Question about RC10 rebuild costs

[jjc43]

Hi Everyone.
This is probably a hard question to answer, but I'm interesting in doing a rebuild and was wondering if there are any general recommendations re: where to start.
I just restored an old RC10 and realize that the costs of finding the individual parts add up quickly.

For those of you that have done many rebuilds, any preference with starting from an earlier model vs something more recent?
Is it more economical to buy a mostly intact car off ebay and just swap out the parts you want upgraded?
I'm trying to understand what is driving costs on the used market - prices seem all over the place. So it's hard to gauge what to pay.
I see some decent cars selling for around $100 and others for twice that, in similar condition. Just seems like I'm missing somthing.

Thanks.

[bluewormx]

Hi, Costing questions are generally frowned upon, but you have asked in a very educated and well thought out manner.

Here are my views to try and answer your question.

Yes it is generally better to buy a good donor car that to build from individual parts.
Princing falls into several categories: Auction price; buy now uninformed seller; buy now high price seller; buy now reasonable price. A reasonable price will adjust itself to auction price, I would consider this the "Real" value.

High price seller usually sell their stuff too because people will buy items for an elevated price rather than wait or risk the auction when and if the item shows up again. Stuff sold buy uninformed sellers are the true bargains and will sell super quickly, so most of the time you never even see them unless you are i the right place at the right time.

Before the Covid crisis, I would have considered it a sellers market with them dictating the prices. Right now to some point it has become a buyers market as people are suffering economically and selling their loot.

[jwscab]

it's kind of been a double hump in the market and value/price. before the re-release of the classic and worlds car, things had peaked and were slowly declining and you could get hard to find parts once in a while for reasonable prices. so the hump/peak happened then. At that point, associated was still making replacement parts for the most part, or had a lot of leftover stock.

when associated re-released the classic and worlds cars, the market got flooded with a full suite of parts and the prices dropped a bit and parts were easy to find. I think at that point lots of guys bought up a bunch of stuff. The interest in the vintage stuff went up a bit and more guys started running/breaking/wearing out vintage/new replacement parts.

once the re-releases ended, associated began to drop support like a rock for lots of items, they changed warehouses or something and fire-saled lots of parts. with no replacement parts of dumb things, like shock rebuild kits, the desire to run these vintage cars will and has begun to dry up quickly. Parts are spiking now because they are not manufacturing replacements.

as collectors/rebuilders, we are stuck again scrounging parts to keep cars together.

so after all that stuff , it was similar to before the first hump. you will have to keep your eyes peeled for cheaper cars that might have a hammered chassis, but good transmission, or hammered front end but good rear parts, etc.

as mentioned above though, with this pandemic pushing people out of work, it may become more of a buyers market, as guys are selling of stuff to afford other necessities.....

my suggestion would be to decide what you can handle resotration wise, and what you want. Do you want a specific model or do you care what color the parts are? is racing more important?

if you are more just a racer and don't like building or don't care what it looks like, buy a whole car and tweak from there. If you are a restorer or builder and are looking for a specific combination, keep an eye out for whole or parts cars......

[Lonestar]

Some great comments above!

The rule of thumb is the same as for 1:1 cars... unless it is sold at Pebble Beach, it's pretty much always better to have the previous owner bear the cost of the restoration than yourself

If you want the absolute shelf queen, it's going to cost an arm and a leg - new parts are expensive as you found out. In general people selling shelf queens cannot recoup their costs, if only because most of us want to rebuild our own, and we already have *some* parts in boxes, so we are not willing to buy the full car at the price of the sum of the parts anyway because this is not what we aspire to. But if you are starting from scratch and you want a perfect car from the beginning, this is the only sensible way...

I guess Joe coined it really well overall - what level of perfection are you trying to achieve? If you want a reliable runner and you don't mind a few scratches here and there, then buying a couple of used rollers of the same generation from ebay (or here... although they don't show up that often these days...) and mixing/matching, and reselling the rest (of keeping for parts) is probably the best way, economically speaking...

welcome to the madhouse, my friend

[jjc43]

Thanks everyone. that's all very helpful. I have a mostly original RC10 from 1990 and added a stealth transmission and upgraded to bearings a few years later.
It didn't take much to get up and running again and I mostly just miss the building (esp with all the shelter in place time I've got at home now). Part of me wants to upgrade my original parts just for fun but then I realized that I'm swapping out many vintage parts that have sentimental and collectors value. I mostly just drive the car around the yard and in the street while my toddlers try to chase it around. Even though my Tekin 410s and Trinity speedworks brushed motor still work, i got a cheap $25 ESC/brushless combo off ebay and was shocked at the speed. Literally on my first run just messing around on my street, I accidentally ran it into a curb and broke one of the plastic steering arms and that took 2 weeks to find something that I could swap out directly and was also (barely) affordable.

I just want to have a car to fix up that looks nicer than what I had as a kid and drive around for fun without hopefully incurring too many costs from breaking parts. I think I'm trying to decide between a gold pan car vs a later model with a plastic chassis. Metal pan seems more durable but vintage parts are harder to come by and are more expensive so I might go with something more recent. Do you think there is any appreciable difference between driving a 30yr old RC10 vs a more recent model?

Thanks again for all the advice!

[Lonestar]

I just want to have a car to fix up that looks nicer than what I had as a kid and drive around for fun without hopefully incurring too many costs from breaking parts. I think I'm trying to decide between a gold pan car vs a later model with a plastic chassis. Metal pan seems more durable but vintage parts are harder to come by and are more expensive so I might go with something more recent. Do you think there is any appreciable difference between driving a 30yr old RC10 vs a more recent model?

it takes a HARD hit to break a chassis - be it plastic or metal. The aluminium tub (and esp. the nose plate) will bend sometimes, though... If you're just going to run in the yard, this won't be a deciding factor to be honest. Sourcing more recent NiB parts is a lot easier though.

Performance-wise, yes, a modern car will run circles around a 30 year old model around the track. Just like a modern vette would against a C4 from the 80's. Then again, to go pick up the bread at the supermarket in a suburban area, it won't make a difference... so to goof around in the yard, same thing.

If it's just chase the dog, make the toddler giggle, and hit the occasional garden table leg, I would still buy a modern car, as sourcing the parts is so much easier as you found out. And then you keep your vintage car nice and tidy, while still carefully (stay away from garden furniture!!!) running it once in a while

Have fun!

[RC10th]

Hell, even B4/T4 parts are getting hard to find and overpriced.

[jjc43]

Thanks again. This is all really helpful. You've convinced me to look into something more recent. It's great to have a place to learn from folks here. I've been learning a ton!

[shodog]

If you want a bulletproof runner then get something new that your hobby shop stocks spares. That way you don’t have to worry when you break it.

As for your RC10 just stock up on rear arm mounts, steering knuckles and uprights. Those are the items that usually get broken in the course of running.

[jjc43]

If you want a bulletproof runner then get something new that your hobby shop stocks spares. That way you don’t have to worry when you break it.

As for your RC10 just stock up on rear arm mounts, steering knuckles and uprights. Those are the items that usually get broken in the course of running.

That's great advice and matches what I've had to replace/repair. I see you're in San Jose! I am as well. Any recs on local hobby stores? I haven't been to any local ones and have been wanting to go check them out but haven't been able to with all the shelter in place stuff going on.

Thanks!

[RC10th]

Most of the good hobby shops closed down. Not sure what's there now but I'm guessing Sheldons is one of the few larger shops left. Even they dissapeared for a while.

[shodog]

I still go to sheldons but not as much as I used to. Not much RC10 stuff left really. NorCal is all about new stuff, no vintage. I like JJ customs which is great for crawler stuff