"Red Tide": Lucas Agitator Pro 10 Restoration

[Coelacanth]

I just received this eBay score this afternoon...of course, the Sees wheels were what immediately caught my attention, even though it appeared that only one side of wheels was included. I wasn't familiar with the chassis, the front end & 3-shock setup in the rear wasn't like anything else I'd seen; the graphite chassis and the blue LiteSink all led me to believe this was no entry-level pan car, so I pulled the trigger on the $50 BIN. It turns out to be a Lucas/Advanced Racing Technologies Agitator, Pro 10 chassis from around 1988. (Thanks to Phin for helping with the chassis I.D.)

I was amazed to see the chassis and wheels were in such good condition! The bottom of the graphite chassis looks to never have been run; there's not a scratch to be found; the only part with the expected scuffs & scrapes is the T-bar. The wheels (plastic and aluminum) haven't the slightest curb rash or dings. The plastic wheels were glued but fortunately not the Sees. But what's the deal with having only one side of wheels? I could understand having a front pair or a rear pair without the other, but who ends up with just one side of wheels??

I find many intriguing design details with this chassis; the tri-shock setup really functions well, and the bulkhead is machined Delrin. The shocks themselves, although black, could be Kyosho Gold clones, the caps and bodies look identical. I'll know more about that once I've disassembled them and checked out the O-ring situation. The front end design is also pretty cool, the suspension here also works very smoothly. I'm not sure how camber is adjusted, though...I'm guessing by changing the 2 blocks underneath the steering plate? This looks to be a very nicely engineered, well-built chassis...a minimalistic but effective design. It looks like it'll be a breeze to restore.

One issue I can see, however, is there is some kind of black or clear stuff painted all over the main chassis plate, most noticeably around the battery slots...possibly to prevent shorting out the electrics, as graphite is conductive?

The body looks great too, the paint job is pretty sweet...it's reminiscent of some Andy's-painted bodies I've seen, but the only signature is "Dennis Fox". "Fox" was also written on the inside of the plastic rear wheel. Anybody happen to know who he might be? The body has some cracking issues unfortunately, both front wheel-wells are cracked and repaired on the inside with clear yellow cement of some sort. I was hoping to mount an HPI DeTomaso Pantera body on this chassis; the wheelbase looks right, but the track width of the car looks to be much too wide for the HPI VTA vintage car bodies.

[trkneller]

Aren't those Technacraft wheels, rather than Sees?

[scr8p]

nah, they're sees wheels. my guess for the singles wheels, if it was a shelfer, maybe the guy used the other 2 for display purposes on another car.

you can't adjust camber up front, but castor is adjusted by loosening the front mounting screws and tightening the rear ones more. if you take the car apart, you will see that the front beam rides on this pivoting 2 piece setup and see how it functions.

touring bodies will definitely not fit. even with some old, wide pan car bodies the rear tires would stick out of the wheel wells. i used to run narrow offset twinn-k wheels on mine, or i would just narrow up 2" wheel.

nice looking car for $50.

[Phin]

Shocks are reano'd Duratrax. I think it was Y'ernat Al that did a dissaembly on them. In the RCCA ads the shocks still had the gold color.


Camber was adjusted by bending the axle in the steering knuckle. Obviously a crappy way to make a suspension adjustment but at the time most cars were using fixed or beam front ends that dealt with the same issue. The Agitator front end could hold it's caster adjustment better than beam front ends though.

[Coelacanth]

Thanks for the info, guys. I discovered that the rear axle appears to be titanium, a magnet won't stick to it. I believe originally, it would've had a graphite axle, so somebody's added some nice upgrades to the car other than the LiteSink. Bonus!

I'd like to replace the T-bar with a new one, is that something that swaps over from an RC10L or is it specific to the Agitator chassis? I've seen a few of these modified for other cars like the RC10L, and there's one on eBay modded to have 2 rear shocks and a Losi 5-link rear end.

[scr8p]

I'd like to replace the T-bar with a new one, is that something that swaps over from an RC10L or is it specific to the Agitator chassis? I've seen a few of these modified for other cars like the RC10L, and there's one on eBay modded to have 2 rear shocks and a Losi 5-link rear end.

the t-bar is agitator specific.

the one you're talking about on ebay is designed for the losi rear end, it's not modded. they had one for the rc10 too. it's a completely different chassis, they called them agi-jammers.

[scr8p]

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=14445

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4834

[Coelacanth]

Thanks for the info! That's good to know...I might just fabricate my own carbon T-bar then.

[bearrickster]

Their very cool cars I had one of each the ASC and the Losi but their so wide really hard to find body's for. I sure miss the old days when their was bodies for all the cars. todays cars don't have the variety we use to.

[Phin]

I've seen mention of an Ultima Agi-jammer conversion but haven't actually seen a pic of one. The Agitator I'd really like to find though is the DTR...the oval edition. It's a narrowed offset chassis with the "Load Actuators" that the Agitator XII had.

[Coelacanth]

I figure this car is too sweet to simply restore (in its current condition, all it really needs is a clean-up). Dusting it off and calling 'er done just isn't how I do things; too boring. The chassis design is quite simple and I came up with a few ideas about how to spice it up--with a little cayenne pepper and Tabasco sauce! This car deserves more than just a cleaning.

So the recipe calls for--

Tabasco: The 6 front end spacers and 8 chassis spacers will be replaced with these:

Cayenne: I went through almost every nut & bolt on the car and will be replacing almost everything with red anodized aluminum hex-head screws & lock-nuts. This will replace the Philips-headed screws, because I hate their tendency to strip & round out in the heads, and aluminum won't rust. I put in a custom order at Fastener Express for $29 shipped for a nice sprinkling of cayenne pepper.

[Coelacanth]

I received my aluminum dress-up goodies while I was away on vacation. Now I can't wait to tear the car down, clean up everything and dress it up with these spicy little devils.

[Hcp22]

[Coelacanth]

I got down to disassembling the chassis last night. I plan to deanodize the LiteSink and have it reanodized red along with both hubs. I found the tiny Philips-head screws used to attach the T-bar were all at risk of having the heads strip out. I got 3 of them out and one I'll have to cut off; all will need to be replaced though. It looks like I may need to replace both pivot sockets, though. The front one looks fine but the ball inside doesn't pivot smoothly. The rear one pivots smoothly, but I think the builder stripped out the plastic screw-holes and decided to install some tiny nuts to retain the screws. The nuts ended up digging into the plastic of the pivot mount. One of them I could remove, but the other just spins around inside the hole or niche it created in the pivot mount plastic. That's the one I'll have to cut off.

Question for the pan car gurus: Are the 2 pivot mounts specific to this car, or can I install pivot mounts for an AE pan car? I attached a pic, sorry for the crappy cellphone resolution. The front pivot mount is removed to show how/where it mounts; the rear one shows the remaining nut, which has gouged into the plastic and just spins around when trying to remove the screw from the bottom. I'm hoping I can replace both pivots with new, smoother ones. Ideas?

T-Bar Pivots.jpg (23.3 KiB) Viewed 5010 times

T-Bar Pivots.jpg (23.3 KiB) Viewed 5010 times

[Phin]

They're not unique to that car but they're also not made anymore nor are they directly replaceable with anything modern. You should be able to drill new holes on the t-bar for a typical pivot ball socket but you'll need to compensate for the difference in thickness.

Delta/McAllister, early Hyperdrive, and a couple of other cars used those pivots.