RCGF Engines

IF, AFTER READING BELOW, YOU STILL WISH TO PURCHASE ONE OF THESE ENGINES, WE SUGGEST THE FOLLOWING SITES FOR SOME OF THE BEST PRICING AND PARTS AVAILABILITY.

http://www.himodel.com/sort.php?sub2=GB

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_listCategoriesAndProducts.asp?idCategory=80

DUE TO A NUMBER OF ISSUES WITH THE RCGF FACTORY (In particular with Catherine Tsang, their Marketing and Sales manager, who continues to refuse to sell us spare parts for the engines despite us having been an authorised distributor). We strongly recommend these as a “DO NOT BUY” product. There is no guarantee of ongoing service or parts and the real life hands-on experiences we have had with the brand is that the engines themself, as delivered from the factory, are somewhat troublesome and extremely variable in quality and componentry.  Add to this the questionable ethics displayed by the company (according to our experiences) and we strongly recommend the product as a “DO NOT BUY”.

Lately, the company seems to be feeding their newer dealers in some parts of the world a bit of a range of “fairytales” about the earlier distributors (including us). Some of the commonly told stories include:

  • The previous distributors were selling engines that were only intended for the Chinese Market

This is an interesting claim because - In most cases (Certainly with ourselves, RC Aero and a couple of other companies) the orders were placed direct from us to Catherine Tsang (RCGF Marketing and Sales Manager at the time) and delivery was paid by us for delivery direct to ourselves. our Companies were listed on the RCGF websites at that time as the official distributors for our countries. IF this claim is true, then it says something about the ethics of the company as it would seem that RCGF knowingly provided us with incorrect and poor quality product and should be compensating us and our customers for that. We will be the first to let you know if that happens but don’t expect to ever hear of it.

  • The company makes 2 different series of engines, one for the Chinese market and one for the overseas market.

Interesting thought. they admit to knowingly producing and supplying an inferior product which by their own admission (above) they have supplied to customers outside of China. Some of the product to which this claim refers to is sold by companies that openly advertise for overseas customers (Companies such as HobbyKing) so why would the factory knowingly allow their inferior product to be sold overseas?

We have seen their “China only” lineup (Sourced from Chinese suppliers out of curiosity). It is the exact same product as has been sent elsewhere in the world. Why would any manufacturer bother to set up 2 lots of production and stock and knowingly make one inferior?

  • Only engines supplied with the proper warranty card and serial number are covered by warranty.

Another interesting statement as some of the companies to which they refer in the first claim above (Overseas companies selling Chinese market engines) have been supplied with those same warranty cards and with “exclusive” serial numbers. Yet RCGF now claims those are not warrantable products. It really doesn’t make much sense does it? Especially as we were one of the main inputs for contents of those warranty cards.

True to form, the RCGF factory has recently “allocated” additional ”exclusive” distributors whilst their existing distributors hold significant stocks of product (We are no longer in that latter group). This is, of course, to the detriment of their existing “exclusive” distributors. Why do these companies do this? - Because it increases the sales from the factory. Some of those “exclusive” distributors (new and old) will end up making a loss and closing their doors because of it but the factory has made sales so will not be impacted.

The engines that were provided by us were fully QC inspected by us, fitted with Genuine Walbro Carbs (not the troublesome copies fitted to the engines sold by other RCGF distributors) and genuine RCExcel ignitions, (not the problematic copies of the RCExcel that the factory supplied to other distributors). In other words - we took away the real “suckiness” that this brand remains good at providing to their other distributors around the world.

We had a very high in-house rejection rate on these engines (26% of all engines delivered to us from the factory had major reliability related issues with them) and a very high customer return rate even after our in-house inspections (a further 15%) due to issues such as micro cracks in the metal components and early bearing failures. Items that can not easily be found on an inspection.

In short, We have been shown that these engines really tend to be a poor choice unless you are prepared to accept an inferior product with a questionable life span.

All RCGF engines that were supplied by us are still covered under full warranty by us and we will continue to offer full service support, regardless of warranty status for those engines until such time as we run out of parts (we retained a number of engines for spare parts purposes but those parts are only available to engines sold by us). We will ensure that you will always receive the very highest quality of service as always on any product we sell.

Please feel free to contact us for further information.