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So, having a rere Worlds Car, I know the B4 top shaft in the transmission works just fine in the RC10 Stealth tranny. What I'm wondering, is do the other two gears also interchange?

Also, I had two hobby shops comment that they were surprised the stock stealth gearbox was holding up to the 4600kv Castle brushless motor. Over the long term, will the tranny hold up, or is it worth looking into metal gears? If so, would B4 metal gears work? Thanks!

Only thing that fits in a 2.25 stealth is the b4 top shaft.

(you have b5 in the title. ) B5 has gone metric so the bearings mix wont work.

Talk to GomachV (Jeff) with the ten4 project ha got Robinson to remake the stealth diff gear in metal. and i think there are idlers floating around that are metal? if not idler cheapest to repleace and have a week spot.

Brian Kinwald in a set up sheet shows he is running a 7t Reedy motor.

Yup I have Robinson metal diff gears for sale and Robinson GT idlers aren't impossible to find if you wanted to go all metal. I'd run the new white ones and call it good tho

Thanks for the quick replies guys. I may buy the metal ones, I'm not totally sure yet. Seems they aren't really necessary. I have built up a second Stealth tranny to swap in, in case something broke.

Is there any gear whine from the metal ones? What's the price on the idler and diff gears? Me purchasing them will likely depend on price, as the plastic ones are cheap to replace.

I would really advice to stick to metal against plastic as a rule of thumb, metal gears are more expensive and create more inertia than plastic gears. A metal diff gear against a plastic idler which in turn is against a metal top shaft is probably not an issue, but if running speedy motors, I would definitely stick to a plastic idler. An all metal gear trans will wear much faster at a much higher cost in any case. On top, an all metal trans will most probably need a special lubricant where the plastic ones don't as the plastic is already containing a sort of lubricant that is freed up when the trans is running. There is a reason why no modern/competition- oriented buggy has a full metal trans. The old Stealth case is easily capable of handling very hot motors with a stock configuration, the B4 slipper is a very nice upgrade though.

I always forget about the Robinson idler.

I was never a fan of all metal until I tried the Robinson set. We tried HG back in the day and they were terrible. These are smooth and not noisy just a little wisp. I run a little bit of tamiya ceramic grease on them. Very little. My preference would be a plastic idler with the alloy diff gear and stock topshaft and no lube.

All this talk about shafts and lube... Where's Thumbs?

I run a Tekin 8.5T in my RC10 on a high traction surface and have never had an issue with my stock Stealth gears...

+1, what Jeff and Brian said.

I had a T3 that was running a 6.5 turn Losi Xcelorin Brushless setup with a 3 cell LiPo,

Only problem I had was the diff balls would melt into the diff gear.

I made it into a spool.

A aluminum diff gear would have solved the problem.

It never stripped the teeth on the plastic idler or plastic diff gear.

Cheers, Dave.

I'm running stock gears with the B4 top shaft and a 2S lipo with a Castle 5700kv motor. To say its fast is an understatement. I believe my gearing is 81/24.

I have yet to replace anything in the tranny and that's over a couple of years of HARD bashing.

GoMachV wrote:I was never a fan of all metal until I tried the Robinson set. We tried HG back in the day and they were terrible. These are smooth and not noisy just a little wisp. I run a little bit of tamiya ceramic grease on them. Very little. My preference would be a plastic idler with the alloy diff gear and stock topshaft and no lube.

So is the ceramic grease for the diff balls or the gear mesh? Is there any other lubricant recommended for use on the diff balls in an aluminum diff gear? Or is no lubricant necessary?

You still need stealth grease for the diff balls. If you want to run a lube on the gears, you can. It depends a lot on preference. I only lube when metal to metal, and I like tamiya ceramic grease. Robinson used to package black grease with their steel idlers as they run on a steel topshaft.

to put it into perspective, the pinion and spur are narrower than the internal gears and they handle the power before it gets into the trans gear set. while there are ratios involved with multiply or divide torque, I believe the pinion and spur take the brunt of the loading.

Yeh, I haven't had anything break yet since I built this car, but it's only been a couple of months too. 20 years ago I never had anything with this much power, and then the comments by not one, but TWO, hobby shops being surprised that it hasn't stripped, made me start thinking about it. I did build a spare tranny with leftover and new parts, so if this one dies I do have another. I may build an all-metal one just for kicks, since I have enough extra parts, and the only things I'd be missing are the metal idler and diff gear.

EDIT: Actually, I just bought a metal idler on ebay, so now I'm only missing the diff gear.