Modern frustration with the old car

[fredswain]

I am limiting droop through limiters inside the shocks. This means that the shocks are what is preventing the arms from going down any further since the arms are capable of moving farther. This means that if I have a wreck and some impact pushes down on the wheels, the only thing preventing them from moving any lower is the shocks themselves. This is why the bottoms stripped out. If I made those solid then the next thing would break which would mean the caps.

[Lowgear]

Thats why the plate idea should work as it would prevent the a-arms from drooping further than the shocks could extend.

[cautrell05]

Fred I might have some ideas for the outer steering ballstuds popping off. My sc converted RC10T has been cursed with that. 5 or 6 times at least. It has new RPM ball cups, new AE ballstuds and new AE steering blocks. Dont remember the part number but they were for the rc10 with the round axle. I am convinced that under a hard hit the steering arm flexes enough to twist the ball stud out of the cup. Practice, first and third heat had problems with them popping off. Took out the bump steer spacers on the outer stud and it made it through the feature untill I Bent a front shock shaft without popping off. It now has sc10 caster blocks and the AE inline steering blocks for the sc10. The sc10 steering arms are alot beefier than the rc10 arms and have no flex compared to alot with the other ones. Hopefully durability doesent suffer too much. Race day is tomorrow. I should know by tomorrow night if it made a difference.

Nick

[Jay Dub]

I too had the issue with the front ball cups popping off. In this pic you can see the thru bolt design. Haven't had an issue since. -Jeff

[fredswain]

I am completely disassembling this car. I'm going to start at square one with it. As I assemble different parts of it, I'm going to look at ways to improve them for durability but also for performance. I'm also going to choose which parts I want to use. I have the team car suspension as well as the full RPM world's arm conversion. I've also got a couple of chassis options too. We'll see.

[fredswain]

After thinking about this car a bit more last night and this morning perhaps my biggest problem is that I've been going about modifying this car all wrong. I've been trying to get it race worthy but not for vintage racing but rather to go against modern faster cars on faster hard packed clay tracks. Let's face it, when the RC10 was designed, it was meant for softer dirt tracks that didn't have 20 foot long jumps. The wheelbase is short compared to modern cars and the arms are shorter which means higher roll centers. This all translates into better handling on softer slower tracks but only gives it a disadvantage on the modern ones which it was never made for. Now I'm thinking that I should just build the RC10 I wanted as a kid rather than one that could be competitive today. That's more realistic. I know it can probably be competitive on some tracks today but probably not on the track that I've been trying to get it out on. I need to build an RC10 that is a vintage racer rather than try to re-engineer it into a modern racer. I've always said that an RC10 was signified by it's aluminum tub chassis but back in the day an off road race car was signified by a graphite chassis. We all had them here back then. I even have one to use. I don't really care about the argument that one handles better than the other. It's now about my childhood dream race car and it had a graphite chassis. Both chassis are flexible by modern standards anyways. I think that's the route I'm going to take. My modern frustration with the old car has really been due to trying to make a modern race car out of an old car. There's a reason that the current RC10 running on current tracks is 3 generations past this mine. It has adapted over time.

[Charlie don't surf]

Just a thought regardless of what you build, Jeff harris, Ruffy and myself as well as many others run these cars against current buggies and A main weekly against factory supported racers- The car is very capable!

[fredswain]

I've already got a plan of action on how to strengthen many of the components up front as well as take care of a few design problems that I was running into that affected my setup. As I get closer to a rebuild I may just start a thread showing it from start to finish. I was pretty frustrated with the car the last time I ran it but now that I've thought more about what direction to take I'm getting a bit excited. Unfortunately I've spent my rc budget for the month so it will be a bit slow.

[Jay Dub]

One thing that alot of people forget (now and BITD) was that the car had years of refinement, and was one of the best cars ever in stock form (worlds car trim). When you deviate from the stock suspension and begin adding different length arms, towers, shocks, different camber locations, etc. you are messing with hundreds of hours of development and tuning. The car is best with stock parts, and small adjustments. It is best to leave it the way it is for 99% of the people using the car. The other 1% are the ones who really understand and know how to tune suspensions. -Jeff

[fredswain]

It didn't have all that much refinement and what was there was for the tracks of the day. The only suspension items that changed were the front arms from the original shorts but we changed them out to Andy's arms of that length anyways, and the shock towers. The world's car had slightly longer front shocks. The suspension geometry for all intents and purposes stayed effectively the same. Everyone ran the inner camber link locations regardless of which car they had anyways. On current high speed hard packed tracks the arms are just too short. Not because of any lack of suspension compliance or travel but because it results in roll centers that are just too high. I've tried every suspension combination I can think of and my least favorite is the stock setup. I can't make it handle the way I want or the way my other buggies can handle. It's fine for street bashing and it's not to say the car can't be made to handle well. Vehicles with shorter suspension arms are more sensitive to tuning changes. Today's tracks need a car that is very forgiving which is what long arm suspensions are. The world's edition may have been the best RC10 out of the box but it wasn't the best the car could be.

I fully understand suspension tuning and geometry. I could write a book on it if I had to. In fact there was a thread on rctech where I nearly did!

[cautrell05]

FYI Fred the rigid steering arms didnt make any diffrence. Still had ends popping off at random. Went with the over kill method-



Nick

[Jay Dub]

I have found the RC10 to be VERY competative on todays tracks. Yes, it is sensitive to adjustments, and it is in part because of the short arms. However nobody can argue that the RC10 was THE dominant platform for longer than nearly any other car -ever. An excellent platform combined with excellent drivers = winning. The car has limits, and one needs to learn them. This is actually a good learning tool, because when you push the car past it's limits the outcome is immediate and recogniseable. With the more modern long arm cars, they are more forgiving, and don't give you the type of feedback that will allow you to become a faster, better racer. When you learn how ot tune and race an RC10 successfully, that will translate to an understanding of what is fast and what is not with a more modern car. being able to recognise when you are pushing the car too hard for a given surface is one of the biggest benefits.

I spent the better part of my "young" racing career blaming the car when it wouldn't do what I want. Then it finally sunk in that the car has no option but to do whatever I make it do. It is not the car's fault that it crashed, or spun out, or flew off the track and knocked out a 7 year old when it hit him in the mellon. It was my driving, and not understanding the limits of the car. This was compounded by my lack of setup knowledge (and of course at the time I though I knew everything) that kept me from being a more successful racer than I was. If you can't get the car to "work" Maybe the RC10 just isn't for you, you might need a car that is less "cerebral". However, if you can get it to work you will be better for it. -Jeff

[fredswain]

Your use of the word "was" is very appropriate. It was the best. It isn't anymore.

I don't blame my car for my driving ability. It does need some attention but falling apart has nothing to do with my driving ability when my other cars don't fall apart like this. I am working out issues with it to make it reliable as well as improve it's performance. The best it can be is not the way it came in any kit. I am working to make it more forgiving and reliable for today's tracks but no matter what happens the car through design is at an inherent disadvantage. Minimizing that disadvantage while making it stronger is the goal. I did get it halfway reassembled with a few things improved. The car is going to use the RPM world's suspension geometry because it is better than the RC10's own suspension. I am using a graphite chassis but there will be a twist to this one that I'll get into at another point when I get further along with it. When the chassis mods are done it will be far more rigid than any other chassis for this car. It'll actually be pretty trick but it won't be a flat plate. As it sits right now it is looking more and more like a real race car. If I can get it to be reliable, I can make it decently competitive. It may not win but it should do fairly well and look good doing it.

[Lowgear]

I was sitting here tonight looking at RC10's on eBay when a better idea popped into my head. If you want to limit the down travel of your A-arms, you can simply use some sort of limiting straps. Just attach one side to the shock tower and the other to the A-arm.

[Charlie don't surf]

Maybe just utilize internal limited like the rest of the racing world?