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

Two winters ago, my wife and I made the decision to reduce the amount of "extraneous" hobbies in my world and I began selling off most of my R/C collection that had been acquired over the last 25-odd years. In doing that, I would be not only selling off most of the 30+ cars I had acquired, and the corresponding collection of parts, but I also set out to reduce my footprint within my own house. That meant diecast, Hot Wheels, baseball cards, cycling stuff and just about everything else that clutters my shop/office. The goal was to acquire and race real formula cars again with my brother.

Whelp, the R/C stuff was about 90% sold and the race car was acquired, prepped and ready for the first event in late April when I found out that the company I worked for was closing the doors and I would be out of a job. R/C stuff gone, hobbies reduced to racing, and now racing had been axed as well with the car getting sold and delivered last month.

So I dug around in my shop to find one of the two projects that I didn't sell off—bags and boxes an original white RC10 that was to someday be built like my first RC car. Everything was exactly like I left it 6 years ago, like most of the "projects" I had acquired. Dirty, yellowed, disassembled and some of it actually even painted, if you can believe that. But, it was mostly a new car that had never been used, and just suffered from a couple of decades of neglect.

I figured an actual project car was in order. Here's how I get back to the car that first got me started into this long, dark path of RC cars. The object is to build this RC10 as I would have in 1986 or '87, but do it as someone with 25-years of experience, proper tools, skills and know-how to build a real race car. So, using as much as I can that was available to me in the mid 80s, here's my first RC10, all over again.


Here's the original car as it was acquired:





The car had been dusted off and wiped down in those photos, so you can see that there was a good base to start from. The typical dust and dirt of 26-odd years shows, and even as it sits unused, it looked... kinda sad. You can tell that the original owner had a great idea to paint everything Ford engine blue, but the surprise was that it was all black underneath it first! Nuts, bolts, shocktowers, ball ends—you name it, it was painted. Lots of strange build things in this car, like the entire container of Associated black grease in the 6-gear gearbox. Fun.


A few shots of my original RC10 from various stages back in the day...









More soon...

Sorry to hear about your employment place, looks like more and more are feeling the pinch.

On Friday, I was excited to go grab a big bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide to see for myself if the whitening trick really worked for the yellowed and UV-damaged parts. The parts from this car would be a great test, as they were new and unused, but old and aged. If this worked, the car would look as it was when I bought it new in 1984.

So I filled an old pickle jar with the H2O2 and set the jar on the front porch. The next few days were spotted with sunshine and rain, so I was constantly doing a dance of bringing the jar back in the house for safe keeping. Three days of this nonsense and I finally had something that I thought looked successful. After a good chunk in the sun yesterday, I finally had results.



See if you can tell which one is new out of the package, which is off of the original car, and which one was heavily used and aged (it was almost tan to start with). Yup, it works.



So I set out to start building the car up slowly, but taking the time to polish and hand-fit everything perfectly, as I would do with a new kit today. The rear end is first. Eventually, I will build a killer 6-gear, but for now, the MIP SP1 fits the bill, as I ran one of the trend-setting gearboxes about this time. I also ran the car with the gear diff from MIP later on, so this was an accurate item for my car at the time.

I ran dogbones in the car for years, and didn't end up with the orange CSC driveshafts until much later in the 80s, so I decided to keep with the theme and stick to the early parts. In 1985, I had no idea that making a car free and smooth was a key to speed and consistency, so we built the car, raced it as it came out of the box, and when it didn't handle, we jacked the spring collars up and down to see if it worked better—it usually didn't.

I set out to build the drivetrain as smooth and free as possible, which started with the arm mounts, arms and hub carriers getting a full deburring, mating surfaces sanded and smoothed, and a full .1255" reaming of the pin holes. I forgot how soft this old Associated nylon was, and how difficult it was to ream. The rear arms needed some hand sculpting to clear the edge of the chassis on both sides, and now they have full movement without binding. After a few hours of hand-work, I took to polishing the pins up and knocking the sharp edges off of the e-clip slots on the bench grinder's deburring/polishing wheel. Using some .125" motor armature shims of various stack heights, I shimmed the suspension tight, but with perfect free movement. No binds is the key, and it's harder to do than I remembered on this old car.

The outdrive axles were next, getting a lot of hand file work, some more time on the deburring wheel and a little Dremmel handwork to clean up the edges. The dogbones are new and a perfect fit in the axles, so there is no slop and everything is buttery smooth. On the whole, the rear suspension components are all perfect. Fresh bearings, cleaned and degreased, then lightly lubed with trumpet slide valve lube for light resistance and yet some oil in the balls. The drivetrain spins freely and easy, like it should have in 1987.



Rear bulkhead and a new stamped rear shocktower were installed, and while not perfectly accurate to history (the early ones were milled with one top hole), that's not my main goal with this build. The MIP SP1 tranny was installed as was the very lightly anodized early motor plate. Currently a 32p spur is mounted, but that will be swapped out for a 48p Kimbrough piece shortly. Original 4-40 threaded rod tie rods were installed with white ball cups, but those will also be replaced with steel t'buckles on white cups or Parma Heavy Duty rod ends as I raced back then.

Rear tires are original Team Losi Racing Yokomo spikes, and they are mated to a set of NOS jellybean wheels. They don't have the inner liner installed, as I didn't feel that wrestling with a wheel that will really only be on display was a smart thing to do. If it ever hits the track in haste at a vintage gathering, they will be properly installed and built.





Next up, the front end build.

Ruffy wrote:Sorry to hear about your employment place, looks like more and more are feeling the pinch.

Thanks Ruffy. Hearing that news a week before Christmas threw everything upside down. Went from having everything in line to having nothing a sure thing. Started the new business, and it's been a struggle since. Looking for full-time work now, as I don't know how much longer we can keep going like this. At least I have a few boxes of "stuff" left to play with down here in the workshop.

Excellent looking project Doug, like everything else you've built in the past. Sorry to hear about the work situation, hopefully the new business will work out.

Hey, those tires look familiar

Doug,
Great start to what I am sure will be an amazing build. Please keep the pics coming.

No stamp on the chassis ..Right ?

It's an A-stamp chassis.

Sweet

Should be a cool build, dude. It's fun to build replica cars of the ones you've run when a kid.

Great project, looks great so far! I do hope you plan to restore the Ascot at some point too...

you got some race prep dogbones in there?

unless i missed it in reading your thread, i'm not exactly sure if this is being build with all new parts or not. but in regards to the rear tower, i have a pretty nice original style (single hole left and right) rear shock tower that i just pulled off my halsey replica. on jay's car, he added 2 more holes to the inside of the tower on both sides (3 total per side). i already had an old style tower with an other hole added to the inside (like the newer ones). so i figured instead of drilling extra holes in the one on the car, i would just use the one that was already altered.

so what i'm getting at is....... the old style tower i have is yours if you want it.

I would have a hard time taking apart that sprinter but it looks like the parts are going to a good use!

Sold the ASCOT cage last year, and got more than I paid for the whole kit for it alone. Not a bad deal—like getting an original RC10 for free.

Thanks for the offer on the shock tower Jason. I won't need it, as I'm not going for über period correct perfectness. The build is going to be more of an amalgam of the 4-5 years I raced that RC10. My original car hadthe Goodyear tires and single hole towers, as it was one of the first cars from the first year, but this projects will be kind of as the car progressed through the years with me.

And yes, those are Race Prep bones. Good eye.

i have a couple pairs of those race prep dog bones. used..... of course, bent..... of course. they sure are light, though.