Completely inexperienced person attempts to restore antique

[matt_vasko]

Hello

I've always wanted to get into this hobby but never took the leap. I am ready now and although limited by my budget... I am excited about getting started.

I was going to purchase a kit and assemble a brand new RC BUT

I found my brothers 80's RC10 Buggy!

I then decided to restore this machine back to running condition. I will attach pictures and hopefully someone can help me identify what year etc.

I look at the first 25 year post and found that my frame has an A stamped into it.

Thanks for looking

[Bmw1tech]

Welcome to the hobby! Nice gold tub rc10 you have there. I am no expert like some of the guys on here but it looks to me like you have an early Cadilac car here. some distinguishing factors such as chassis color, front tires, steering arms, and shock gaskets are some factors of determination. maybe even a late edinger. hard to tell from pic but chassis seems to have that low tone gold anodizing on the edingers. the 25 years of rc10 is a great post to start, like you have already done. a little cleaning and maybe some newer electronics and it could be a nice runner for you. However, they dont make parts for these anymore so if you break anything you will be spending a pretty peny to try and find another. These "vintage" cars are going crazy with collectors now. mostly making them origional and pretty and putting them on a shelf. A cheeper alternative for a every day runner would be an associated b4. you can pick up a rolling chassis used anywhere from 70-100 bucks and parts are readily accessable.

[matt_vasko]

Thanks for the reply!

I see lots of parts on ebay etc but I have no idea what parts would fit! The fact that they do not make them could be a problem haha

I found this one store on ebay that seems to have a lot of parts for rc10s

Which model do I have?

RC10 B3 B4 B4.1
RC10 B44, B44.1
RC10 GT & GT2
RC10 T3 T4 T4.1

I don't know if i can post links but his ebay store is Hopmeup

[klavy69]

Which model do I have?

RC10 B3 B4 B4.1
RC10 B44, B44.1
RC10 GT & GT2
RC10 T3 T4 T4.1

Welcome to the board matt. In answer to your question...E) none of the above. You have the original RC10 that the others all kinda got their start from .

Todd

[matt_vasko]

That's what i was afraid of......

OK how about this, what type of maintenance should i do to this car? Should I rebuild the differential (the large plastic gear seems to not be level)? I think one of the rear shocks seems slow, should i rebuild them??

Lastly the steering seems to have a lot of play, how can I fix that???

Thanks

[klavy69]

personally I don't fix anything that isn't broke .

If you plan on doin some mild running with this it would not hurt to go thru the shocks and clean them up and change out the fluid and refill them. If they leak back down right away then yeah, start lookin towards a rebuild on the shocks.

Steering slop is inevitable with that steering setup. You could get new bellcranks for it and it would tighten up a little bit and would still be an unadulterated rc10 or you could search out some after market steering assy. You could go with some aftermarket ballbearing alloy or some worlds steering assy or you can get something that has been recently redone like the A&L steering assy that I personally like as its readily available and it helps support some of the few people still supporting this car . A&L steering can be seen here:
http://vintageteamaandl.com/home.htm

Hope this helps.
Enjoy this buggy.

Todd

[matt_vasko]

Thanks for the advice.

I am going to look into the shock rebuild kits and will be looking for new electronics to get this old guy running again.

Can someone send me a link to the right rebuild kit?

[Bmw1tech]

Hey Matt. Im trying to put myself in your shoes here. I have personally been in this hobby since the early 90's and have a couple "vintage" cars such as the one you have here and find it difficult to find parts for these cars to restore them. you have an origional rc10 gold pan car. like the first couple cars in the first 25 years of rc10 thread. best bet to find parts for these is on ebay. search " vintage rc10 " and you will get the most results of parts for your car. another option is to get the manual that came with the car and cross referance part #'s as some of the ebay listings have them or simply look at your car and see if they look similar. .. that white gear you are referring to is the spur gear. most of them somewhat wobble and is normal to some extent. ..so here is my final 2 cents. I would either get the car running with what you have, otherwise if you try and piece origional parts together for this car you are going to end up spending an arm and a leg on highly inflated vintage parts. If you want a cheep modern runner that you can play with or even take to your local track to race, here is a good example. http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_info.php/cPath/1_44_1561/products_id/163251/n/Team-Associated-B41-Brushless-RTR-1-10-Buggy-w-24GHz-Radio . this is what you have now but with another 20+ years of development and its ready to run and parts are readily accessible/ cheep.... those gold pans are very collectable and a great achievement in remote control history. That is the car that started it all... so I would keep it and possibly restore it slowly depending on how deep your pockets are and perhaps get a modern day runner to have fun with.