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

Been doing some work on the RC10T buggy conversion. I got some "Worlds" buggy shock towers for the front and back. The back just bolted on like usual, but you have to do some filing to get the front to work and the mounting holes don't line up. The upper ball joint arm is in the right place though. Now I ended up with front shocks that are too long, but the rears are just fine. To cope with the long fronts, I turned over the a-arms. If this turns out to work ok, I may just leave it that way, but the plan was to eventually get the right size front shocks.

Found the diff wasn't working properly. Turns out a drive plate was missing, along with one of the balls. Also found that it was all bushings. Since I want to actually run this car, I upgraded to bearings, and also replaced the missing drive plate and ball.

I pulled off the piggyback caps, and then rebuilt the shocks. Not long after found that one of the square "clips" that hold the o-rings in place, popped out on one of the back shocks and bled oil onto the nice table. I really made sure those were popped in there too when I built them too. Hopefully it will stay in this time. If I continue to have issues with that, combined with the wrong size front shocks, I may just break down and get new ones of a different style for all 4 corners.

For anyone who's curious, here's what my old build looked like towards the end of my RC10 era. Taken with a Polaroid camera. I'm surprised at how well that picture has held up over the years.







Hence why I painted my re-re with that paint job:

Starting on the vintage body:

Body is just about done. Still waiting on the wing to come in.......






And then with the new wheels and tires:

DONE! Man I am so frickin stoked to have one like this! Been wanting one for YEARS, and to finally have one, and another built to look like my personal car 20+ years ago, just makes my year. I'm sooo happy. Now I need to restore the Marui Big Bear that it sits next to on the shelf in my office.....

Looks very good!

Looks great!

I'vve now got the RC10T-to-buggy conversion done. I used a front shock tower I found on ebay that allowed the use of long travel shocks AND a buggy style body. No idea who made it, of what it's from, but if it breaks I have some fiberglass to make a copy.

I used a Turbo Mirage body, and threw on some vintage gold pan stickers. Personally I think it came out awesome.

Went outside to get some better pics of the "fleet", since all my indoor ones come out like crap.

It blows my mind that all three of these cars are basically the same, all three use an identical chassis, aside from the gold pan not having stealth tranny holes.

Was talking with a buddy last night about why the RC10 had lasted so long, and is still relevant today, is due to how easy it is to modify. It's a great platform to do whatever you like. So many parts and pieces just bolt right on.

Yesterday was the first time I took the grey RC10T-Buggy out to the track. For a machine that was just cobbled together, and all the settings purely a guess, it handled beautifully. It flies over the jumps reasonably flat, and the long arm suspension soaks up the bumps with ease. The chassis never seemed to get upset.

Only broke one part, the chassis pin block in the rear for the a-arm.

My only complaint was with the castle esc/motor setup, I should be getting more speed out of it, or so I would have thought. It had a 21 took pinion, and was still accelerating by the end of the straight, so I jumped it down to a 17, and it did have more off the line punch, but not nearly what I thought it would. I need to dig into Castles setup program and make some changes.

I've been running the buggy at SRS lately, tuning things here and there. I was having a bad time with the car rolling over on certain corners because of the high-tack clay. Sooo I modified a B5 sway bar kit, and used mounts from another kit. Came out rather good I think, and looks factory if you didn't know RC10's. Adding the sway bar made a HUGE difference in the corners.







I was having issues with bite in corners, and the car was always wheelying when you mashed the gas. Taking a note from that overseas guy who added weight to the front, I did the same. Made some experiments and found a suitable amount. It still wheelies sometimes, but not as bad, and now corners are more predictable.

I then decided to make a front sway bar. While it may look stupid simple, it took me some time, trial-and-error, and playing with different parts and pieces to get something that worked. This is what I ended up with. The bar *just* clears the body. The "mounts", are actually caster blocks that I cut down.







While I haven't tried the new front bar out yet, the weights and rear sway bar allowed me to keep up with the modern buggies, or at least most of them.

People always comment when I take it to the track, about the "vintage buggy", but I think they are surprised at just how fast it goes around the track. Not bad for a 1992 car, eh?

On another note, is it just me, or does everyone else also blow through rear a-arm mounts? Could be the 28 year old plastic or maybe the higher speeds these days, as I don't remember them being a problem 25 years ago, but speeds were much lower, and I wasn't getting pounded by a 6 pound Traxxas Slash either. I have 3 sets on order, since it's the one thing I break most often.

If you are using whitened parts some say they break easier,plus the longer arms can make crashes more violent on the mounts... If you still have trouble with the shock clip blowing out it's usually caused by a small spacer left in there from a previous build,it happens but you can usually spot it during assembly... I had it last week with some shocks but I caught it as soon as i couldn't get it to snap in place an the extra spacer went unnoticed even when cleaning prior to assembly.. Don't know how i missed it i use cotton buds down in there before reassembly an it wasn't easily visible... .Nice bunch of cars mate if you are still breaking the mounts look for the RPM versions on ebay

I've only been using the white arm mounts. I've seen black ones in pictures on the net, but never for sale. Sometimes it's hard to tell if they've been dyed, or if they came black. I'll try to find some RPM ones.

As for the shocks, I haven't had one blow out since that first one a while back.

In the latest issue of RC car action, I noticed that guys are starting to run wings on the front now. It was kinda deja-vu for me, as we used to run them 20-25 years ago. Jconcepts makes one that would bolt directly to my shock towers, but it was ugly. So I found this one that is made for pickups. I used rear wing mounts with the second attachment point cut off, and bolted the mounts to the two holes in the front bumper plate. Everything fit like it was made for it. I went with the stealth look, a few stickers but no paint. We'll see if it helps keep the front end on the ground, hehe.