there should be one.

As a builder of 1/32 scale slot cars with some success over the years, I can only ask, why on earth didn't he check the parts fit before he went ahead and painted the thing? I mean, seriously? As to the interior missing, I'm not at all sure that they ever did a fully painted stock interior for that car anyway - besides, the lexan interior would be preferable for a competitive car.

An e-mail to the company refers me to 132slot cars and they can't help me. Don't have any. Looking online, no one in the US really has spare body parts for Revoslots. A body kit here, replacement mirrors/wing set there (nothing for a car issued since 2019).

It's a challenge for any distributor/retailer in these times to maintain a parts supply, though I can't think of any who make a better effort to keep parts in stock than 132. The simple fact is, on a global scale, and affecting all manufacturers, moving product around the globe from production to consumption is a massive problem at present. Just renting a container costs three times as much as normal. They can only do their best! Here's a current list of Revoslot parts available at 132Slotcar. No doubt it will be updated as soon as possible. Keep in mind that they never charge anyone's credit card until they have the product in hand to ship, and they always package things properly to prevent damage or squishing of contents.