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Picked up the kit on Thursday and built it up yesterday night and today. For the most part the kit went together well albeit the manual was not quite right. So as I was building from both the old and new manual I started to make notes and suggestions on the new manual which I have here:


Things of note
-Tools included are only Allen keys. I don't really care about this but it may affect some one.
-Stealth Diff grease, Black Grease, and 20wt Shock Oil is supplied.
-An actual paper manual, granted it has a few errors in it.
-Bushings, why? Just charge us the extra $20 and put bearing in the kit. I had to "barrow" some bearings from my project RC10T for this build.

Bag A - Nose plate/Steering
-There's a few points where you have to thread a screw through a part and then threadlock a nut onto the end. Do not put threadlock on the screw before threading it into the plastic! Doing so will enbrittle the plastic and cause it to crack over time.
-all ball studs use the small pattern 4-40 nuts. The manual misses this.
-Foam Things! At first I thought the kit didn't actually come with them but I was wrong. Never thought I'd see this in a new kit ever again. a nice addition but they are actually in Bag F.
-Failure to mention size of screw for shock mount. It should be a 4-40x38 BHCS
-Ball stud shown going in the arm is actually from Bag B for the sway bar. so if you're missing 2 later now you know where they are!
-Easy to miss but all the turnbuckle stuff is in Bag F
-Despite the ballcups being black they still suck as much as the ones in the RC10 Classic did. They are too tight on the threads and don't grab on to the ball studs strong enough. Best to go with RPM or even the Fan RC ones that look and fit properly. Also the instruction say they are white, they are not.
-Part fitment is good not too much play in the arms/steering -0.20" Ballstuds are a bit too long for the belcranks causing them to drag on the chassis slightly. filing them fixes the issue.
-they have you install the center link too early, just leave it off till you get the belcranks mounted into the chassis.

Bag B - Sway bar and Bumper
-These parts of the instructions is fairly accurate.

Bag C/F - Servo / Battery tray
-weird that this step is this earlier in the build but here it is!
-Antenna mount never really got tight on mine, not sure if there is a molding issue with it but it's not a huge issue.

Bag D Rear End
-Mentions 1/4" axle shim, these are not included and this isn't a 1/4" axle anyway. Don't really seem to need a shim anyway, both my axles have minimal side to side play.
-wrong ballstud size stated in step 1.
-The drive pins are solid steel and not roll pins. keep those aside for when you're ready to mount the wheels unless you like dropping pins into the void.
-Sway bar ball stud shown in center hole of arm but should be in inner hole. The OG manual gets this wrong too.
-they give you 3 sets of rear toe blocks, which is nice granted they don't tell you about this in the manual. there's 3 degree, 1.5 degree, and what I think it the stock RC10 blocks which appear to be 0 degrees. I used the 1.5 blocks. Hubs supplied are 0 degree.
-No mention of how to adjust wheelbase but there are 2 ways and you can get between 161mm and 171mm of wheelbase with the supplied parts. The officials way is to move the spacer next to the rear hub. The bigger way is to use the other set of holes on the toe blocks.if you go full back you get around 171mm of wheelbase. The dogbones will be tilted backwards but are well within their range of motion you may need to change the spacers in the outdrives and axles though so it stays better centered in them. I'm running this way to use an old Torino Talladega body. If you do do this you will also need to flip the upper shock mount around to reduce the shock's angle. -The rear bulkhead is missing the "Worlds" camber link hole that the original DS used for it's kit setup. I used a scrap chunk of bulkhead as a drill guide for this hole along with 2 others (I did this same process to the FR-01 which had the same issue), It is 4mm to the side of the multi hole section. I don't have a worlds bulkhead around but I figure this is closer to the geometry I'm looking for regardless. -The camber link measurement is as if you're using the aforementioned missing "Worlds" camberlink hole. If you don't want to drill the hole and instead want to run in the innermost hole you'll need to adjust that measurement to around 12mm.
-Sway bar links, make sure you evenly attach the rod ends, there's not many threads to engage here to get to the proper length. They really should have made these links a little be longer.

Bag E Shocks
-Highly recommend using green slime on all o-rings and the shock shafts
-Use the clear 1/32" spacers as internal limiters in all 4 shocks
-Instructions show 30wt but it's supposed to be 20wt oil (included)
-Shock travel should measure 0.50" on all 4 shocks.
-Confusing info about ride height. the measurements given (6mm) mean the Spacers not the chassis ride height. I'd just leave these off till everything is on the car though.
-Fun fact that isn't said in either manual. you can flip the lower shock mount to increase travel
-For the rear, disconnect the camber links and one of the sway bar links before trying to install the lower shock mount. this will make your life way easier. after that reconnect it all then mount to top of the shock to the tower.
Bag G Transmission
-The kit has the required greases but doesn't mention where to use them. I added that info to my annotated manual.
-Thrust bearing is the 91990 Caged unit but the instruction showed to loose ball style assembly.
-Thankfully they went back to the original style Stealth transmission. All bearings are in the trans case with the OG style idler gear with a pressed in shaft. The top shaft is aluminum. The case has holes on both halves for the top shaft area which is cool for future mods. The diff is silky smooth and the transmission rotates freely.
-Felt spacer, cool that this is included but man are they delicate.
-Slipper is pretty close to the original ones. single slipper with bronze thrust assemble. Super easy to swap spur gears and not mess with slipper tension.
-I suggest putting a little bit of black grease on the dog bone ends to combat wear.
-No motor screws included so you'll need those.

Bag H - Tires
-Tires seems to grip nicely and are pretty soft. Brings back memories of my BFG KDWs I used to buy for my full size cars.
-Front tire foam seem inadequate. Center of tire wasn't making contact and the tire overall has an underinflated look. I took some foam out of a spent pair of buggy tires and cut them down to fit.
-Wheels are more of a satin silver finish and there is a little bit of unevenness on the lips. I'm sure I'll curb rash mine racing it anyway but it's worth a mention. There's also no vent holes in them so I'd suggest drilling those before you mount the tires. I prefer this to putting holes in tires, especially ones this soft. -Wheel disks can spin a bit, that can be fixed with a dab of CA if you'd like. Also I modeled the disks before I built the kit, although i need to tweak the cutout a little bit. https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/rc10ds-wheel-disks-original-style-y-spoke

Suggested Kit Setup
Based off of the two manuals I came up with this setup. It is also in the annotated manual. I'll work on some more modern gearing suggestions some point in the future. For running gear I used Hobbywing Justock ESC, a 21.5t Trinity Monster, Savox 1258TG and Blue MX SR3100. Current body is one that's been shuffled around my cellar for decades and never properly mounted to a car. It's a Bolink Torino Talladega body. Is it a little wide? Sure, but if you look at old muscle cars you realize that the wheels were never flush with the body. Also, the wheel wells were cutout for something else a long time ago and weren't really right and the paint has runs in it from my past self, but it looks cool from afar while it's tearing up the pavement so it'll do for now till I get the other bodies ready.

Overall the build was fun. The instructions might not be 100% and the original instructions were far more detailed. Regardless most of the car went together fine.
As I stated above my starting setup is hybrid between the old and new kit, the main difference between the setup I started with and what I'm actually running is I'm using the longest possible wheelbase.

The finish quality on the chassis parts is nice, slightly textured. All the screws threaded in to the parts fine save for 1 ballstud that had malformed threads that I just replaced with one from my stock and the antenna tube holder which just doesn't seem to tighten. Both pretty minor things.

Before taking the car out on Thursday I made a small spoiler for the back out of scrap lexan. I had a 23tooth pinion on my Monster Max 21.5 (w/ torque arm) but it was clear that this was way undergeared for the outdoor asphalt track at RCM. I ended up jumping all the way up to 29tooth which seemed pretty good.

Handling was actually a lot better than I expected. Turn in was actually really good, you can do some controlled sliding with careful throttle inputs. I did have some issues with entering the straight from the straight from the sweeperwhere it would sometimes catch and grip roll. Also going into the corner at the end of the straight. If you let off too abruptly it would lift oversteer (maybe I should have gotten a Porsche 930 Turbo body ) or grip roll.

I took the car back to the pits and took all the preload out of the springs except for the small ones I used to dial out tweak lowering the car a couple mm. This made it a tad more confident in the high speed sections although it didn't completely get rid of the problem.

Some learning the limit scars. Some of the infield turns I would diff out a bit if I wasn't careful, I tightened the ball diff a little bit to help with that. Ultimately, I think I need to take a little bit of the droop out of it to mitigate some of the body roll maybe soem slightly stiffer springs as well.

This brings up another issue I discovered, the tires. These tires are pretty soft, which is great for grip but has a few cons, one of which is the sidewall is not stiff enough. the rear tires deform too much in high speed corners causing the inside sidewall to rub on the shock's endlink. You can see how the rear tire pulls inwards during a high speed right hander: This might be fixable by gluing the foams to the wheel or stiffening the sidewall of the tire. or using front tires on the rear wheels to decrees the sidewall height and add a bit of stretch that will my the tire a little bit more stable.

The other issue is these tires are wearing pretty fast, I've got 3 packs through the car and this is how the tires look. It does sound really cool going full tilt around the track, you can hear the tires howling in the corners. Yes I know the tires are on backwards, I flipped them during my last pack to keep the wear even.

I do need to remove some negative camber to fix the treadwear a bit. Unfortunately the camber links area huge pain in the ass to adjust because the ballcups want to eject themselves at the slightest twist so i left it for that practice session. I'm definitely replacing those ballcups as soon as I have the chance.

Lap times I think I got the car down to a 13.5s hot lap. To me that's pretty damn good for a buggy based 2wd onroad car. Especially when the average driver running a modern 4wd sedan running a 25.5t motor is doing it in the 11s range. The hotshoes put in average laps of 10.7s (10.3s fastest lap).

So no, it's not going to beat a modern car even with the slight HP advantage,but it still was pretty damn impressive for what it is and really fun to drive!

Drove the car yesterday and added more about the experience above.

Really want to try this with some foam tires in the future.

I also might try moving the rear swaybar endlinks to the middle holes and see what effect that gives me.

Would've loved to hear those little tires screeching around the track, I have to do that someday. Glad to know the details about the DS tires, thanks!

When you mentioned body roll, I was immediately thinking about the anti-roll bar adjustments. Looking forward to hearing what setting works for you on those.

The nearest track to me is over an hour from here. Your videos of the 40th on the track were great, would definitely watch the DS go around the track, if you made a video at some point.

GreenBar0n wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2024 10:01 pm Would've loved to hear those little tires screeching around the track, I have to do that someday. Glad to know the details about the DS tires, thanks!

When you mentioned body roll, I was immediately thinking about the anti-roll bar adjustments. Looking forward to hearing what setting works for you on those.

The nearest track to me is over an hour from here. Your videos of the 40th on the track were great, would definitely watch the DS go around the track, if you made a video at some point.

I'll try to figure out a good place to put a camera out there next time I go to the track. It was before a race night so the track was about to be used for the race on my last pack so I ended my practice after that pack. The car does have a lot of potential though! Body roll wasn't severe but I really don't think I need as much droop as I have for the surface, which is fairly smooth. I'll mess with the sways first though. The other thing keeping me from running more is just the tires in general. I think i'll get 3 more packs out of those before they turn into slicks, but that might not be a bad thing. Either way I want to secure another tire setup.

RogueIV wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2024 6:41 pm Drove the car yesterday and added more about the experience above.

Really want to try this with some foam tires in the future.

I also might try moving the rear swaybar endlinks to the middle holes and see what effect that gives me.

Great review - thanks for posting.
The original DS manual shows the swaybar link going in the middle hole. With the link in the inner hole, would the swaybar be very effective since it's positioned so close to the inner arm hinge pin? Also, sliding the upper link pivot back toward the shock tower might stiffen the sway bar a bit.

XLR8 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 12:01 am

RogueIV wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2024 6:41 pm Drove the car yesterday and added more about the experience above.

Really want to try this with some foam tires in the future.

I also might try moving the rear swaybar endlinks to the middle holes and see what effect that gives me.

Great review - thanks for posting.
The original DS manual shows the swaybar link going in the middle hole. With the link in the inner hole, would the swaybar be very effective since it's positioned so close to the inner arm hinge pin? Also, sliding the upper link pivot back toward the shock tower might stiffen the sway bar a bit.

I am aware that it'll make it more effective my concern is how much it ends up reducing the rear traction in the process. The car's balance right now is pretty good. So hoping that changing locations of it doesn't make it too tail happy. To be honest I think it needs stiffer front bar as it sits right now. Either way I'll experiment with it.

First step before all of this is getting rid of these horrible ballcups on the camber and steering links though.

RogueIV wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 11:44 am

XLR8 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 12:01 am

RogueIV wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2024 6:41 pm Drove the car yesterday and added more about the experience above.

Really want to try this with some foam tires in the future.

I also might try moving the rear swaybar endlinks to the middle holes and see what effect that gives me.

Great review - thanks for posting.
The original DS manual shows the swaybar link going in the middle hole. With the link in the inner hole, would the swaybar be very effective since it's positioned so close to the inner arm hinge pin? Also, sliding the upper link pivot back toward the shock tower might stiffen the sway bar a bit.

I am aware that it'll make it more effective my concern is how much it ends up reducing the rear traction in the process. The car's balance right now is pretty good. So hoping that changing locations of it doesn't make it too tail happy. To be honest I think it needs stiffer front bar as it sits right now. Either way I'll experiment with it.

First step before all of this is getting rid of these horrible ballcups on the camber and steering links though.

We're on the same page. At least they've provided a wide range of adjustability and it should be relatively easy to adjust at the track.
FWIW, I probably wouldn't recommend using droop to limit body roll as it could entirely unload a tire and make handling unpredictable. It's probably best to use the anti-roll bars.

As most everyone whose built the new DS has noted, those ballcups are definitely not AE's best. Have you selected replacements?

Anyway, thanks for documenting your driving experiences with the car, identifying areas for improvement, adjustments, etc. It's been very helpful.

XLR8 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 12:38 pm
We're on the same page. At least they've provided a wide range of adjustability and it should be relatively easy to adjust at the track.
FWIW, I probably wouldn't recommend using droop to limit body roll as it could entirely unload a tire and make handling unpredictable. It's probably best to use the anti-roll bars.

As most everyone whose built the new DS has noted, those ballcups are definitely not AE's best. Have you selected replacements?

Anyway, thanks for documenting your driving experiences with the car, identifying areas for improvement, adjustments, etc. It's been very helpful.

I'm going with RPM ends as they have never let me down. Also I can add a little bit of color to this sea of black.

Another issue is some of these shock ends have a bit too much slop as well. Noticed it when I was trying to dial out chassis tweak so might address that as well. Maybe even goto the shorter ends as that'd allow me to lower it a bit more.

RogueIV wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 1:34 pm

XLR8 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 12:38 pm
We're on the same page. At least they've provided a wide range of adjustability and it should be relatively easy to adjust at the track.
FWIW, I probably wouldn't recommend using droop to limit body roll as it could entirely unload a tire and make handling unpredictable. It's probably best to use the anti-roll bars.

As most everyone whose built the new DS has noted, those ballcups are definitely not AE's best. Have you selected replacements?

Anyway, thanks for documenting your driving experiences with the car, identifying areas for improvement, adjustments, etc. It's been very helpful.

I'm going with RPM ends as they have never let me down. Also I can add a little bit of color to this sea of black.

Another issue is some of these shock ends have a bit too much slop as well. Noticed it when I was trying to dial out chassis tweak so might address that as well. Maybe even goto the shorter ends as that'd allow me to lower it a bit more.

Yeah, RPM ends should be a good choice. I have them on the Stealth '91 buggy.
I just checked the original manual and they recommend 3/8" (9.5mm) ride height with body fitted.
Man, that is low!
At that height, the arms will be nowhere close to level. So much for design intent.
I received only 3 of the short shock ends. Apparently one broke from the tree but wasn't in the bag.

XLR8 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 4:34 pm

RogueIV wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 1:34 pm

XLR8 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2024 12:38 pm
We're on the same page. At least they've provided a wide range of adjustability and it should be relatively easy to adjust at the track.
FWIW, I probably wouldn't recommend using droop to limit body roll as it could entirely unload a tire and make handling unpredictable. It's probably best to use the anti-roll bars.

As most everyone whose built the new DS has noted, those ballcups are definitely not AE's best. Have you selected replacements?

Anyway, thanks for documenting your driving experiences with the car, identifying areas for improvement, adjustments, etc. It's been very helpful.

I'm going with RPM ends as they have never let me down. Also I can add a little bit of color to this sea of black.

Another issue is some of these shock ends have a bit too much slop as well. Noticed it when I was trying to dial out chassis tweak so might address that as well. Maybe even goto the shorter ends as that'd allow me to lower it a bit more.

Yeah, RPM ends should be a good choice. I have them on the Stealth '91 buggy.
I just checked the original manual and they recommend 3/8" (9.5mm) ride height with body fitted.
Man, that is low!
At that height, the arms will be nowhere close to level. So much for design intent.
I received only 3 of the short shock ends. Apparently one broke from the tree but wasn't in the bag.

Yeah I think that ride height might be a typo imo at that height there's barely any suspension travel.

Updated the manual to V3 to add the note about rear upper shock mount assembly needing to be reversed. Thanks @XLR8

Great write up bud appreciate all the work you're putting in.

You should try the Tamiya F104 belted slicks one day see how you like them.

KidAgain wrote: ↑Tue Aug 27, 2024 1:01 pm Great write up bud appreciate all the work you're putting in.

You should try the Tamiya F104 belted slicks one day see how you like them.

It's on the list! Might see if there's any at the lhs this weekend.

Got the RPM ballcups on. I had to cut down the camber link ballcups a little bit and the inner front camber link location requires you to trim and file the cup side a bit to clear the nose tubes without rubbing. Note that I forgot about the steering linkage in my ballcup count so i used a few white cups I had in my drawer and used them as indicators for the reverse thread side of the camber links, since the turnbuckles don't have marks on them indicating what end is what other than the threads themselves. Might as well make the best of a mistake!

I also tossed it on the arrowmax and gave it a proper alignment back to 0 toe and -2 camber all around at a ride height of 10mm. Not a lot of travel under compression, but we'll see how it goes.