A while back, I got some emails from modelers who had noticed our engines on E-bay, and they were selling for less than the regular selling cost.
I answered all of the these fellas...
Yes it is interesting... There is a good reason....It looks like a RCGF Engine, but it is not.....
You will find me and all the distributors of the RCGF Engines repeating the same story. The RCGF Engine are the most copied, and cloned engines, bought through 3rd party companies and sold as their own by other engine sellers. Notice that I did not say manufacturers...
That is why RCGF Engines had to actually retool their engine line-up so that these other substandard designs won't be associated with the RCGF line. This was completed early this year, and these new engines are getting incredible reviews. As distributors of these engines we are really hesitant of talking these engines up. But it really is coming to a point that we need to differentiate ourselves from the lower tier crap manufacturers that are giving the quality engine manufacturers like RCGF, headaches.
Gas Engines that modelers think are manufactured by the company selling them, are in for a big surprise. Many of them are not. They are either contracted out, cloned, copied, forged or whatever you want to say. There was a seller that actually put a picture of the RCGF 150cc engine on their website and starting selling them as their own brand!!!
I see posts that have guys raving about the deals they got for an engine that should cost 100's more. To be fair, some of the deals are real and the buyer is the winner. But talking from personal experience, these deals few and far between. You know why....
The engines that are bought from unknown sellers are junk, made with substandard materials. The will run for a couple of hours or maybe even a season and then die. The seller has dozens of these cloned and copied engines and he is selling them one at a time.The posts on all the popular RC sites are full of these stories. So now a happy modeler becomes a pissed off consumer, looking for some kind of redress.
Good luck...go ahead and get some service for them....Go ahead..
Over the summer time I dealt with a number of modelers on these issues. It is frustrating and time consuming, but one service that I am pleased to do, so that I can educate them.
Here is the kicker on this too. Some of the sellers who were hawking the pseudo RCGF engines, actually gave the buyers the name and number of our Company, so that if any problems were experienced they could call us for immediate service. What a great scam....
One fella even sent me his engine. The box was a real RCGF box ( or one hell of a good copy!!), the instructions were written in Urdu (honestly!). The ignition system was blue colored.... (unknown to me or anyone else that I talked with). Now to the engine.
The engine was not even close to the look of our engine. Yes it had a cylinder head and a carburetor, but the spark plug did not fit the engine. The seller had even painted the muffler shiny black...
It took me hours of work to convince the buyer he had been had. Man... was he angry... I did feel for this guy. He eventually bought one of our legitimate ones.
Right now... with all the pro-active stuff that we have been doing on stemming the cloners and copiers, it seems that these guys have switched tactics. NOW, we are seeing cloned DL engines coming on line. I feel for the guys who think that they will be getting the deal, but instead getting the finger!
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