saved from the closet: late 80's RC10 with vintage hop-ups

[mk-Zero]

Dug my old RC10 out of my bedroom at my parent's house over holidays. Put some new batteries in the controller, charged the old NiCads for 20 minutes and it ran. Well, for 5 minutes or so, lol. My 3 year old son loved it, and I had fun with it, so I decided to bring it home with us and freshen it up a bit.
I bought the car in around 1988 or so from a guy at my school. He had put a lot of money into it but decided he wanted a Yokomo. I got the car pretty much as shown, with the exception of the titanium front shock towers I made and Kyosho front shocks I put on it. Well, i did the terrible orange and white paint all over everything too. Seemed lime a good idea in 1989 or so, lol. I basically just bashed around my parents yard and street in San Diego some 25 years or so ago.
It has some interesting stuff on it that I havent seen on here in the short time I've been lurking around. It appears to have a Hot Trick ESC and a somewhat unusual Hot Trick chassis. It also has some odd steering linkage, looks like it could be a one-off setup. I'm also not sure about the tranny, I thought it was an MIP, but after looking closer I'm not so sure. Not too sure about the motor mount either. Its got a Trinity Joel Johnson 1987 World Championship motor, which I think I read was a 17 turn motor rated at 39000 rpm?

Anyway, that's enough of me yammering for now, here's some pics of the poor thing. Hopefully I'll have it in more respectable shape in the near future (pics in next post)...

[mk-Zero]

Not sure why it wouldn't let me put these pics in the first post, but anyway, here they are...

[Phin]

Lots of nice old parts on that car. The transmission is MIP...it's the older version that originally went on the Tamiya SRB cars...the motorplate is a Hot Trick piece designed to mount that trans on an RC10. Bellcranks, and the chassis (sprint car version) are Hot Trick too.

[mk-Zero]

Thanks man.

Does anyone know if the Hot Trick ESC had braking? Mine doesn't seem to, but I'm not sure if it didn't originally have it, or if the braking circuit is just toast...

[GoMachV]

They originally did but like all those early speed controls it likely has a blown brake fet. There wasn't a lot of braking action as I recall either.
The bad part about a speed control that is "potted" is that you can't make any repairs. It is however a very cool and fairly rare to find esc.

This whole car should clean up very well! I would love to find one in my closet!

[j-sou]

Cool car! Lots of neat old parts on there.
Your 55 looks cool too! I've got a 57 ragtop waiting in storage.

[vintage AE]

That is quite a find. The only thing in my closet that old are... well, never mind, I don't have anything that old in my closets. Definitely clean her up and throw some modern electronics in it. With the re-re out, you will find arm mounts, arms and many of the breakable parts available if you need them.

Cool car, that's some hot stuff

[mk-Zero]

Spent some time on the car last evening. As you can probably tell in these two pics, the nose plate was bent upward pretty bad and had a twist to it. Not to mention the hideous orange paint on it and my Titanium shock towers.




I took the front apart and used my vice and some hand tools to straighten things up. It's probably not 100% straight, but vastly improved. I also scrapped the paint off the nose plate and the shock towers. There's still a little paint here and there, I'll try some paint remover at a later date. Looks much better though to me!




I will probably either try to chemically strip the white paint off the plastic parts, or just spray them black. Does anyone know if paint stripper will damage the plastic?

[Phin]

Use brake fluid to remove the paint from the nylon.

Or buy re-re parts.

[mk-Zero]

Use brake fluid to remove the paint from the nylon.

Or buy re-re parts.

Ah, brake fluid, brilliant! I'll give it a try! Thanks
Trying to avoid buying parts that I don't "need," seems more fun to try and use the original stuff where possible

[vintage AE]

I just used brake fluid to strip paint off of a Viper body, worked great!

[mk-Zero]

Here's the collection of old tires I have with the car, other than the foam ones shown in the previous pics.

For the front, I ran these old ProLines on Sand Scorcher wheels.


On the back, I usually ran these


or these

I think those are the original RC10 tires from my car's era?

And finally for the sand


I ordered a set of RC10 front wheels and ribbed tires I plan to run on the front in the dirt in place of the Tamaya rims and ProLines, and a spare set or rears so I can keep the foams mounted for the street.

[shodog]

That's some great stuff you have on that buggy. I would say the MIP tranny is the creme of the crop.

[vintage AE]

I'd love to have those sand tires if they are the ones for the jelly bean wheels.

[mk-Zero]

Not sure what jelly bean wheels are... if they're the original RC10 wheels then thats what they fit