Old RC10, looking to rebuild.

[decontstructor]

Hello all, I'm new to the forums and this is my first post here... It's been probably 18 years since I last enjoyed the hobby. I now have an 11 y/o son that is interested in getting a car now. This made me go out to the garage and open a box to get out THE RC10 GRAPHITE Late 1990-91. This has the ball bearings but is the model before the stealth transmission came out. I thought I had the stealth transmission but in a recent trip to the hobby shop I found out I've got the older style transmission.

I am looking at getting my old RC10 to work and I am completely overwhelmed by all the new technology since I last had this car out. When I was younger I used to bash this car very regularly and launch it off of skate board ramps. I did horrible things to this RC car and i NEVER broke anything on it. I did add the front bumper to protect the front wheels when it didn't land right and started to do cartwheels, lol. I also raced it on a local track. I had a lunchbox that was my first "real" RC car and I took that to the track once too. Everyone was sooo annoyed cuz that giant truck was always in the way.

I am thinking about getting my son a 2 wheel drive RC10, I'm hearing the short track trucks are taking over and I'll probably end up getting him one of those. For myself I was looking at the RC10 44.1 because I always wanted 4 wheel drive. Before I sink money into my end of the hobby I thought it would be fun to restore my old car and get it running again. I've been to two of my local hobby shops... One said to sell it on eBay, he was a grumpy old guy and has issues with team associated for some reason. the other was just as excited as I was about restoring it and I've bought the parts so far to get the rolling chassis ready for electronics.

Fixing the chassis up for me is the easy part. I've got my old electronics but I have no clue if any of them still work or not, I will be finding that out shortly. I am interested in getting new electronics that would be worth using not only in this car but when I buy a new kit I'd like to put the electronics in the new car and slowly buy the parts to keep the vintage RC10 running.

So, I really hope this isn't too long of a post... Now that u've had a little history these are my major questions. What in the world should i put in this car? Should I rebuild my old motor and use it? Would the old style transmission be able to handle lipo's and a brushless motor? Is this worth rebuilding? While rebuilding this I am going to completely take the car apart and rebuild it. I've gotten new A arms (I hope that's what they are called) and ball cups to replace the rusted out ones. Does anyone have any more suggestions I should do before putting new electronics into it? Thank you all in advance for reading this. I did upload 4 pics of the ol' beast and I'm hoping they upload properly with this post, if not I'll make sure to add them afterwards. I've always been a forums troll reading everything I could to learn as much as possible, but in the last week I've actually posted two things both related to this car. Thank you again and I'm really excited to hopefully be able to drive this again. I had a ton of fun with it before and I'm looking at learning as much as possible to pass this passion on to my son.

[Charlie don't surf]

Welcome to 10talk!! Pic size upload max is 1024 x 760 do if they are bigger you will have to resize. Your 6 gear tranny will handle brushless just fine and something like a takeout RTR eBay system can be had cheap. Sounds like you are ready to do some restoring!

[decontstructor]

Thank you for the info on resizing. I would love to know what I should or shouldn't put into this car. Electronics wise...

[Charlie don't surf]

It will handle anything if the tranny is well built. But most people gave been keeping it in the 13.5 range for a motor, and a moderate lipo like a 5000 25c. Looks Sharp!

[decontstructor]

It had a really pink paint job before, my father had painted it to look like a Kyle Petty stock car. Now that I've gotten out of the box again I had to make it OD green... I'm in the army and for some stupid reason everything looks better to me in OD green. lol...

[CON2]

I like the matt look might try it!

[Lonestar]

Welcome Nice story!

Regarding your electronics, the one thing that you will need to buy anyway is a new battery, the pack you might still maybe still delivers some voltage, but it is probably 50% of the potential of anything recent. The latest proven technology is LiPo (Lithium-Polymer), which delievers an incredible perfiormance edge vs. the NiCd (discontinued for eco reasons) or NiMH (still manuf'ed), is more robust, does not require complex cycling sequence to remain in top shape, but does require a lipo specific charger. You will find tons of rumors and vids of lipos catching fire, lipos don't like to be molested or they ignite, but in 99.99% they do so because of a human mistake (typically using the wrong charger or the wrong charging mode).

For mills, you can go brushless or brushed - buying brushed would be a bit crazy in 2011, it's like buying a car on steam engine Brushless is more or less maintenance-free, and there are some fantastic inexpensive entry-level combo's that will blow the pants away of 95% of way more expensive brushed engines.

What I'd do if I were you atm is keep the brushed (yummy) Cam mill and whatever ESC you have, get someone to recondition your mill (lathe, new brushes, cleanup that'll set you back $10 maybe), buy a $40 lipo pack (you will need to be smart and ask around on the forum to see what fits in the graphite chassis) and a $40 charger and run it like that for the time being. Then if your son and you get hooked, you can "upgrade" to brushless (count $70 for a good little entry level system) later on

Welcome again

Paul

[treehugger]

Hey nice !
i have been getting back into the six gears ,i just finished a 6 gear DS 13.5 BL with 7.4 lipo the punch set at 10% great speed . i got 40 mins a pack and only just warm .


Paul

[RC104ever]

Hey welcome! I was in your exact same boat about 2 or 3 months ago. I've learned a ton since then just by searching and reading here.

To help get you up to speed, here are some links to some useful threads:

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=20904

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=22274

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5483

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=10403

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=13862

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=21965

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=22025

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=21737

[decontstructor]

Thank you again for the replies, I just got done with an extremely long shift at work and it was rather nice having something to read while I was stuck there doing nothing. lol...

The paint job I hate to say was just a quick fix to cover up the old paint job. One day I may put a new body on the car and give it a decent paint job.

Lonestar, LMAO @ buying a car on a steam engine. I am def taking your advice as per my electronics and going to get this moving sooner then later. I am going to have to get a radio though because my old one is probably beyond repair. It is missing the piece to hold the 8 batteries in place and I would rather get a new radio then duct tape some batteries together and make my own battery case.

Treehugger I appreciate your response but I have not yet caught up to your RC vocabulary. You're def speaking greek to me.

RC104ever thank you very much for the links, in my thirty hour shift I not only had time to take apart and reassemble my car but also read all the links and I am still trying to digest them. They are all filled with extremely good info when getting back into the hobby.

I'm starting to appreciate the wealth of knowledge in these forums, now if i can only find a way to learn through osmosis...

I did have one more question as far as the ancient esc that I already have goes. With it being probably close to 20 years old can it handle a lipo? Even if it couldn't would the worst thing that could happen is that I'd ruin the old esc and have to get a new one? That would be such a shame .

As far as the front rims go I was thinking of putting on tires and still replacing the rear ones with the b4 rims but after all the work of cutting the tires off and sanding down the rims to get the rubber and glue off of them I realized that 2 diff sets of rims would probably look rather stupid, lol. Oh well, it was towards the end of a really long work day and I needed something mindless to do to keep myself awake. TY again for all the info, these forums are great. I just have to catch up on my RC acronyms like what a CVD is. Google ftw, lol.

[decontstructor]

By the way the front bumper was added long ago because my car had a tendency to launch itself off of skateboard ramps and do cartwheels. I am still amazed at how hard I bashed this car when I first got it and I NEVER broke anything on it. I am glad I completely disassembled it and put it back together because I found a lot of the precise measurements were done incorrectly and some things were put together wrong.

The more I read up on the classes today and actually racing the cars I'm reading more and more about the short course trucks. I'm wondering if the RC1044.1 would be better to be replaced by the SC10 4x4. Any thoughts on that subject would greatly be appreciated. I am also very curious about the new belt driven system the SC10 4x4 uses, I always like new technology and new toys... I am mainly looking to upgrade to 4 wheel drive after I get done with this project and I would also like the option of being able to race whatever four wheel drive RC I get into and not end up being limited because I picked something that was popular 5 years ago. I was also looking to have flexibilty and being able to put on road tires onto something and being able to adapt to both surfaces. I'm probably asking for the moon there but who knows until I ask, lol.

[Lonestar]

I did have one more question as far as the ancient esc that I already have goes. With it being probably close to 20 years old can it handle a lipo? Even if it couldn't would the worst thing that could happen is that I'd ruin the old esc and have to get a new one? That would be such a shame .

Hi again - this is a valid question but you turn it in a slightly offset fashion

ESC 101 There are two main characteristics for an ESC which will determine if it fries or not - input voltage and max output.

(i) In terms of input voltage, (and to make a long story short) Nimh and Lipo voltages are not so different, so input-voltage wise, your esc is not at risk
(ii) current wise, it gets a bit more complicated. The current that flows out of the battery is actually drawn by what the motor needs at a certain time, as opposed to "pushed" by the battery. Big motors will draw big current, and the "tunnel" this current goes to is the ESC. There are then two possible limiting factors that can lead to failure either (a) the ESC cant "pass
the current "on" and it fries (sometimes it thermals first, sometimes it goes poof) or (b) the battery is too weak to provide the current anyways and it doesn't fry but gets too stressed and wears out quickly (in which case the esc can or cannot fry depending of the max current the esc can channel vs. what the batt can provide).

In other words, to toast an ESC you need BOTH (a) a motor that pulls bigger current than ESC specs and (b) a battery that can supply current bigger than ESC specs.

Conclusion: Yes your speedo can handle lipos as long as you don't put a mill that pulls too much current for it - give us that ESC name and someone will find the specs for you.

________________

More: A good way to toast lipos, other than charging them wrongly, is to drain them below a certain voltage (typically 3v/cell, so 6V total for a 2S). There are three ways to avoid this: (1) buy a modern "lipo-ready" esc that has a cutoff and which stops below a certain voltage (2) buy an external $20ish cutoff device that piggybacks on the esc or (3) keep your money use your brain

The discharge curve of a lipo around 3v is VERY sharp. whereas a NiXX slows down kind of "progressively" when depleted, a lipo will really show that it's coming to short of electrons as the speed will drop in a very noticeable manner. When you notice the first signs of speed dropping, it means you're done. STOP running the car and WALK to it, then pick it up. That's it, we actually all have lipo cutoffs built-in our brains. Those that don't keep driving the car to their feet at a crawling speed as it's all what's left in the lipo and then you can throw it in the (recycling) bin

Paul

[decontstructor]

I love the way you answer questions, it's like RC cars for dummies... lol, thank you!!!

So from your multiple posts I gather that I can get my brushed motor reconditioned and use that with lipo's and my old ESC, seeing as the old motor won't pull to much of a draw that my ESC can't handle even though I'm giving it power from a lipo. Then when I am ready to upgrade to a new kit I'll already have the proper batteries and just need to replace the motor and ESC.

[fredswain]

I am still running my 20+ year old Tekin esc but with a newer Trinity brushed 19T modified motor. Still no brushless here. I am running a lipo battery though. A Gens Ace 50C 5000 mah to be exact. Great battery for $35. I just have a simple $5 alarm which loudly beeps when I should stop running it. You don't run lipos all the way down like the old batteries. Just messing around the neighborhood I can get about a half hour of runtime. My friend with a more efficient brushless gets another 10+ minutes on me. Back in the old days you got about 5 to 6 minutes if you were lucky. Because I have the speed that I need and plenty of runtime, I haven't seen the need to go brushless yet. I will at some point though. I did upgrade to a modern 2.4 radio though. This is a must in my opinion. It is so much smoother than my old Futaba and KO's of the past.

[decontstructor]

I did get into helicopters not to long ago,and they used lipo batts, I've ruined one of those by not listening to my internal clock that says stop, even though my Id kepy saying what else can you get out of it.