Originally Posted by OldTimer
(Post 515821)
Just a few points i would like to make which i think people might not be aware of -
The GTO did not sell as well as expected admittedly mainly due to a competitor bring out there own version of a 201 mid motor car which was £60-£80 cheaper from memory. And in the current climate this is a lot of money so i understand why people went for the cheaper option, that is there choice.
The car was designed to be a little shorter than normal, some people loved it some others did not get on as well, but this also comes down to driving style, i can give a proto car to somebody to run then give it to a different person and one thinks its the best thing ever and the other thinks its a pile of s**t ;)
We broke a few towers on the proto-cars but these were beefed up for the production kits which caused few issues, i actual designed a hd tower for yourself due to the issues you were having, i not sure how many manufactures would do that ;)
The gearbox was one of the sweetest parts of the cars, and as long as you used the RW idler gears as we advised due to the tamiya idler gears having problems, we had no issues with the gearbox gears.
Unfortunately there is no AC team so i am limited to the amount of setup info i can give, we always try to give a base setup for the cars, and the guys which were running the proto cars and giving me feedback and posting here on oople, choose to run a alternative car, so we did not build up a list of alternative setups.
The kit was designed to fit the standard shell and also we produced a undertray to make the car very water tight in wet weather, no one has advised me of any issues using the kit shell and undertray.
All AC kits are expensive as they are made here in the UK, the kickup chassis as well as the tub chassis's are layed up by hand not a machine which is costly but the quality speaks for its self. The gearbox casings are CNC machined rather than moulded again high quality but costs a lot more, the plastic used is expensive engineering plastic not a cheap unknown plastic, i personnel drill all the screw locations in the gearbox's so i can insure they are spot on and fit for sale, this takes 1/2 hour per gearbox.
Also we don't mass produce like AE Losi etc so we will never compete on price with them, we try as much as we can to keep the price as low as possible and if you saw how much we made on some kits you would wonder why we bother.
And if people think the kits are expensive so i can make loads of money. If that was the case i would of closed down AC back in 2005. Any money we do make goes straight back into making proto's parts, tub moulds and developing new parts and cars like a am currently working on.
I hope the above does not come across as a rant that is not the reason why i have spent a hour typing this reply :) i just felt the above will give many people a better understanding of atomic-carbon
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Atomic Carbon
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