RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

Congrats to Kelly and Barb for a great run.

Bummer. Congrats to them, but it's sad to see another great RC company going away.

I wonder if Factory Works could use a titanium products division...?

Nooo! what the f..!!!
I was just to order retro turnbuckles today

It was a shock to everyone. I know his nephew had a machine in his shop and I had wondered if maybe the nephew would end up taking over one day. Seeing the “we're done” makes me think it’s not just moving to another person.

I know costs have skyrocketed for everything I use, and Kelly had to place his orders in advance, this is probably about the time he would have been ordering the stock and he places one large order to cover the year. Probably made the decision a lot easier. People these days want the fun colors and cool looking titanium and don’t care about the lifetime guaranteed usa made grade 5 that he used.

Wow what a bummer!

Just wow did not see that coming.

Damn that’s disappointing.
Thank you to them for all the years of fantastic products and support of the RC community.

Good run for sure!! Outstanding folks. Wishing them well in retirement!

I have internalized my bummedoutedness and surley won't share that here...

That's a shame, another company gone. Sort of like when you get older and more of your friends start passing away.

The abruptness is a bit of a surprise which leads me to believe something behind the scenes may have been at play.


Good luck to them and they will be missed

Kelly told me he ordered material once a year, months in advance. This is probably about the time he would have been ordering and with costs of raw materials through the roof once he was revived from passing out it probably made the decision easier. Things have slowed over the years for sure, with all the cheap Chinese ti and hangar9 essentially copying the look of his punishers, I would not blame him a bit for wanting to call it quits.

The latest I have heard is he doesn’t it want to sell the name and company, he wants it to die with him which I totally respect. New owners aren’t always good owners and to drag the family name through the mud, I get it. His machines are reportedly being auctioned off and the few special tools scrapped.

What about all there left over stock? Are they going to just hold on to it I wonder?

We don’t know for certain but the rumor mill thinks it was sold as a job lot. It sounds like this has been well known in some circles for “months” now- so there is a good chance they were selling it off at a discount already and obviously not replenishing the bins when they were low. Most of the inventory of pins and buckles fit in two large metal cabinets. They didn’t have a warehouse full of merch.

No more retro turnbuckles

I just recently ordered some turnbuckles for a build I'm working on...I guess I should order more before you can't get them anymore. Well, it was a good run. I literally have their turnbuckles on all of my race buggies. You just kinda figure they'd always be there. Even before my last order, I had ordered a set for my RC10B6. It's like, new buggy, order set of Lunsfords. Done.

Wow this is bad news to the R/C world.
I use Lunsford titanium turnbuckles since ... hmm .. don´t remember but a very long time.
Replacing the Tecnacraft turnbuckles after that company closed.
Both have been the best turnbuckles to me and I never broke or bend any of them.

I just bought two sets of Lunsford for my newest project a couple of weeks ago.
Seems I have to stock up my inventory for future projects.