Describe the life of your first RC10

[fredswain]

I got my first RC10 when I was 10 years old in 1986. It was the new race car that had just come out that was killing everything else that everyone had to have. I initially used the mechanical speed control with power from a Trinity Monster stock motor controlled by a KO Propo EX-5. I painted the body myself. It was simple solid red with the windows painted black. I messed up this simple paint scheme by painting the red first and then the black second. I didn't have the red on very well and the black bled through pretty badly in some places. It was nothing a bunch of stickers couldn't fix!

My first "mod" was a new metal rear wing, a front wing, and a drill bit where a swiss cheesed the chassis into a fraction of it's former self. Everyone was starting to use velcro to hold the bodies on so I did that next. Then to make removing it faster I cut the rear of the body off behind the rear shock tower. New parts were constantly coming out back then and the thing to have that the racers had was a graphite chassis. That was my first real performance upgrade. I had the Composite Craft graphite chassis with the wide front end and had a graphite Trinity wide shock tower. I still had the mechanical speed control at this point! My next mod was a Novak T4 esc. Now I was starting to feel like the big boys. I had various stock motors from Twister, Trinity, Reedy, Race Prep, Magnum, and many others using standard brushes, cut brushes, and the other tricks of the day. I also went through several batteries from SC, to SCR, to SCE and in various cell orientations.

I raced it a few times and did horrible. I tried all sorts of tire combinations but ended up with solid 2" wheels up front with Dynamite Racing studs and stock 1.6" wheels out back with Proline spikes. Later I added black RPM rear arms even though the rest of the car was white. Losi aluminum bell cranks were next as well as heavy duty captured rod ends. Andy's came out with their wide arms and those were now the hot ticket. I had the wide graphite chassis though so I tried to cut it down. A kid with a hacksaw isn't a very precise way to do things. It was a disaster so I cut the front end off and used the stock gold nose and shock tower. Soon I switched it to a graphite nose piece. My dad painted a new body for me based off of a paint scheme we had seen on a reader's ride in RCCA. That's pretty much how that car stayed until after I got my JRX2 and it slowly got parted out to a friend who was racing an RC10.

My new project plan is to recreate that car in the stage where it had the wide nose graphite chassis. What was your first RC10 and it's sequence of mods?

[CamplinP]

Wow, nice memory and description.

I think I got my gold pan in '86. I used a 2 stick Futaba radio.I didn't do near the mods you did. I think my first addition was the T4 (which I still have on my Optima Mid). The car came with bearings. I know I put wider arms on. Not sure if it was after the CE came out or if the were another brand but they were white. I used Monster, Race Prep, and Le Mans motors. Various tires were used and I remember some Goodyear foams for indoor races. For the indoor races I had a Red Old Milwaukee Corvette body. (Funny when you look back at all the kids with beer and tobacco labeled cars). I think I put some Thorp stuff in it at one time. It raced really well. I had a bunch of ribbons at one time. I have no clue where it went. Somehow I have my Fox, Optima Mid and other parts but no trace of the 10.

[LTO_Dave]

I bought my first RC10 C.E. in '92 or '93 after watching my brother race his. Mine was bone stock except for being lowered with fuel tubing and running a set of TRC green dot foams mounted on black wheels. I painted the Viper body plain blue and put a few AE stickers on it. I ran the stock mechanical speed control with a Futaba Magnum Sport controller, receiver and a pair of S-148 servos. I later added a Novak 4-10M5 ESC and Dynamite MicroPro receiver. I think I ran the green stock AE motor, then an S&K Pink Panther that my brother handed down to me. I also remember running a Trinity Green Machine and Slot Machine at one point.

I remember breaking several stock steering arms and bending tie-rods too easily by just bumping the wooden and PVC track borders.

[Y'ernat Al]

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=9066

[xanadu]

In 1986 I had a grasshopper. Must have ran it over 500 times. (with one battery and a 15 minute leisure charger) I went to a race and saw that every car was an RC10. Oil shocks!! Whatever those were. Aluminum chassis! It was gold! Ball differential! I didn't know what that was, but I had to have in order to win. I begged for 3 or 4 months for one for Christmas. Leading up to that magic Dec. 25. There was a box that seemed way smaller than my grasshopper box and much heavier.
In my 8th grade class, there was about 2 other kids into RC. One had an older brother with an RC10. I asked him to measure the box dimensions. Finally, I could not take it anymore and I gently peeled open the end of the gift and saw the most magical words ever written. That blue writing that said, "#6010 kit less electronics" or whatever it says. I almost cried.
I was never away from that car for more than the 8 hour days at school, and even then, I had the old RC10 ad in my notebook that was in front of me in every class. When I had to mow the lawn, I would set it on the porch to wait for me when was finished. Almost like a pet. I even made a holder on my bike handlebars to carry it to new places to run.
To make a long story short, I think I ran it over 1000 times over the next few years.

[DougH]

I got might right after they first came out, one of the first ones in the area. Somehow I messed up something when I put the tranny together and it was bound up a bit with a lot of drag. Because of this I got frustrated and ended up selling it to a friend and continued racing my Tamiya Super Champ for quite a while before I saw the error of my ways. Of course it turned out to be a simple fix for my friend and boy did I feel stupid later. LOL

[oldmanian]

I got my first RC with a Panda Grasshopper clone (cyclone I think). I messed around with about everything that I could on that thing and finally killed it.
I save up money from my summer job and got a Graphite RC10 with a 6 gear when they came out in '91. I built it and ran through a bunch of batteries with it tooling up and down my parents long driveway. I got and installed the proline truck conversion kit and continued to tear things up with my 540 and futaba ESC installled. I loved that thing, and I always kept it knowing that I'd be rehabilitating it one day.

I think that the hardest thing for me lately is admitting that my RC Car has turned 21 years old and who-ah does that make me feel old...

but oh well, I love that care, and I'll see it on the track and my driveway again soon!!!

[Jackb05]

My first RC10 was a championship edition, bought it in the early 90s. My brother was into RC before me and I got hooked when I saw the gold tub RC10 and Hobby Lobby Tornado that he had.

I loved that RC10 and would always run it, could never break anything on it, built like a tank. Well..... one day I come home and my brother decides to chop off the sides of the chassis, made it look like a graphite chassis but in reality, it made it really flimsy. I am like what the... when I saw it. His excuse was that it made the car much lighter.

I was pretty mad at him at that time but it always cracks me up now when I think about it now.

[Orange]

The life of my first RC10.... Hmmm...

Pampered, driven hard, pampered, driven hard, broken, pampered, driven harder, broken, fixed, driven, broken, driven broken, glued back together, Driven, broken... Sold.

(The life of a Cardinal Houge chassis RC10)

My second RC10...

Driven hard, rarely broken, pampered, Repeat at least 300 times...

(The life of a bone stock RC10)

That is all!

[fredswain]

I have wanted to recreate my childhood RC10 exactly as it was after I installed the graphite chassis and went to an esc. That car has been long gone for 20 years though. I gave my friend Chad all my old parts back then since he was still racing and I wasn't. A little over a year ago he got me back into rc. After I started this thread the other day I was talking to him about my old car and parts. He said he still has everything I gave him and that I can have them back if I want them! It felt like being thrown back in time or being reunited with a long lost friend. I thought everything was long gone but he's a pack rat and has had it all in a box all this time. I can't rebuild the entire car from my old parts but I've got most of it. The chassis was cut up and modified back in the day so it's gone but I've got the old 6 gear and the front and rear suspensions. I just need to get a new wide front end graphite chassis. Fortunately I found one this week on ebay so it's on it's way. He even reminded me of something I did that I forgot about. Since I always had ball cups popping off, I ended up painting my dog bones bright yellow so they'd be easier to find when they flew out. I've got those back too. I remember doing it now. I used a yellow paint pen since that's what I had. I'm pretty much just going to need to hunt down some specific proline tires and a pair of graphite angles that were double stuck to the chassis so I could velcro the body on. That part may prove a bit tough. I had 2 wheel/tire combos that I liked and fortunately the alternative is easy to recreate which was solid dish wheels with Tamiya Super Spikes in the rear. It may be time for a new build thread!

[jwscab]

It's really hard to actually remember the life of the rc10 I have. I suppose some background prior to that is necessary.

R/C for me started with drooling over the Sear lobo and the like from the christmas catalog, and misc. radio shack stuff. My cousin had a kyosho pegasus which was the 'real deal' RC kit with servos and mechanical speed controller. This started the real begging for an RC car. One xmas, my younger brother and I were rewarded with matching grasshoppers, MRC stick radios, and Tamiya hump packs. They were built within hours on xmas day, and I subsequently dunked mine in a sewer(living in the city). fished it out, fortunately it was just a storm drain, but still stinky.

fast forwarding a bit, we'd drive the grasshoppers with the pegasus late at night angering my cousins neighbors, with me picking up along the way bits and pieces of a frog and a lunchbox, along with a bunch of misc stuff. The lunchbox and frog and grasshopper were fine enough, but on asphalt, the buggies weren't too good, so I started making parts for an on-road type car, ended up with a lexan lunchbox body on basically an on road car with a frog gearbox and axles with (poorly) handmade a-arm suspension, along with some of those misc parts.

at this point, we moved out of the city to a piece of property with a decent enough space to build an off-road oval (lots of dirt shoveling after school). As that was being built, I saved enough to buy a Traxxas Bullet, which had the coolest ad in RCCA and looked just like the MUCH more expensive(and less complete) RC10. That car ran well, but as everyone knows, the body was super fragile. I also smoked the trans gears and broke the trans case with a 13 turn modified motor.

At some point here, my brother claims I picked up another box of stuff which included an almost complete RC10 in pieces. So that car was built(without manual BTW) but I cannot for the life of me remember exactly how it was built(gold pan or??). It also came with a sidewinder body, of all things. I'm not sure what happened to that body.

I picked up many mods for the car at this point, a composite craft/trinity chassis(this may have come with the basket case), team losi steering bellcranks, a set of houge trailing arms, robinson steering system, thorp 48 pitch gears, litesink, etc.

I have an image here of the car in some iteration, it appears to have the carbon chassis, and houge arms.

In it's current state, it has the following mods:
houge trailing arms
houge chassis
thorp 48 pitch 6 gear
litesink
andys arms
losi shocks with MIP cartridges
losi steering
robinson steering

[arf]

I was running 1/10th pan and picked it up used so I could run "gearbox class." Lowered it with a Parma 289 Cobra body and street tires. Used my older Futaba electronics and Tamiya motor. I used rubber in the back and foam pan car tires in front and it worked. Later I set it up for dirt oval and got my a** kicked by guys with $100 batteries.

Eighteen years later I built a tribute car just like this fun race car that I missed so much. Here's the pic.

[arf]

Oops, double post

[ROH73]

My first RC10 was purchased used in late 1987 or early 1988. It's a late Edinger 6016 (Edinger box and motor, but otherwise more like a Cadillac) that my friend Chris bought in Summer 1986 around the same time I got my first RC car (a Hornet). I drove/bashed the RC10 bone stock for a while and then converted it for indoor oval racing on hardwood with a Novak T-4. At some point during the first racing season, I swapped out the aluminum chassis for a Composite Craft carbon fiber one. Here's a pic of it in oval racing form.

I raced it about two years and then converted it back to a buggy around 1990 with a Sidewinder body, wide front arms, etc. I drove it mostly on asphalt around the neighborhood with foam slicks. Here's a fairly recent pic of it with that body, but off-road tires. I still occasionally drive it on asphalt.

[TitleSeventeen]

I wish I knew more about mine... I wanted one for years and years and got mine in 2004 or 2005 from a guy I went to tech school with. Its a late CE that looks to of been run hard, broken, repaired poorly, and run some more. then stripped of electronics before I got it. It sat in a box from then till just winter 2012. When I dug it out, found this site and got an idea of what I had and started collecting parts and rebuilding it from the chassis up. Now I need to get some batteries and a body painted up and I may take it out race it some and try not to break it.