Customer Reviews

Elenco Radio Controlled Car Kit

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've built many kits and done lots of repair work on electrical items large and small over the years. I read the reviews and I ordered three of these for my boys for Christmas. We put them together today. It takes closer to 3 hours to put one together. No 12 year old without extensive electrical experience can work with the very tiny wires - my adept 13 year old broke two wires and I broke one of those twice trying to correct his mistake. One of the circuit boards was dead out of the box. Most frustratingly, you CANNOT use this with your friends as advertised because the cars all broadcast on the same frequency. The value of putting this together was lost when one boy had no car at the end and the other two had to run their cars in different areas. Very frustrating.

This car is a well made product. The assemble is easy. You can see how the motors work. There is no gluing, the screws and wires are easy to tighten.
The only problem is that the right front wheel came out of it's place. So I switched the screw with the other one and it seems to stay.
I would reccomend this toy if your kids are into cars. This was a very fun toy for me.

Teddy S.

Built with teenager within about 2 hours. Great education value. Worked OK but not sure how much abuse it will take before breaking. But then again, did not buy for durability.

I got this for my 10 year old for Christmas.
We tried to put it together. The motor didn't fit in where it was supposed to fit.
The reviews indicated that this was pretty straight forward. That was not our experience. We gave up on it when we couldn't get the motor into where it was supposed to go.

I felt it was an expensive mistake.

I didn't have time to argue with the company about whether or not they would take it back, so I didn't pursue that route.

This product was a lot of fun to put together. That's the point: to put together. Once it is put together it's not much fun. It's slow and doesn't drive straight. There is a steering adjustment, but it doesn't help much. No matter what it veers off to the right. Also, it runs on 4 AA batteries that completely drain after 30 minutes.

One problem that I had is that it is very picky with batteries. It ran with 4 cheap off-brand TV remote control alkaline batteries, but with 4 brand new Duracell alkalines, it wouldn't even run. I thought maybe the batteries were defective, but they were able to run in another electronic device just fine. Also, you can't use rechargeable batteries in the car because you need the proper 1.5v per battery to correctly operate the RF receiver (6v) whereas rechargeable NiMh batteries only output 1.2v each or 4.8v total.

Also, I had to break out the soldering iron to connect the wires. This kit wants you to wrap the wires around each other and stuff them inside non-shrink tubing. That doesn't work very well. Best bet is to solder them.

All in all, it was a decent fun evening putting the car together. It won't last long and it is SMALL. I wouldn't buy it again.

I got this to build with my son. It comes with a notice in the box to contact the manufacturer if you are missing parts or if they don't work. Must happen often?

Of course once assembled the car did not work. I called the number and they said that the main board was probably bad, so they would send me a new one. 2 weeks later it arrived, and guess what, it was defective too. So I am giving up on this toy and sending it back to Amazon.

Cheap parts that don't always work, not worth $30.
Not worth buying, spend a little extra on a real RC car you can put together because this one probably won't work.

My grandson was very excited to receive this kit as a gift. He put it together pretty much by himself, and had a blast.

Kids must have patience to put this together, as it can take up to 1-2 hours. The plastic molded parts do not fit well together causing the car to not drive straight, even after adjustment. During assembly, when testing the electronics, it smoked and was discovered to be defective. Customer Service was great in helping troubleshoot and sent out a replacement circuit board. Unfortunately the new board had a problem with the variable resistor. I ended up salvaging electronics from an old remote control car and swapped the boards. It worked okay after that. Good learning experience, but bad quality.

My son researched and asked me to buy this car. He's 9 and when it arrived, he promptly sat down and worked on it. Sadly, he found broken parts. But a call to the company and they sent the replacement parts promptly with no questions asked. It's together and runs great. Good power too. Even my 5 year old is enjoying playing with it too.

this was fun to build. It wasnt very hard to make, all you had to do was screw in some pieces. The directions were kind of clear, I understood most of the instructions but at times I was a ittle confused, but was able to figure it out. When it was time to drive it, it didnt really work. The motor would give out short bursts or do nothing.