when i was in 6th or 7th grade, there was a local hobby shop in my town that had the typical tamiyas on display, but they also had one, single rc10 converted to a sprint car. i went down there all the time after school and just stood there at the counter gawking at it. it got so bad the owner kicked me out. i remember just being overwhelmed by that sprintcar, i drew pictures of it, dreamed of having it, and just really really wanted one, i even tried to make a model of one out of clay in art class...
anyway, after pestering my mom to no end, i got a #6010 rc10 for christmas my 8th grade year. i remember trying to put it all together that night but not having a dad around (who could have helped me or at least would have had tools i could use) i only got so far before i needed some help from somebody who had access to more than a butterknife and some visegrips.
so, with some help from my moms much younger boyfriend at the time i had the rc10 up and running in a few days. it BLEW AWAY all the other kids rc's in the nieghborhood right out of the box. my buddies mugen bulldog was no comp, my other friends tamiya brat was a joke compared to the rc10, and i very much remember racing this kid who had a hornet with some famed technicolor motor in it who thought it was the fastest thing around. there was alot of smack talk in school about who would win, and the day when we raced them down the street my little stock rig blew the doors off that hornet with just about every kid in town as a witness. to this day its still one of my proudest moments.
but being a very poor kid of a hard-working single mother, i didnt have alot of resources or knowledge on maintaining the little guy and i simply couldnt afford normal bashing costs and really didnt know how to properly maintain it, and pretty soon it was beat up and neglected... about a year later traded it for an '87 haro sport freestyle bike. (pretty good trade, i still wish i had that bike). then came my 16 birthday, and my real car and all those girlies i could give rides in it were all i thought about.
anyway, flash forward to about 7 years ago. i had just started a career in advertising and finally started making money. one day i found out about ebay, and for some reason typed in 'rc10' in the ebay search...
i ended up getting back into the hobby with an rc10gt i bought off ebay. the black tub version loaded with mip hopups. not knowing anything about gas rigs it took me a good week of yanking on the pull start after work to just get the darn thing going, but after that initial putter putter WHAAAA!!!! of the engine i figured things out pretty fast. i bought another rc10gt, and bashed the both of them for a summer before i started thinking of the older electric rc10s like i had when i was younger.
anyway, after i got used to the gas powered gt's i started thinking about getting an older buggy again to convert into a sprint car like the one i used to obsess over.
after quite awhile of searching ebay for parts, i put this together:
and while the gt's brought me back into the hobby, it was really building the sprint car, and the nurturing of my inner child as a result, that got me so into the old buggies again. funny thing is i havent driven a buggy since that first one i got way back in the 8th grade. i'll buy one off ebay with the intentions of making it a runner but soon after i get it cleaned up to my satisfaction i shelve it and start looking for another ebay 'runner'...
). imet up with a guy who got me into dirt oval racing in 1991. i bought a jrxt and ran in the truck class. i raced all over eastern pa and a few tracks in nj. while racing the truck, all of the edm drivers had rc10s. i always wanted to run with the big boys. they were always so fast and smooth. i would always love corner marshalling for them. seeing a pack of 8 or 10 of them going through the corners with the back ends hangin out was just awesome to me. so, i just had to get one. after a year of good sucsess in the truck class, i bought a rc10 graphite team car, still got this one too. i raced the car in pretty much stock form up until about 94-95. at that time, i bought a raborn lto chassis for it. then in 99, i retired the car from its racing duty and i built a kranzels terminator rc10 conversion. i got a gold chassis from a friend of mine a few years ago. i built it up with parts i have accumulated over the years. just waiting to build up another trans, and i'll have a good runner. this one is gonna be a buggy. i have never ran an rc10 as a buggy, so it'll be fun 
