Team Associated RC10 4WD Part 4
"Body Shaping,Paintwork and Decals"
(Box Art)
Hello fellow RC enthusiasts from around the World and thank you for joining me.
I hope you are all well.
In this post I will be shaping and painting another body shell for the RC10 4WD, but this time I will be painting the colour that is on the box of the buggy. This process is called "box art" as can be seen in the picture below.
Here we go...
First of all I removed the body shell, the rear wing and the rear wing mount as can be seen in the picture above. This will obviously give me access to the nuts and bolts holding the shock towers to the chassis of the car.
I thought I would start with the most difficult to replace first, so I started with the front shock tower first.
To remove the front Dragon Punch shock tower, you need to remove the front tie rods, remove the bottom bolts, unbolt the front gearbox and remove the bolts holding the shock tower to the front gearbox. I also needed to remove the front chassis stiffening rods and unbolt the front shock absorbers from the top mounts. There are quite a few components that need to be removed to unfasten the front suspension tower and took around an hour to complete. once the Dragon punch front shock tower was removed it was simply the reverse procedure to refit the standard shock tower into position.
To replace the rear Dragon Punch carbon fibre shock tower there are simply four bolts to remove and to unbolt the suspension top mounts. Replacing the rear shock tower for the standard shock tower only took 30 minutes.
So after 90 minutes I had replaced both the front and rear Dragon Punch shock towers for the original shock towers provided with the kit.
The picture above shows the RC10 4WD with the original front and rear shock towers in position.
As you can see from the above picture, I have put the Dragon Punch shock towers back in their original packaging ready to sell, as I doubt I will refit them in the future. I originally bought the Dragon Punch shock towers as I was going to fit the Team Associated big bore shock absorbers but after building the car I changed my mind and stayed with the standard shock absorbers.
After the original shock towers were installed, I reinstalled the body shell mounting posts but I'm not sure if I will use them. I have seen many other owners simply using velcro to hold the body in place, so I might do that.
With the car back to it's standard form, I got the new body shell out ready to cut and shape it. The body shell has lovely pronounced cut lines but I can remember cutting the last shell and it needed a lot more modifications to fit on the car. This body shell will be exactly the same so I may omit the body cutting the body post holes for now.
In the picture above, I have cut away a lot of the excess lexan body leaving the trim lines on for now.
With most of the excess cut away, I cut the body shell quite close to the trim lines but there is still a lot of material to cut away. Once I am as close as I dare cut, I will then use the rotary tool to take the trim line off completely.
I have read and seen that the rear shock tower and shock absorbers need extra space so I'm banking on have to take away extra material in that area. The same is true of the front shock tower and shock absorbers.
After a lot more work with the rotary tool, I had removed almost all of the material that I needed to at this point. There is still some lexan plastic to remove from the front (the shock tower) and the rear (the spur gear cover).
After removing the plastic from the front area where the shock tower is, and at the rear where the spur gear cover is, the body shell will now fit to the car, although I think I removed way too much lexan where the spur gear cover protrudes.
The above picture shows how much material I removed from the body shell for the spur gear cover.
Although you can see the chassis at the bottom of the shell in the above picture, the body shell will sit a lot lower when I remove the body posts as I have decided to use velcro to secure the body shell rather than the body posts and clips.
After a lot of sanding with P800 wet and dry sandpaper, the cut lines created by the rotary tool have cleaned up quite well.
I would imagine that I would have to remove some lexan to the let rear of the body shell if I fitted a motor.
The picture above shows a closer view of the rear of the body shell. The bits that are hanging from the body shell are the protective film that covers the body shell and are not pieces of plastic.
I have removed the lexan at the front where the tie rods and the steering linkages come out of the car.
The above picture shows the front of the body shell where I have retained all of the shape of the front lip that tucks in at the front of the car. You will be able to see it better when the car has been painted.
A final look at the side of the bodyshell before I wash and dry it and then fit the window masks.
After washing the body shell with soap and warm water, I started applying the window masks.
The window masks are not a perfect match for the windows and fit in certain areas but not others as can be seen in the picture above.
After a lot of sticking down the masks and peeling them off again, I completed the window masks as best as I could. The frame around the windows is meant to be black but my skills are not good enough to be able to mask that area off so I am painting the whole thing with
PS-19 camel yellow.
Before I started painting with the PS-19, I am spraying around the windows with Tamiya
PS-55 clear coat. This is a technique that RCKicks uses so that you don't get any bleed through of the main paint under the window masks or tape if your using it.
After leaving the clear coat to dry for 30 minutes, I started laying down the camel yellow.
In the picture above, you can see I have put down 4 coats of the PS-19 camel yellow. It is starting to take on that iconic colour now. A lot of people have said to back the camel yellow with PS-5 black, but I'm thinking more along the lines of PS-12 silver, but the silver might make the camel yellow too bright when I actually want it to be a kind of mustard yellow and to darken the yellow.
After some careful thought and enough time for the PS-19 to dry, I decided on the PS-5 black paint to ensure that the camel yellow would take on a deeper colour.
You can see in the above picture that I have tried to keep the coats of black paint to a light dusting but the paint seems to come out too fast.
I also decided to remove the 2 rear window masks so that the yellow is broken up by the black colour. I wanted to do 3 of the windows in black but I decided that 2 was enough.
With the black backing paint sprayed on in an even coat, I let it dry for 2 hours and then I went back to it.
As you can see from the picture above, the black paint has a uniformed finish and is dry enough to remove the window masks. The paint is still quite soft but dry enough to touch.
With the window masks removed, I can see there has been some paint bleed into the windows but not as much as it did with the green body shell. Maybe I should have used more of the clear coat to seal up the window masks a little better.
In the above picture I have removed the protective film from the outside of the shell and the results are pretty good.
I think it came out quite nice!
The black panels at the rear turned out pretty good.
I'll now leave the body shell overnight to let the paint cure before I fit it to the car.
After 24 hours of letting the paint fully dry, I quickly put the freshly painted body shell on the buggy and it looks great. I'm more than happy with the results.
It's looking beautiful!
Now that the body shell is painted, I need to start work on the rear wing.
Above is a picture of the rear wing in the shape it comes in the kit. I need to remove the lexan to get it into shape.
First of all I used my lexan scissors to remove the big parts of the plastic as can be seen in the above picture.
With the excess of the lexan removed with the scissors, I started work with the rotary tool to take off the material down to the trim line.
With the wing that is trimmed down to the line, I used some P800 wet and dry sandpaper to smooth off the rough edges. It took quite a while to smooth it down.
as soon as it was smooth I reamed out the mounting holes and fitted the wing wire with the diamond shaped mounting plastics and fitted it to the car. and it looks quite good.
A view of the wing from the rear of the car.
A view of the wing from the side of the car.
A side view of the car with the wing at the top right of the picture.
Now that the wing is cut and shaped, it's time to paint it up.
The first thing I did with the wing was to wash and dry it thoroughly ensuring that any grease, dust or plastic was removed.
After the wing was washed and dried, I masked up the side that wasn't being painted to protect it from overspray.
Now that the wing was masked up properly, I laid down a light coat of the camel yellow spray paint ensuring the wing was evenly coated.
I left the wing to dry for an hour before I applied the second coat of paint, again ensuring every surface of the ing had a coat of the spray paint.
After applying the third coat of paint, you can see that the colour is starting to look solid and isn't transparent at all. I think another 2 coats will completely solidify the colour as you have to remember that the paint on the wing is not getting backed up with the black paint like the bodyshell.
The above picture shows the wing after 4 coats of the camel yellow paint and it's looking good!
When the paint had dried, I inspected the paint afterwards and decided that 4 coats of paint was enough. After removing the masking tape (pictured above), I was happy with the results and left it to dry a little longer. I think 4 coats is enough as a lot of the wing will be covered with decals.
Whilst I still had the painting box out, I decided to give the lights a coat of black paint. I left them on the parts tree so it would make painting them a little easier. The above picture show the lights before painting them.
And this picture above shows the lights after 1 coat of paint.
The picture above shows the lights after the second and final coat of paint.
With the wing now dry, I couldn't wait to put it on the car and get the whole effect!
And it's looking quite good. The wing and the body shell aren't perfect, but I tried my hardest and they came out not too bad at all.
I still have to drill some holes in the body shell to fit the lights, but I'll drill the holes once the decals are applied.
Time to start applying the decals...
Using some soapy water to help me, I started with what I deemed to be the hardest to apply first, the rear decal. I thought (and rightly so) this would be the hardest as there isn't any reference of where to apply it, so I made an estimation from the picture on the box.
Then I applied the next hardest decal which was the long stripe down the side. The stripe kind of twists as it follows the shape of the body contour down to where the cut out for the front suspension sits. It took me a couple of attempts to place the decal but removing it was easy with the soapy water applied to the rear of the sticker.
The next one to be applied was the lower white decal at the bottom of the body shell. This was quite an easy sticker to apply as the bottom of the body shell was a guide to where the decal should be applied.
And then the other side was affixed.
Next to go on was the AE symbol and then the "Reedy Modifieds" decals.
And then the other side was applied.
I then applied the "TEAM ASSOCIATED 10" sticker at the bottom as well as the window netting decal.
I then did the other side but I had problems at first with the window netting which took me 3 attempts to get right, but with the soapy water it was easy to peel off the decal and then to re-apply it.
I next applied the tricolour straight sticker just below the front window. Over the top of that I first applied the white "TEAM ASSOCIATED" and then the "Reedy Modifieds" decals.
Next to go on was the number 10 decal, which is actually a 3 piece graphic which was quite a challenge trying to get all 3 pieces straight. There is a small mistake between the 2 halves of the zero but it was the best I could get.
At the front of the body shell I placed a Team Associated decal as it is on the box the car came in.
The last 2 decals that I could find on the box was the black air intake stickers. This one on the left,
and this one on the right.
That was all of the decals I could identify from the box so I kind of freestyled the rest of the decals on the rest of the car and on the rear wing as can be seen from the following pictures.
With all the decals I could identify on the box placed on the car, I was almost finished with attaching the decals. I'll check the web to see if I can find and identify anymore soon.
A view from the rear of the car.
And a view of the other side of the car.
The only thing left to do now is fit the spotlights to the car but I think I'll leave them for the minute.
Well my dear readers, that is the Team Associated 4WD complete. I hope you have enjoyed reading the posts on this car and maybe learned a little from my mistakes and the information I have gathered along the way.
Hopefully I will have another project to share with you at Christmas time, so until then please take care and continue to enjoy your hobby.
catxls.com 2026
22/10/2026
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