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(gonna type this in phases, please be patient)

(B1M part starting on page4)

Hi guys

Here’s the story of my newly finished OIN… yeah, I know I’m late to the party, as usual, since the NIX’es of this world and other re-re’s have pretty much put to bed the whole OIN concept together, but let’s see if we can still share some valuable info here

I bought this car on the forum a few years back in the middle of the OIN craze, with the idea of making it a (gentle) beater. It has the whole package, B4 top shaft (with V1 slipper though), some cool nylon arms (not sure whether Jake’s or Dynothechs), RPM steering, RPM rear hubs, Tecna’s, 10T front tower/bulkhead/shocks, B4 (or B44?!?) CVD’s, B4 front hubs/carriers and probably some more which I’m forgetting about

The body was pretty cool – a plain jane Protech that had received a CWF-like vinyle cover. Actually very neat, and unusual looking, but top-heavy, and invisible on the track (black isn’t a great racing body color choice)

I parked the car in the to-do pipeline and went on to other RC (and non RC… priorities), with the intent to make it a backyard beater one day… and pretty much forgot about it

Fast-forward to fall 2017. We have an indoor racing series for the winter season, the SIORC (Swiss Offoad Indoor Championship) here, with 4 indoor carpet races over the winter. At the end of the past season in spring 17, I had sold my Xray XB2 as I badly wanted to race a B6 for the 17/18 winder. As the calendar came out in september, it appeared I wouldn’t be able to run 2 out of the 4 races. This, and the fact that we all expect AE to release a B6.1 after the worlds, there was no way I would buy a brand new spanking kit and needed hop-ups to do just two races… What would I run, then?!?

You guessed it, the OIN I then take it off the stash of project cars, and off to work I am!

Let’s put the moose on the table first – if you’re the one who sold me this car many moons ago, can I respectfully tell you this thing was poorly assembled AND poorly maintained. The whole suspension was binding (not enough clearance between arms and mounts), some of the axles were corroded and there was no way the parts would move around them, the shocks mounts were crushed to the max and binding the suspension further while adding hysteresis, the diff was crunchy as heck, slipper pars were glazed and so on so forth…

So it was time for disassembly, restoration/replacement, and rebuild...

(to be continued)

In the aftermath of the photobucket disaster, I haven't taken that many pics, to be honest... Just too much work for too little reward. Then my "rc10talk corporate citizen" spirit took over again, so I started shooting, but a lot of the early phases are missing.

First after disassembly: working on the suspension. That's the soul of an offroader, and especially in 2wd, it has to be absolutely faultless. When I bought the car, it was faulty as hell Everything was binding, some of the turnbuckles had been screwed so far in the ballcups that the 'buckles were sticking out "inside" the ball cup, some of the axles were totally corroded. Net - there was no way this would run properly as-is. Again, if you're the former seller, I can't believe you actually managed to complete one lap with this poor thing
Here you can see the car without transmission... but with the suspension rebuilt already (although still some work to be done on the shocks, more of this later.

Basically this means filing the excess plastic on the arms so there is some clearance agains the rear arm holders and the front Bulkhead - without removing too much material otherwise there is too much slop. This means assembling, testing, disassembling, filing, assembling, testing, disassembling, filing, assembling...

Also, polishing the shaft to a newly found mirror finish (auto polish + dremel adjustable chuck work wonders) was needed as well as replacing the ballcups... I also had to cut some of the tecna's - dremel + cutting disc - as they were too long. Remember to wear eye protection, because when a disc snaps, it explodes in bits that typically hit the user's face In the end, the suspension has to fall under its own weight. Of course, when you hold the chassis flat, it does... the true test is to do it while holding the chassis vertically. If the suspension is properly built, it should move to one side or the other as soon as one tilts the chassis in the slightest way.

Next is the transmission.

Again, the diff was such a poor thing. It was both crunchy as hell as well as slipping like crazy. This can only mean one thing: the thrust grease had gone to the main balls. Time for a full rebuild. The kicker was that the diff rings, which were shot beyond recovery, had been glued to the diff outdrives (which are in surprisingly good shape, at last!). That means, off to the acetone bath.

Being lazy, I rebuild the diff fully with new parts but the outdrives - the good news is, most parts are still widely available. I used all the tricks I know to build a killer diff - the old stealth is one of the best diffs in the business, when done the right way it is smooth as hell as well as long-lasting. What a design! With Kyosho ball diff lube (the best I've ever found, came in my RB6 kits, still have some leftovers as I had two at some point), AE black grease, 1000 grit sandpaper, AE carbide balls, some generic ceramic thrust balls, and the right tightness, this diff means business. New idler gear, new spur, new pads. Unfortunately I dont have V2 discs, so the V1 slipper will have to do until I can buy the other parts.
Then for no reason, I started "working" on the body. As mentionned earlier, it was covered in CWF-style vinyle - useless at the track. I peeled it off, and it was a b!tch, really.
Surprise, below the vinyle, it's green. At least that's race-able, but I have a good buddy on this forum (hint: he JUST won the BOTM contest) who has promised me a painted Protech to race that instead... Still waiting, mon ami

After lots of torn fingernails and bleedy fingertips (vinyle sticks well!), we have a proper body, pics are coming soon below.

The next step is, how to get those standard 12mm hex Schumacher minipins pre-mounts on the car?

The answer I used is:

JC front axles:
https://www.amainhobbies.com/jconcepts-b4-12mm-hex-conversion-front-axle-set-jco2169/p238503


SC10RS Steering blocks:
https://www.amainhobbies.com/team-associated-hex-steering-block-set-sc10rs-asc9880/p209659


AE front clamping hexes:
https://www.amainhobbies.com/team-associated-12mm-aluminum-front-clamping-wheel-hex-set-blue-2-asc9891/p236852


AE rear clamping hexes... to be honest, there's a variety of them, wasn't sure which ones to use given I didn't know which UJ's were on my car, I randomly picked these and hoped for the best:
https://www.amainhobbies.com/team-associated-factory-team-b44-12mm-narrow-rear-clamping-hexes-2-asc9925/p263582


After some fiddling with washers thickness and positions, various nut profiles and stuff, the car then looks like this:
(TBC'ed)

Aah... an interesting thread to read

I never thought to much on how free the suspension arms should be. If they flopped up and down, I moved on. Now I'm going back and spend some more time on them.

Suspension freedom is utter key in RC racing... especially if you only have 2 wheels to pass the power to the floor through! But the old RC thinking that only the rear end matters tends to be a bit obsolete as you will read on a about a bit later

Next step is the electronics.

The idea was to reuse existing RC gear rather than buy new one. Given that I'd only race it twice AND that it would likely be uncompetitive, no point blowing $250 in top-of-the-line electronics... But I'd race it and I can't be bothered with truing comms during raceday these days, so it has to be brushless and given I had two shorties sitting idle, it'd run on shorties.

So I recycled my old trustworthy Hobbywing Xtreme Stock as controller. It's basically a 60A version of the V2.1 from 5 or 6 years ago, but with a smaller footprint and a better cooling system. This one has had several lives in my racecars already (DTM and 2wd OR) and I knew it'd be up to the business, so off to the soldering iron for recabling it goes. A mockup assembly shows it fits under the bulkhead, so that's perfect for inline shorty placement.

Next is the motor - this is a non-adjustable Turnigy (read: hobbyking) 8.5T, sensored. Again, it's beenraced in the past in 2wd, the powerband is wide, it's not a thorougbred but it does just well in 2wd... and it's paid for already. Ticks all boxes, then
Servo. I've always hated how servos are mounted on RC10's, the way the servo link is aschew drives me crazy.

A cool (and in my mind, the best) solution is to mount a lo-profile servo vertically, but it doesn't fit under the buggy body. It does work wonders on the RC10T, though:
So I had to settle for doing something which i HATE doing, i.e. drilling a B-stamp chassis (yes, I know it pains you too...)

(TBC'ed)

I really like where you're going with this. I keep promising myself that I will build a OIN one of these days; I just need a set of front arms. Anyway, in the 3rd installment of your saga, you are singing the praises of the AE Stealth gear box and it reminded me of one of my own.
I won a well used vintage Stealth from ebay a couple years back. As soon as I opened the package, I could tell this thing has seen better days; this thing was a mess! Time to rebuild. I cracked-open the case and disassembled the diff but I couldn't find any of the main diff balls - just empty holes. How could this thing function without diff balls?? So I began scraping the layers of old grease from the gear (there was a ton of grease) and found the missing balls; they had completely embedded themselves into the gear adjacent to the holes. All of the balls were present, they'd just been relocated from their original residences. I used the point of a scribe to pry them out. You've probably seen this happen before. Apparently, the diff had been run loose (a lot) causing the balls to heat and they simply melted into the gear. So, lacking a set of replacement balls and gear, I decided to clean everything up, install a new set of rings, reassemble and run it while I wait for the parts to arrive. The diff is trash so what harm can I do running it? Well, life moves on and I never got around to installing the new parts and today that tranny is still in my graphite lightweight runner and it is the smoothest and quietest Stealth I have. The diff still spins freely and it doesn't slip while running my usual 10.5 on 2s.
Anyway, thought I'd share that little anecdote. I'm really looking forward to the next installment of your saga...

Interesting story. you now have a bespoke design diff gear!

The stealth diff and tranny in general is the world's 8th wonder in my books!

So - servo. In 2017 you can get some crazy servo performance, both from a torque and speed p.o.v., even in a lo-profile package.

I recycled my Sanwa ERS971 from my Xray: 0.09s/60 deg, 9kg.cm, plenty enough for a 2wd, and low-profile so the servo link can be close to straight... but this means drilling the B-stamp. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do:


and countersinking... very manual as you can see!
Old-school RPM servo mounts... spoiler alert: some cutting will be needed!
because otherwise it hits the front plate, but that was planned - wanted the servo as far front and right as possible!

Honestly guys, that f*n attachment interface is a total PITA and totally discouraging me to properly "build" a topic...

Final holes. Method used: trial and error
Now with the servo and electronics fitted (skipped a few steps here...)
And now with everything, including a funky-looking and thermo-formed antenna wire, a pure-80's fluo pink KO servo horn, a not-too-pretty battery bar maintaining system (cut M3 threaded rod...) that allows to recycle a bastardized white battery half-box, and then some:

(more to come)

A very talented forum member whose lathing skills are primo kindly sent me this:
me thinks it looks lovely!
(thank you again!)

Car is now done... I was expecting a good looking body from an aforementioned forum member, but it hadn't come yet, so I stickered the crap out of that green body - although not concours material, the result isn't too bad, this is a pic taken during raceday:

Personally, I think that stickered green body looks fantastic. I would not be ashamed to run that one bit. Anyway, a great build overall.

Very nice, I love it!

XLR8 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2017 2:33 pm Personally, I think that stickered green body looks fantastic. I would not be ashamed to run that one bit. Anyway, a great build overall.

I agree... except for the upside down AE (EA?) logo

Well when he does a flip it will be right side up fo a short time!

Ucsdmutt wrote: ↑Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:30 pm Well when he does a flip it will be right side up fo a short time!

If he drives like me it would be right side up most of the race. Hmm maybe I should do this with all my decals on my race bodies.