Team Associated RC10 4WD Part 2
"The Build"
Hello fellow RC enthusiasts from around the World. I hope you are well.
Welcome to the build of the Team Associated RC10 4WD.
I know I said I was waiting until Christmas until I started the build but unfortunately I couldn't wait any longer LOL, I am far too excited to wait.
I have been ordering some upgrade parts for the car including (this list will change and increase as we go along) some Punch Dragon carbon fibre shock towers and a new rear wing bracket which was originally designed for the RB6 (I think). I am also thinking of buying the chassis stiffening upgrades and the big bore suspension upgrades just incase I race this buggy. However, both of these upgrades are quite expensive so they may be done after the car is built.
This post will be updated after every build section as I will not be doing the build within a day, so please keep coming back for further updates...
OK let me begin...
I also took the small bag of tools out of the box.
The instruction manual also stated that I will need the iconic gold pan to start the build so I got that from the box.
The build of the car also requires some locktight, of which I have got from another kit.
I put the contents of bag "A" inside of the chassis pan and familiarized myself with both the parts and page 5 on the manual.
Having studied the parts from bag "A" and the manual, I was happy to go ahead.
Above is a picture of the ball studs, bolts, bearings and washers required for steps 1 and 2.
Above is a picture of step 1 complete with the nose of the chassis connected to the gold pan. I have also attached the body post with the bolt and 3 washers as required in step 1. The 2 bolts that connect the nose of the chassis and the gold pan have been fixed in place with the application of lock tight. Step 1 is now complete.
Above is a picture of the parts required in step 2.
Step 2 requires the insertion of the 4 bearings into the plastic arms as you can see above.
Above is a picture of the ball studs inserted into the arms as per the instructions in step 2. This is when I ran into the first problem. Although the kit is supplied with some hex keys, none of them fit the ball studs, so I had to find a hex key in my tools which fitted them. Once I had found a suitable hex key, I inserted the ball studs as described in step 2.
With the bearing and the ball studs fitted to the arms, the instructions describe the fitting of the arms to the chassis. This is when I ran into another problem. The ball stud is too long and will not let the steering arm travel (as can be seen in the picture above(sorry about the quality of the image)) across the chassis.
The picture above shows that the right hand (or the top arm in the picture above) arm cannot move over the chassis. I am going to have to remove the arms. The left (or bottom arm in the picture also has ball studs that are too long but this arm can actually move. In both cases the ball studs will drag across the gold pan chassis and scratch it. The solution to the problem will be to remove both of the arms and grind away the excess length of the ball stud. Whilst watching videos of other people building this buggy, I was made aware of this problem and had prepared myself to run into the problem however, I did not expect the ball studs to be as long as I have found. To be honest, I find this error/mistake quite unacceptable considering the cost of the kit. You would not find this kind of error with the likes of a Schumacher or a Kyosho kit.
The ball studs (picture above) after they had been on the grinding wheel and being relieved of the excess metal. Once the excess material had been removed from the ball studs, I once again installed the steering arms back onto the gold pan chassis, this time without the ball studs catching the iconic gold pan chassis.
With bag "A" now complete (except for the turnbuckle) I could now turn my full attention back to the rest of the build.
Now I am instructed to open bag "B" (pictured above).
Now with bag "B" open, I removed the parts containing the diffs shown above.
Above you can see the ball diff carbide balls and the diff centre shaft. I have already greased the centre shaft thrust bearings with the black grease.
With the parts for the ball diffs removed from the parts bag I followed step 1 as shown in the picture below.
Steps 1 to 3 (above) of the diff assembly shown in the manual.
In the picture above you can see how I inserted the carbide differential balls.
After following steps 1,2 and 3, I had fully completed the front and rear differentials.
At the end of building the ball differentials, there is a part in the manual (above) that describes how to set up the differentials to allow for different handling characteristics. I set a tighter front differential in comparison to the rear differential which will result in there being more "on power" to the front wheels during cornering and giving better steering under power.
The next stage is assembling the front transmission
Following step 1 and 2 of the manual (above), I built up the front transmission
The picture above shows the front transmission.
Pages 8 and 9 below shows the build sequence of the rear transmission
and
The rear transmission (shown below) before installing the slipper clutch.
The picture below shows the rear transmission with the slipper clutch and flywheel installed.
Please note:- There are shims on the inside of both the front and rear transmissions and are inserted as per the video shown here
Now that both the front and rear transmissions are complete (shown above), I can now move on with the build.
I am now instructed to open bag "C"
Step 1, 2 and 3 of bag "C" are complete as shown in the picture above. In all the excitement I forgot to take pictures of the stages.
Once again I forgot to take pictures of steps 4, 5, 6 and 7 shown above and below!!
After the front suspension build (bag "C") up to step 7, I am instructed to open bag "D".
The following pictures are the completion of bag "D"
Bag "D" is now complete.
Bag "E" and bag "F" are now complete but I have made a mistake with the hub carriers and I will have to turn them around.
After swapping the hub carriers around, bags "E" and "F" are now complete.
After noticing the the front hub carriers were on the wrong sides, I wondered how many other mistakes I had made on the build, so I went right through the car checking all parts. I was confident that the diffs and that the front and rear gear boxes were put together correctly. I was also happy that they were fitted into the car correctly, but I wasn't happy with the turnbuckles and the way the front and rear arms were at different droops on either side. The arms on the rear were also not articulating properly, so I replaced most of the ball cups on the turnbuckles and remeasured them. It turns out that most of the measurements on the steering and the top arm turnbuckle were way out of specification and needed significant adjustment. I spent a couple of hours measuring and replacing a lot of the turnbuckle ball caps until they measured what the manual specified and were moving without being bound up. I ended up using all of the spare turnbuckle ball caps so I had to order some spare ones just in case I take the car racing. The car's turnbuckles of the steering and suspension are now well within tolerance as per the specification in the manual.Happy days!!
I am now completely up to specification upto and including bag "F". Bag "G", is making up the shock assemblies , however I think I am going to install the new carbon fibre shock uprights before I start building up the shock assemblies.
Above is a picture of the new front carbon fibre shock tower which is designed for the big bore shock conversion.
Above is a picture of the new rear carbon fibre shock tower.
A picture of the new rear wing mount which (as I stated earlier in the post) is from the Team Associated B6. Using the above parts, the kit will not use the wire wing mount and will also mean that I will have to cut the bodyshell in a different place and will cut off the part of the bodyshell that covers the rear transmission but I will get to that in part 3 of this series on the RC10 4WD.
In order to fit the dragon punch shock tower, I had to remove the original shock tower. The means I have to unbolt the front transmission as can be seen above and below.
With the front transmission unbolted, the original shock tower was removed as can be seen above.
With the new Dragon Punch shock tower in place, I tightened the bolts of the transmission in place and double checked they were tight. You can see in the picture above that I hadn't fully tightened the front transmission so I tightened them further and rechecked all the bolts.
With the new Dragon Punch shock tower in place at the front, it was time to replace the rear shock tower. The above picture shows that I have removed the original shock tower ready to accept the new rear Dragon Punch shock tower.
The new rear Dragon Punch shock tower being readied with the suspension mount bolts.
With the new rear shock tower in place, I had to remove the rear body post as the new shock tower will be holding the new rear wing mount and the body post will fowl the rear wing mount.
The picture above shows the original shock towers and the rear body post that I have removed. I also removed the wire wing mount posts as they are not now needed as the rear shock tower will now hold the rear wing mounts.
The picture above shows the rear shock tower in place and the deletion of the rear body post as well as the removal of the wire wing mount alloy tubes.
The picture above shows both the front and rear Dragon Punch shock towers in place and every bolt tightened and rechecked.
the picture above shows the alloy wire wing tubes and the rear body post that I removed.
It was now time to start bag "G", which is the suspension assemblies.
With bag "G" at hand I opened it up and laid out the shock absorber shafts with the pistons.
The pistons were then fixed to the shaft with E-clips as can be seen below.
I then laid out the shock absorber seals in the order that they must be fitted into the shock body.
Using the special tool supplied in the kit, I loaded the seals onto it in the correct sequence and then pushed the tool into the shock body thus loading the shock body with the seals.
The next job was to put some spacers onto the shock shafts which can be seen above. These spacers limit the shock travel and ensure the piston doesn't travel too far.
Next I put some shock oil on the shaft of the piston and inserted it into the shock body, then I screwed on the ball cup onto the end of the piston threads.
With all four shock absorbers at the same stage, it was time to add the shock oil.
The rear shocks were filled with 35WT oil and the front shocks filled with 50WT oil.
After filling the shocks with oil, I pushed the piston up and down to remove any air that was trapped in the shock absorber. You can see the air bubbles coming to the top of the oil in the picture above. This step was repeated for all four shock absorbers.
After the air was expelled from the shock absorbers, I fitted the adjustment collars, the spring and the bottom caps as can be seen above.
Once the shock absorber assemblies were complete, I started to fit them to the car as can be seen above.
The picture above shows all four shock absorbers fitted to the car. The shock absorbers move freely and they have a very smooth action upon depression. The car is looking good but there is a problem that I will show you later on in the post.
Onto bags "H", "I" and "J"
I am combining bags "H", "J" and "I" because they are big parts as you can see from the above bag.
The chassis front stiffening bars above were a real pain to fit as you need to flex the chassis to make the bolts fit. They took me an age to get the chassis in the right position and to fit the bolt with just two hands.
In the picture above you can see that I have fitted the battery box.
I decided to fit a steering servo to the car as the parts for fitting were in bag "I" and it was open so I went ahead and fitted it to the car.
In the picture above you can see that the driveshaft is just about to pop out even though I fitted more spacers than the manual specified. This little problem is something I need to revisit at a later date and I will update this post.
Conclusion
Now that I have finally finished building the car, I can reflect on the build, the manual and the parts. I can say in all honesty, I didn't enjoy building this car. Not because it was a challenge but because of the fitment of parts, the mix of metric and imperial bolts and the lack of detail in the manual. I made some mistakes and I take full responsibility for those but the manual could have offered more technical advice. The manual didn't mention anything about the shims in the front and rear transmissions, just a bag of shims in the box labeled with a QR code. I don't want to sound negative but it's hard not to be when you spend a few hundred pounds on a car that just isn't ready to be sold to the public. Team Associated should have ironed out all these problems before they released the kit. I was so looking forward to building this car that I started building it early as I was supposed to be keeping it for Christmas. I'm so pleased I didn't keep it until Christmas as it would have ruined my holiday!
Now I'm not the only one to have gripes with the car. There are many known builders on youtube that have had the same issues and they have said the same as me. Some people had parts missing from the kit, some bolts should have been longer etc etc...
The only good thing I can pick out on this car are the shock absorbers, they are smooth and made of good materials.
On the other hand, I have seen people that love the Team Associated cars and have enjoyed building them. Maybe it's just the RC10 4WD. I know one thing for sure, that I won't be buying any other Team Associated cars. Yes it's a strong statement but I feel like I have wasted £261 plus the cost of the suspension uprights which were £36. I wish I had waited and bought a Kyosho Javelin.
One thing I will enjoy about this kit is the cutting, shaping and painting of the bodyshell.
With my rant/conclusion over, I will try to forget about the building of this car and once the shell is painted, I will put the car on the shelf and move onto my next project.
The Fixes
Rather than just leave the car as it is, I am going to try a couple of fixes that other owners have used with success. The first fix is to move the blue spacer from the outside of the rear hub to the inside of the hub carrier. This apparently pulls the drive shaft in a couple of millimeters. The second fix is to use the shortened ball cups on the shock absorber ends. This fix shortens the travel of the suspension and stops the driveshaft popping out. The third fix is to increase the length of the spacer inside of the shock absorber, again this limits the droop of the suspension.
Here we go...
FIX 1
The pink arrow in the picture above shows the original position of the blue spacer. The red arrow shows the new position of the blue spacer.
The new position of the blue spacer has indeed pushed the dogbone on the driveshaft further into the outdrive and the movement of the driveshaft has indeed improved.
FIX 2 & 3
The second and third fix are easier done together.
First of all I removed the rear shock assemblies
With the shock absorbers removed from the car I removed the ball cups from the bottom of the shock absorber piston, then I opened the shock absorber up and drained all of the shock oil back into it's container.
With the oil drained from the shocker, I then removed the ball cup from the end of the shock piston and then I removed the piston.
I cut two equal pieces (one for each shock absorber) of nitro fuel tubing to use as a spacer which will go onto the shock absorber piston. The pieces were cut into 9mm lengths. You must also remember I had already placed 9mm of nitro tubing onto the piston during the initial build of the shock absorbers, so adding another 9mm gives a total of 18mm limitation to the travel of the shock absorber.
You can see from the above picture that I have added a further 9mm of tubing to the shock piston, giving a total of 18mm.
I then inserted the piston back into the shock body, refilled it with oil and replaced the cap. I did this for both the rear shock absorbers.
With both shock absorbers refill with oil, I then replaced the ball cups with the shorter type which were supplied with the kit. The shorter ones are 2mm shorter than the ones I initially used as can be seen below.
The shorter ball cups are at the top of the picture. Now that the shock absorbers were filled with oil, I then screwed on the smaller ball cups and then replaced the spring over the shock absorber.
With the shock assemblies now built back up, I fitted them onto the car as can be seen above.
The picture above shows that the dog bone of the driveshaft fitting inside the outdrive a lot more after fixes 2 and 3, albeit at the expense of 20mm of shock absorber travel but at least now the driveshaft no longer click when moving nor will they pop out at full droop of the shock absorber.
Yes it's a bit of a bodge job but these are the fixes that experienced Team Associated guy's use and if they are good enough for them, then the fixes must resolve the dreaded driveshaft popping out issue. I owe a huge thank you to Bob over at Hot Track RC and his Team Associated RC10 4WD:Full Mechanical Build video. If it weren't for his expertise, I would have thrown my RC10 4WD in the trash. If you are going to build your own RC10 4WD then I strongly advise you watch the above detail video as it will save you time and your sanity.
Please join me again soon were I will be attempting to fit an RC10 B4 rear wing mount to my RC10 4WD.
Until then please take care and continue to enjoy your RC hobby.
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