Find Replacement Parts Fast at an Online Hobby Store

An online hobby store can often be the best place to find replacement parts and optional parts quickly and easily for your remote control models.

The friendly staff at your local RC hobby shop will also be happy to help you get the parts you need, of course. But when it comes to supplying RC parts for the many different remote control vehicles, aircraft, and boats on the market, brick-and-mortar hobby stores are naturally limited by the amount of space they have available for inventory.

For good reason, the shelves at your local hobby shop give priority to merchandise that’s in high demand and helps the owners earn the money they need to stay in business. If you come to them needing a small, low-cost part for a radio control car that was introduced five years ago, chances are good they’ll have to order it for you online anyway from their own suppliers.

That’s something you can do for yourself online, from the comfort of your own home. At a well-designed online hobby store, it’s not at all difficult to locate the correct replacement parts. You can often find the exact part you need, no matter how big or small, with just a couple of taps on your mouse or touchscreen.

The time you save using the resources of the online hobby store can be very significant, even when you add in the time you’ll spend waiting for your part to be delivered. No doubt you’d rather be out RC bashing or flying than driving from one hobby shop to another, only to discover they don’t have your part in stock — and they’ll have to order it just like you would!

Online Hobby Store Search Engines

A well-designed online hobby store can make your search for a specific remote control model part surprisingly easy, even if you’ve misplaced your product instruction manual, don’t know the part name, and have no idea what it’s manufacturer part number is.

Let’s use the Horizon Hobby online hobby store as an example. Horizon has a special Part Finder page with a very clever search engine. It begins your hunt for a specific RC model part by asking for a few pieces of basic information that you probably know right off the top of your head.

First, you select your model’s manufacturer, its name, and the stock number from a trio of drop-down menus. The options shown in each menu are automatically narrowed by the choices you made in the previous menus. After you’ve selected your model’s manufacturer and product name — information you certainly don’t need to look up anywhere — the stock number options are automatically selected.

After you’ve made your selections in all three of these fields, the Part Finder for the Horizon online hobby shop displays a list of the parts and accessories available for that product. Icons at the top of the list help you further narrow down the results. Now, you simply choose a category of part or accessory you want to view, like Tires and Wheels, Bodies, Motors, Servos, and so on. Gradually, your search hones in on exactly what you’re looking for, and all you needed to start with was the manufacturer and product name.

Online Hobby Store Exploded Views and Manuals

The Parts Finder of the Horizon Hobby online hobby store isn’t the only option you have to find your radio control model’s parts and accessories. You can also go to the product page for your RC vehicle, aircraft, or boat. There, you’ll find links to exploded view diagrams and manual PDFs that will also quickly take you to the exact part you need, even if it’s just a specific screw, nut, or bolt.

For an illustration of how these work, let’s go to the ARRMA GORGON radio control monster truck product page. Scroll down until you see the “Quick Links” header in the Product Details section. Below that, you’ll see clickable buttons for Manuals & Support, Replacement Parts, Optional Parts, and Shoppable Exploded View. (Please note that the product pages for RC models that aren’t 100% ready-to-run may also have buttons for Pit/Field Tools and Completion Guide).

Clicking on the Replacement Parts or Optional Parts buttons takes you to full listings of parts suitable for the ARRMA GORGON, complete with photos and pricing. You can scroll through the parts to see what’s available — for example, ARRMA offers some of the same parts in different colors for the GORGON RC monster truck, in case you’re interested in changing up the look of your model.

If there’s a specific part you need, one even simpler way to find it is by clicking on the Manuals & Support button. In this example, you’ll be able to download multilingual PDFs of the ARRMA GORGON exploded view diagram and of its instruction manual. Both make it easy to match the part you need with its correct manufacturer stock number. Both can be saved to your computer or other device, for convenient offline reference anytime and anywhere you like. The manual also includes a comprehensive list of replacement parts with stock numbers as well as part descriptions. You can refer to these when ordering the parts from an online hobby store or take them to your local hobby shop to point out the exact part you’re looking for.

For an even more convenient way to order replacement parts from the Horizon online hobby store, however, try using the Shoppable Exploded Views. Clicking this button on the ARRMA GORGON product page calls up an exploded view diagram of the GORGON. The difference between this diagram and the ones on the Manuals & Support link is that the parts aren’t simply identified by the part number. Each part number is an active web link. Clicking on it brings up a window with a photograph of the part, a link to its full description, and an “Add to Cart” button for easy ordering. Need a specific replacement button head screw for your GORGON? After going to its product page on the Horizon online hobby shop, you can literally locate the correct part and order it with as little as three clicks!

Online Hobby Store Convenience

Again, this is not to say you should make all of your RC hobby purchases from an online hobby store. Your local hobby retailer is also an essential resource that offers many kinds of service and support you can’t get online. For example, what if you don’t know what’s wrong with your model? How can you know what parts to order? The support staff at your local hobby shop includes expert technicians who know all about troubleshooting. They’ll be able to diagnose your RC model’s problem and get the parts needed to fix it.

But if you know what’s broken and have the tools and know-how to make the replacement yourself, online hobby stores like Horizon Hobby offer a fast, hassle-free way to locate and order replacement parts right from the comfort of your own home. The online hobby store, too, is an invaluable part of your total RC hobby experience.