RC150 Build - My First AE 1/8 Nitro Onroad Car

[morrisey0]

Anyone have a front bumper plate sitting around that they could trace and give me a dimension? It is for a RC150, but I believe it is the same as the late RC100 and the RC200. It isn't overly complicated, and I could eyeball it, but if anyone happens to have one.

Then, on the radio plates. Some are cut for servos, and some are not (like mine), but I can't find a picture anywhere of a non-servo plate complete vehicle, with servos? Were they just taped? Anyone have a pic of the set up? Thanks

[morrisey0]

I think I got the plates thing good enough. The RC200 manual has a great overhead illustration of the car on the front cover, and the bumper template is easy to get and scale from there.

In reading in the manuals, it looks like the radio plates came with various cutouts over the versions, but it states to cut out what you need for your equipment. So, I guess people just used different techniques, and I think some / many just taped servos. I am just going to deign mine around the electronics and fuel tank that I have / will have.

Anyone had any luck removing the black tire glue that AE liked to use BITD? I have always hated the pre-glued tires that came this way from them. I have cut the wheels down as far as I really want to go, but the black is stained into the nylon I believe. Anyone ever had any luck lifting the stain out?

[V12]

The black tire glue is a pain in the a...
But I think it was the only glue which really fixed the tires to the wheels safely. For that reason very hard to remove.
I removed the same or similar glue from Delta wheels with my Hudy tire truer.
But it still was not easy.
BTW if you try to do the same way, be careful and don´t overload the tire truer with too much pressure.
I killed my Hudy this way, after several sets of wheels.

[V12]

The RC200 manual has a great overhead illustration of the car on the front cover, and the bumper template is easy to get and scale from there.

Still searching for a RC200 manual. Is it possible to make scans of that manual and post at the 'Scan' section?
That would be great.

[morrisey0]

The RC200 manual has a great overhead illustration of the car on the front cover, and the bumper template is easy to get and scale from there.

Still searching for a RC200 manual. Is it possible to make scans of that manual and post at the 'Scan' section?
That would be great.

Let me know if this works or not. This is just rough docs. I want to clean these up and OCR them in the near future.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AiFH8UVGA_RvhJsGGvcr1NVoWn28zg?e=pCu2HT

[morrisey0]

So, I started this off as a questions thread, but then just decided to make it a build thread and I will just ask questions as I go. The plan here is a "driver" restoration of a RC150. I will use original parts as long as they can be brought back to "driver" condition, but if not, new or repop parts will be used. This is not a "bring back to fully original" type of build.

This is how she started. Found this about 3ish hours away from the house, for a stupid low price I thought, so I took a day off and made a road trip. This car came with a K&B Veco 19 engine in it, so it may have been one of the later versions that came with such engines in the box, but I thought those would have come with the "car" version of the Veco, with the longitudinal head, but I am not sure there. This particular car came with the standard head. Car came with a good foundation, but was missing quite a bit.

[morrisey0]

So, from there I just started taking it apart and prepping and cleaning what was there that could be reused. For the hardware, I decided to replace it all with commercially available equivalents, just trying to match the chromate coating of the original. I had a NIP spur gear or order, but UPS lost it, so had to reuse the original. The original main plan was going to be the engine, because well, I have never touched a nitro engine in my life previously. This was a bit of what I was looking at, and this isn't all of it.

So, yea, the engine. I tore it apart and put it back together, and learned a lot there. I found a $10 engine on ebay that had the head I needed to make it a "car" version, plus a straight pipe/muffler, so score. I thought I had some just engine done pics, but I don't, so just on chassis pics.

[morrisey0]

So, from there, it goes just like a pan car. Put together an end, and then put together the other end, then fill in middle. The back and front went together pretty easily; the middle is taking a while.

For the plates, I just decided to do my own thing. My car was missing the front bumper plate altogether, and the radio plate had seen better days, so I decided to replace that also. I was unsuccessful in reaching out to a member here who reproduces these, so I found that to be a great excuse to buy a cheap CNC machine and do my own. These are my original designs printed out for proof of concept.

And today, I finally got the CNC half-way working right, so I got the front bumper plate done. I started into the radio plate, but the only small bit I had started melting the ABS and it just ended up a mess. New bits should be here in a couple of days.

[LurkingCAT]

Yet another very interesting thread to follow - thanks a lot

[V12]

Let me know if this works or not. This is just rough docs. I want to clean these up and OCR them in the near future.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AiFH8UVGA_RvhJsGGvcr1NVoWn28zg?e=pCu2HT

Thank you. That works great. No need to do more into this.

[V12]

Then, on the radio plates. Some are cut for servos, and some are not (like mine), but I can't find a picture anywhere of a non-servo plate complete vehicle, with servos? Were they just taped? Anyone have a pic of the set up? Thanks

Just found a pic which could help. Cutouts not really well made but show the positions for the servos.

[V12]

For the plates, I just decided to do my own thing. My car was missing the front bumper plate altogether, and the radio plate had seen better days, so I decided to replace that also. I was unsuccessful in reaching out to a member here who reproduces these, so I found that to be a great excuse to buy a cheap CNC machine and do my own. These are my original designs printed out for proof of concept.

BUILD 3.jpg

And today, I finally got the CNC half-way working right, so I got the front bumper plate done.
BUILD 5.jpg

Thumbs up for making your own CNC parts.
It helps a lot when parts are not available, but I have absolutely no knowledge in CAD.

[morrisey0]

Thumbs up for making your own CNC parts.
It helps a lot when parts are not available, but I have absolutely no knowledge in CAD.

Its not really my thing either, but 2D stuff is pretty simple.

I am running into cutting issues that I need to work out. My "outside" cuts are coming out great, and within .02%, but all of my "inside" cuts are coming out small for some reason. Everything looks good in the CAM, but it is not coming out correct in the real world. Will continue to try to work that out.

Also a bit excited because hopefully my 2nd and 3rd AE 1/8 onroad cars show up today! One of those, "well if you are interested in that, I also have this" situations.

[GoMachV]

Not sure where you are on the machine, but calibrating the axis are pretty important. I use my longest digital calipers and the calibration function in mach3, not sure how yours will be set up. Basically on mine you move it a distance, and tell the program how far it actually moved, and it will math out the correction. Always test a few times. Also not sure if you are measuring the bit or going with the published specs for it but what I find works best is to use it to drill a hole, measure that and then use it to create a small circle, like 10mm or so and measure that- you will then need to do some math to calculate its real cutting diameter. Sometimes you will end up having to do an average. I also will run my first pass as climb and then a cleanup pass as conventional, but that's more for g10 and carbon. Plastics melt so easily you probably won't want to do two passes. If you get good at plastic you will be awesome at composites. They are much harder on the end mills but much less picky about speeds and feeds.

[morrisey0]

Thanks Jeff! I am measuring my bits, and putting that into the CAM (Easel). It does not have a direct calibration for X and Y, but you can play with the factors in g-code. I did a simple test with a metal rule, and across 300mm, the Y looked dead on, and the X was shy about .5mm (and my front bumper plate reflects the same result in total width). Right now, holes are being but at +/- 80% of design diameter, so something else is really off. At first I had the cut path set wrong, it was cutting on the line path, but now I have it so it should be cutting on the inside of the line path for all of the "interior" shapes. The main piece is being cut on the outside of the line path. I'll keep digging.