m4inbrain

I see - don't think i've seen the shell by itself. The few blogs i found it in mention that it's a limited 2010 re-release - so even if you find it, it's gonna be steep, unless i misunderstand something?

Just trying to figure out which one wasn't in stock - for the last three days i've been on the hunt for a certain shell, so i'm somewhat fluent in "japanese RC shops", might've seen the one you're looking for - but the description is a bit on the vague side. Team-C makes a nice Evo 5 and 6, if that helps.

https://landlmodels.co.uk/products/tamiya-50927-1-10-lancer-evo-wrc-body-rc-hop-ups This one?

Cheers - yeah, was loads of fun. Can't wait to get out in two weeks again. Plans for the shell have changed entirely lol, the body i really want isn't to be had anywhere in the world it appears: Seen some cool "drifty" variations of it, looks awesome - but can't be found anywhere in stock. Harumph. Now i'm looking more at "customisable" bodies - the usual suspects, S13, S14 early/late, S15, JZX100 - for these kind of bodies, you get loads of aftermarket parts/panels, to further customise it (engine bays, fenderless frames etc). Haven't really set my mind 100% on what to go for, the favourite changes daily at the moment. But i'll get there, gotta read into paint blending etc first, haven't done a shell in a decade and gotta fresh up the non-existing knowledge lol.

Well then, finally the day. First club/drift meet, first drift kit, first RWD drift - absolutely perfect, and i'm not exaggerating. The rig ran absolutely spot on. Didn't touch any settings, completely dialed first try. Apologies for not really having pictures, had to screen grab from the (awful) video, but enough to get an impression of what it looks like running. I didn't mention it, but it does have an LED kit now, with working brake lights - though that was a faff and a half to set up, i'll write up what i had to do to get it work properly at some other time. The issue was that it (Killerbody LED set) went into blinking mode by itself after a few seconds, looked arse. Got it fixed, looks good - but lost an LED somehow, tore a cable out. No biggy, that's the only battle damage i sustained as well. Coffee and donuts were provided by the organizer (included in the £5 admission fee), the beast my belly was happy. And lastly, because it thought it was kinda funny.. That's the (1-1) car of another attendee, lol. Pretty sure that has seen some sideway action too. Already big plans for the next steps, which will be a new shell, accessories (want an engine bay etc), airbrush kit, and yet another LED kit that also provides the option for backfire LEDs.

Not used it, but the holder is for 40mm fans. https://www.corally.com/Car-Parts-Tuning/Radix-6-XP-6S-C-00185/Tuning-Parts-Radix-6-XP-6S/Team-Corally-Fan-Holder-for-fan-40-mm-Composite-1-set/

If push comes to shove, anything can be made to fit. Bearings are quite obviously available from all kinds of manufacturers, it's usually cheaper (and better) to go with dedicated bearing companies anyway rather than the ones sold by the RC manufacturer. Same for screws and bolts. There are "universal shocks", like for example the Yeah Racing Qutus "system". All you really need is the length/diameter of your current shock and get something that is reasonably close, and go from there. Body panels are a bit harder, probably not really going to happen without changing the looks a bit (different shell, different wing etc). Wing mounts (one of the likelier things to break when rolling in grass) are a bit more complicated, these aren't really universal - but if you have a 3d printer, it's pretty simple to just whip up a quick design and print it. There's also the potential to just plastic cement/epoxy it back together. It'll still work fine. Now, for the steering rack, potentially knuckles etc, they're usually somewhat unique to the design of the RC and can't be directly replaced with random other buggy parts without changing the geometry, for that one you'd need to ask in a dedicated XTM forum, they'll probably be more help there. Suspension arms i wouldn't know, but i can't imagine it being hard to find universal/other buggy replacements for that. Generally though, you can certainly frankenstein a lot of parts on a buggy. Depending on how good a job you do, it could actually be considered "upgraded". That all said.. It's of course much easier to just get a rig that you can still get spares for. If you want to stick with the nitro truggy theme, immediately the Hobao Hyper 7 springs to mind - basically indestructible, and still parts available. Can be had reasonably cheap used too.

Neither takes 8s. The EXB barely takes 6s with a 1650kv motor. And at that point already it's completely undrivable and starts ripping into the drive cups. I should know. Pics?

Yeah, sucks. Found a few places that sell combos for airbrush sets (primer and multiple colours) including tutorial how to get the effect, but that method won't work for shells that are sprayed in reverse (as in, instead of primer, colour, colour, clear - colour, colour, "primer"/backing). Over 30 year old colour, one of the most iconic (to petrolheads) to be ever created - and to this day, not possible to recreate it. Mind boggling, really.

While true that the home of drifting is japan, the E30 is well loved by drifters too (in europe). That's why you can't find any reasonably priced ones anymore. -.- I'll probably end up with both eventually anyway, the question is just which one first. The E30 is cheaper (almost half the price), so it doesn't hurt if i ruin it by making a mistake, haven't done a shell in almost a decade. That's what swung it. Easier to find a colour for it, too - though am a bit sad that still no one is able to offer a midnight purple in a can. 😞

That is in fact true, didn't think of that. Though while they were settling, i assembled the rest of the rig (bumper and stuff) - so it's not that big a deal. Next time though i'll probably use the dryer, cheers. I think i've chased the gremlins away for now - one of the two sensor ports on the motor seems to be naff, doesn't want to pick it up when connected there. Sucks a bit for cable routing, but it'll do until i consider upgrading to the XD10 ESC with D10 motor. Had a quick play in the house, still needs all kinds of adjustment both mechanically (toe in, camber, caster etc) as well as the gyro - just turned it to roughly "that'll do percent", and had a quick go. Works as it should - not well, mainly because i'm using carpet tyres on wooden floor (absolutely zero grip), but it does act/react like it's expected to. All ready for next weeks meet, already making plans for the next (the "good") shell, lol. Currently torn between this: and this: I do like my wagons, i kinda like the Corolla better - but i did own an E30 20 years ago, so, hms. The E30 is also made by an Ukrainian company, so i can tell myself that i'm doing a good deed by buying that one. I can certainly sell "helping Ukrainians" easier to my wife than "yeah remember the shell i bought two weeks ago? Ordered another one now.". 😄

No, stainless is what you want, generally. Just gotta be a bit careful when driving them into plastic, easier to strip than with a nylon bolt.

As mentioned, here's the last real update for now in regards to building. The chassis is assembled, the body fitted, at the moment trying to chase electrical gremlins - but, pictures first. These are the devil. Probably took me bloody 20 minutes to get those E clips seated. Though they did give you three extra, so there's that. My needle nose pliers didn't want to grab, constantly slipped off - drove me absolutely nuts lol. Next: Don't have a shock stand, so a random box will do. Took 15 minutes for the bubbles to disappear (i've read that some people use heat to accelerate it, but i don't smoke so i don't have a lighter lol - also, plastic shock bodies). Apart from them awful E clips, they assembled reasonably well (as well as plastic into plastic would go well). Wheels and shocks on for the first time - but the wrong wheels, also note that the motor wires are still awful. Now they're fixed. Correct wheels on now, at that point it still had way too much toe out at the front, since rectified - but still needs a full and proper alignment. The top one is my 2.0 RTR, doesn't seem THAT much different i'll be honest, though the main difference apparently lies in the gearbox, i don't know. Don't care either, got to build a kit, so i'm happy. Connectors also arrived, soldered everything up now - but there's an issue. Started programming everything (ESC, radio, Gyro etc) - but the motor is cogging like mad on low throttle. Which it shouldn't, considering that it's sensored. Or at least, supposed to be sensored. Could not get that out of it, the ESC also doesn't recognise the motor as sensored (no sensored programming options appearing in the setup menu). If my experience is anything to go by, there's really just three options: ESC borked (the sensor-port), sensor cable borked, or motor borked (sensor port - though the motor has two sensor ports for different mounting positions, doesn't work with either) - it's wired ABC correctly. Got late, so i couldn't be bothered to check where my castle 1717 sensor wires are (i don't even know if they'd fit), that's for tomorrow. That's it so far. Next will be fixing everything in place (nothing cable tied yet, stuff still needs to go in and out of the RC for fitting/testing), and programming (once the motor works as it should). Then it's down to setting it up, as mentioned one of the lads at the club has a full hudy setup station, so i'll be making good use of that. And then.. probably going to buy a Yokomo chassis too, just for the giggles lol, forgot how much fun/how relaxing it is to build a kit. And of course drive the wheels off of it.

Betaflight has a fixed wing option, but it's a bit hit and miss. https://betaflight.com/docs/wiki/archive/Setup-for-a-Fixed-Wing-Aircraft As was mentioned in there, servos browning out could be an issue. Personally, depending on what you intend to build (foamy, or something more expensive), i'd just ignore the gyro stuff, get a cheap china ESC etc and just fly as is without horizon mode and whatnot. If you go with a cessna/cub style plane and add some dihedral, it's super easy to fly. Wouldn't start with a warbird, they're notoriously for being harder to control (apart from one or two outliers like the T-28). You'd want to start with a dihedral top wing, not a low wing.

Yeah - i actually finished earlier 😞 Well, at least with the general assembly - needs an alignment urgently (currently not really toe-in, more toe-around), needs the shell fitted (and figured out - doesn't really fit with the magnetic mounts, so gotta figure that one out). And needs a bit more soldering/cable routing, but in terms of assembly it's done. And sadness ensued. Will add pictures later, my fingers are still bleeding from all the E-clips for the shocks. As mentioned, still faffing about with the shell - sits around 10mm too high on the chassis, and i don't seem to have any adjustment downwards left - so that's going to be interesting.

Well, did a little bit more. Build is slowly coming to an end, so both excitement and sadness are creeping in. First, cleaned up the motor a little bit. From this: To this. Not perfect, but better. It's good enough for the girls i'm dating, so i'll leave that part alone now. On the other hand.. Not happy with my heat shrinking job. It turns out that when you heat heat shrink, it, well, shrinks. Something that you should take into account when measuring/aligning it. Because if you don't, then it's looking like this: The ESC isn't stuck down in that picture, it is now. Not happy with the heat shrinking there (i wanted some longer runs on the cable so i don't cut the ESC wires all the way to stubs). I'll remove that heat shrinking, instead of two parts i'll just use one long shrink, no point in being able to readily disconnect the motor anyway. Sadly, my battery connectors haven't arrived yet (thursday, sigh), so while the ESC is now gorilla taped in the correct position (as is the gyro), i can't really do any power wiring just yet. Also not 100% certain where to put the receiver yet, i'll figure that out tomorrow. For now, that's how the thing sits: Tomorrow then will be shocks, as well as figuring out the rest of the electronics - maybe mocking up the body as well. Depends on how well my thumbs recover from them stupid pillow balls, really need a tool for that. The rear arm sits so weird because there's a cable stuck underneath so it's not drooping properly, only noticed afterwards. Receiver needs connected to everything, and the cables routed decently - and i gotta figure a spot for the capacitor as well, probably just going to zip tie it somewhere underneath something out of the way. I do have a battery now (was tempted to just use bullets to connect to the battery, but knowing myself, i will eventually get it wrong and short it out), but as mentioned, connectors still missing. To this point, no stripped screw/threads, no major issues with the manual (a few typos, like dmaper instead of damper, that's it), everything fits nicely. For a 95% plastic build, this is pretty good to assemble. Pinion sadly hasn't arrived yet either, that's why the motor looks so disconnected there. So far, so good.

Yeah, making good/smooth progress - and i'm taking it deliberately slow, to the point where i shave the plastic parts with a craft knife where they were attached to the plastic grid thing. No need to rush, needs to be done by the 28th, not sooner - might as well do it right, have a few brews with it, listen to music and shoo the cats away every three minutes. Not sure what you mean about the pictures - they're imgur URLs (to save MSUK the traffic of loading the pictures), so i just paste the URL, press enter twice, then text - then enter twice again, next picture/URL. If i understand correctly, the "pressing enter twice" is what does the spacing.

So, here's the result then. Not noticeable in this picture, but the rear end clip is the wrong way around, caught it before installing though. New home, was pretty straight forward except the block that holds the two idlers was the wrong way around as well, leading to me not being able to close the gearbox properly (1mm gap). Was an easy fix also, though. Not going to pretend it all went together smoothly so far - but i will say that everything that didn't go together smoothly was me being a monkey, not the kits fault (clips backwards etc). Gearbox together with the stiffening bars (this is also where the gyro is going to mount, on top) - i will say, assembling a plastic gearbox with mostly plastic internals is considerably easier, and cleaner than a full metal box. I did enjoy this part of the build, despite it being fiddly. Motor mounted - pinion hasn't arrived yet (also tomorrow), but the motor gots to come off again anyway, those huge blobs of solder offend me. Ordered a desolder pump as well as solder wick just for that, lol. I'm also not quite sure if i keep the motor clocked like that, because from the motor to the ESC is barely two inches. Not enough space to mount motor bullets (unless i directly solder the ESC to the motor, which i don't want to do), so i will have to figure out some routing. All offered up now, almost starting to look like an RC. Reasonably, ish. Here's why i'm not sure where the motor is going to be clocked: That's a mock-up for the ESC position. It's so close to the motor, again, no possible way to directly go from motor to ESC and install bullets at the same time. I of course also want it to be tidy though, so i'll be doing some thinking man tomorrow, once everything is completed and mocked up. That's where i stopped today, kinda savouring the build a bit - it goes nicely together, and building a kit is somewhat rare for me (at least nowhere near as often as i'd like to build one). Tomorrow is soldering day, motor bullets, ESC bullets and connector, cleaning up the solder on the motor etc. Maybe i'll do a little more on the chassis itself depending on whether or not i can contain myself. Also started to think about setting it up (camber, toe in etc) - turns out that the guy who let me drive his blinged out RMX 2.0 also has a Hudy setup-station, because of course he does. So that's £200 saved for me lol, he already told me that he's going to bring it to the next meet. I did order a camber/ride height gauge to set the rig up, but if i get the option to use some stupendously expensive toy to do the setup, then absolutely i will.

There we go, after waiting for the turnbuckle (more on that later), i finally got some more done. Starting with: more turnbuckles. I just absolutely hate setting turnbuckles. Especially plastic ones. Kind of important to get it right though, these were the steering linkages. Next was: You guessed it - more turnbuckling! With the added bonus of me ordering the wrong turnbuckle. I needed 3x68mm, and somehow ebay translated that into 3x76mm without me noticing. But cranked all the way down, it reasonably fits. I don't have any adjustment left though, so at that point i was just crossing my fingers. Steering assembly with upper suspension arms ready to receive my botch job. Of course, before i install everything, i need to centre the servo: Yeah. Of course i'm going to use an 8s ESC to centre the servo. Mainly because my XT60 connectors haven't arrived yet (tomorrow) - so i can't solder the XR10 ESC just yet. To get on with the build, i had to connect what i had - in this case, well.. yeah. Looked funny though. Next was the differential, and i thought to myself "oh, that's a generous amount of black and ball grease - but.. Still more than enough though, so no complaints. Just thought it's funny how misleading those tubs are. Now, the (to this point) most annoying part of the build so far. Assembling the rear differential. I've built a few diffs so far, but never one that i had to assemble the thrust bearing myself. Turns out that sausage fingers + 0.3mm steel balls = infuriating. But, here's the result. That one was easy, but this one: Boy. It'd been reasonably easy if there was a groove or anything to hold everything in place, but nah. It's just two tiny washers, and you gotta stack eight micro-balls in there - and not with the good ball diff grease (sticky), but the ugh black grease (sticky, but also liquid-y). That one i really didn't enjoy and almost made me flip the table. Let me start another post, don't know if there's limits i'm approaching here.

Indeed, stiffer springs (and the sway bar you mentioned) as well as thicker oil or different shock pistons are the solutions. You gotta admit though that cranking up the ride height (and with that, centre of gravity) is nonsense when your issue is that your RC constantly falls over. It just doesn't make sense. The Outlaw isn't different than other RCs in that aspect, cranking down the collars means lifting the body. It very well could be that i'm missing something else and that cranking up the body does fix something - but in that case the effect still isn't changing the compression. That's more my point, not that it doesn't fix anything, but that it changes the spring rate/compression, because that isn't happening.

That's not what that does, it's one of those myths that just don't die. What it actually does is set the ride height to maximum, which is the complete opposite of what you want to do if your problem is traction rolling already. Shock collars do not change the spring rate. The spring compresses with the same force regardless of whether it's one quarter or three quarters compressed. They're linear, and they have to be because otherwise it'd be impossible to tune for races. Unless of course you have a dual stage spring/progressive spring, which i doubt on an Outlaw. Compression is tightened by changing either the oil, or the piston to one that flows less ("less holes"). That's it. Preload just affects the ride height. Nothing else. Here's a few links that i find incredibly helpful/useful in general (i use them all the time, too old to remember everything). https://www.sodialed.com/rc-settings/shock-pre-load#:~:text=About shock pre-load&text=Pre-load is a fairly,the top of the shock. https://www.sodialed.com/rc-settings/shock-springs https://www.sodialed.com/rc-settings/shock-oil

No worries. 👍

What's that collar setting supposed to achieve?

Hard to specify anything without knowing how stiff the springs are etc, or even what kind of buggy it is (4wd, 2wd etc) - as a rule of thumb, i'd go with 400cst in the front, and 350cst in the rear- then go from there.

Picked it up local, so got lucky on that front. Saved a good chunk of money too. Waiting for parts always sucks tho. 😞