Associated RC10 B7D - The Off-Road Distraction

[Anthroxoid 190]

Hey nice job on the paint scheme. The black panels arcing up are going to make that body look extra sleek. Love to PS-54 main hue. 😎

Two cents on the plastic threading: it’s a flexible FRP, with lots of plasticizer for flexibility under stress so when you tap a thread with a screw that starter thread is only made up of the smooshy matrix plastic. If the holes are deep enough a tiny counter sinking or reaming will help you locate the threads on soft plastics like this—or just be super gentle as you plan. I’m sure you’ll learn the feedback after one or two removals and resinkings.

[Pylon80 4231]

2 hours ago, Anthroxoid said:

Hey nice job on the paint scheme. The black panels arcing up are going to make that body look extra sleek. Love to PS-54 main hue. 😎

Two cents on the plastic threading: it’s a flexible FRP, with lots of plasticizer for flexibility under stress so when you tap a thread with a screw that starter thread is only made up of the smooshy matrix plastic. If the holes are deep enough a tiny counter sinking or reaming will help you locate the threads on soft plastics like this—or just be super gentle as you plan. I’m sure you’ll learn the feedback after one or two removals and resinkings.

Thank you for the insight, the plastic feels strong but soft at the same time which makes sense with your explanation. I think the best word to describe it would be "resilient".

[Anthroxoid 190]

7 hours ago, Pylon80 said:

Thank you for the insight, the plastic feels strong but soft at the same time which makes sense with your explanation. I think the best word to describe it would be "resilient".

You’re welcome and in my humble opinion exactly correct on describing AE’s resins. It’s incredibly strong, long fiber FRP and can really take a beating. They also put a lot CAD time in on the B74’s suspension arm forms to get low CG, and ideal webbing for that nice balance of flex with form retention. Really looking forward to hearing how yours drives as I’m super tempted to add one into my garage. I can say that their 4WD cousins are superb vehicles, so I’d expect you’ll find the same true with the B74. And their shocks, my goodness. You’re in for a treat there. Have fun!

[Pylon80 4231]

Servo Installation

The current trend for high end servos is to use low profile ones. It's a bit difficult to find something fast, strong and accurate that isn't low profile; but in reality there's more than enough room for a standard servo. I had a Hitec 625DW which is a great value in terms of strength and accuracy although it's slow by racers' standards. I have used it for on-road and found it perfectly fine, so I'll use that 🙂

The newer Hitec servos have a 25t spline like a Futaba or Savox etc but the 24 of old wouldn't have been a problem since the kit comes with 23, 24 and 25 splines arms! 

There's a nice aluminum ring the slips on the arm for strength: it cannot deform and skip a tooth which it the usual failure mode with plastic arms. 

You then have to make a tiny link to hook into the steering set: 

It's very hard plastic which makes it very free and durable at the expense of play; I'm ok with that these days. 

The servo mount is nice and strong: 

As a tip, you have to install the servo but leave all four screws loose; this enables lining up the mount with the two holes in the lower deck. Then, you can tighten the 4 screws that attach the servo to the mount. Doing the other way around is a common error which leads to stripped holes in plastic servo mounts when there's nothing wrong with them in reality. 

Finally a sort of upper deck bolts over the servo and makes the front of the chassis feel bulletproof:

Front arms will be next.

[Anthroxoid 190]

Nice and clean. The only other vehicle I’ve seen so far to use reversed steering arms is a Tekno eb410 and if I recall correctly, they claimed to have “invented” that arrangement. Shenanigans… Regardless, it sure does allow for a nicely compacted steering assembly as your buggy shows. That’s useful weight up there, too. 

[Rinskie 1284]

Very nice man. Glad you made the right choice! 

[GTodd 1602]

On 5/8/2024 at 10:15 PM, RichieRich said:

I have not started my build yet but I love seeing your progress so far. Before I go any further, I should say, that I do like the paintwork you've just completed. I just saw a new retro body for the B7 made by Leadfinger RC. It has a "normal" buggy look with the cab towards the rear which is a shape that I like. I just ordered one. I'd like to get one for my B6.3 also once they start making those. Maybe I'll start a build thread once the new body arrives.

Oh shoot why did you do that! Now I need to order one, that's smoking!

[Pylon80 4231]

Front Arms

Nothing special other than the need to make setup choice already; I am going by the most neutral starting point per the manual for the first time around. The total caster will be 25deg, based on the chassis (22.5deg), the bulkhead (0deg included in the kit) and the C hub once equipped with +2.5deg inserts.

I ran my trusty reamer through the front arms which use 3mm suspension shafts like a touring car:

The fit was already quite nice but it's always good to make sure the arms fall under their own weight, making the suspension as compliant as possible.

The suspension shafts are inserted into a bulkhead which is blue  and can be shimmed with some included shims. The standard one is 1mm and I like the fact that you can read its thickness on the little tab even when it is installed, that is just smart!

The two other holes will be used to secure the tiny bumper that will also act as a bash guard to avoid damaging the blue part.

Then we move on to the front shock tower, which of course is carbon fiber:

The carbon is thick, 4mm and a surprise for me who is used to on-road cars. The plastic part next to it is another smart detail, it is a guard to avoid delaminating the carbon part, not if, but when, you crash and the car ends up upside down.

Front Knuckles

We get a few options in the kit:

They each provide a different steering feel and as usual I chose the middle one for starters.

Then it's quality time installing the front freewheel axles, blue aluminum as standard...

Then we attach the carbon arms to the knuckles, similar to today's TRF touring cars:

The kit ones are '+1' with other arms available as options... I am guessing these will fine-tune Ackerman.

The C hubs are next:

More carbon, this time attached to the C hubs and marked with a '0'. I am guessing this fine tunes front roll center.

I am really impressed with the design of the knuckles as an engineer; if you have struggled building straight and smooth knuckles on an FF-03 or Type S or TRF 417 or even XV-01 etc, you know how critical it is to make the threads perfectly aligned for the upper and lower screw. Well, here there are balls inserted into the C which makes the assembly self-aligning. Bravo! (and ignore me if this has been standard in racing buggies for 20 years  I just didn't know).

Then you add your choice of caster insert into the C, as explained at the beginning I am going with the middle ground +2.5deg:

The C hubs can be mounted onto the front arms. They are supposed to be slightly tight fit on the suspension shaft while the shafts are loose fit into the arm. This reduces the total amount of play since the arms are wider than the C hub.

Next up will be the rear of the car, which is a busy place!

[Anthroxoid 190]

15 minutes ago, Pylon80 said:

I ran my trusty reamer through the front arms which use 3mm suspension shafts like a touring car:

Nice, and your line here about coming from the TC genre reminded me that there’s a nice promo vid on AE’s site about how the B7 was pretty heavily influenced by a new employee of theirs who came from the custom TC ecosystem. They talk about it a lot. Pardon the lack of link as I’m not sure if it was there or YouTube, though searching for the B7’s design evolution or similar should land you the reel that I’m thinking of. I believe that you’ll appreciate your car even more after watching it. 
 

looking forward to the rest of your build

—XOID 

[Pylon80 4231]

19 minutes ago, Anthroxoid said:

Nice, and your line here about coming from the TC genre reminded me that there’s a nice promo vid on AE’s site about how the B7 was pretty heavily influenced by a new employee of theirs who came from the custom TC ecosystem. They talk about it a lot. Pardon the lack of link as I’m not sure if it was there or YouTube, though searching for the B7’s design evolution or similar should land you the reel that I’m thinking of. I believe that you’ll appreciate your car even more after watching it. 
 

looking forward to the rest of your build

—XOID 

Interesting and thanks, I will be searching for it

[RichieRich 846]

How is the build going? The Leadfinger B7 body arrived this past Friday and I have some Lunsford turnbuckles arriving tomorrow. This may be the final RC10 build to have Lunsford titanium installed.

[Pylon80 4231]

8 hours ago, RichieRich said:

How is the build going? The Leadfinger B7 body arrived this past Friday and I have some Lunsford turnbuckles arriving tomorrow. This may be the final RC10 build to have Lunsford titanium installed.

It's actually quite far along  I just need to update the thread, which is where most of the time goes on a build like this!

Rear Arms Mount

The rear arms use inserts similar to TRF touring cars; I had this system on my TT-02 Type SR at some point. A series of inserts are provided and you can pick and choose which inserts you use at the front and at the rear of the rear arms. The neutral inserts provide 3deg of toe in, 1deg of anti-squat and the neutral point for width and roll center.

As a starting point I went with this neutral setting although for some reason the manual mentions that the starting point for anti-squat is 2deg. Most people building these will probably use a 13.5 or at most a 17.5 motor. Since I will be starting out with a  very mild 21.5 motor I chose only 1deg of anti-squat. As usual the arms mount is blue aluminum which is very nice!

I thought the rear suspension pins were strange... I realized why:

They are 3.5mm diameter instead of 3mm. Again this shows how everything is so foreign to me on these modern buggies.

Ball Differential

There are 2 variants of the B7 that are quite different in many ways including wheelbase and where the rear shocks are etc: B7 is for carpet (I am sure carpet racing a buggy is tons of fun, but still... an off-road vehicle on carpet... how sad). Since I didn't know any better and since my local track is dirt I went with the B7d, d for dirt. As such, it comes with a ball differential as opposed to an oil-filled gear differential. I really like ball diffs and I realize that I have them on all but one of my on-road cars. Although someone like me probably will never feel the difference, they do offer a somewhat greater finesse over dusty surfaces as opposed to an oil diff. Think about cutting a tomato with a dull knife or a sharp serrated one. Or carving a snowboard over icy slopes, pick your metaphor! Also, physically an oil diff needs to have some differential action to oppose any resistance; the ball diff on the contrary always seem to offer some resistance even from a static point. At least this is my view point on the subject!

I always polish the plates before building the diff, even if it is brand new and the reward is a very smooth diff:

It is much easier to do if you hold the plates with a strong magnet! Holding the plates directly, you can also cut your fingers by abrasion without noticing if you are not careful.

I didn't notice that the grease was included in the kit (instructions said it was not...) so I used Tamiya ball diff grease as usual. So, there is some Tamiya in that chassis!  The spring is very strong and works better than the conical Belleville washers I am used to. As usual I will finalize the tension once I have the rear wheels installed on the car; more on that later.

Next up we will build the gear box.

[GTodd 1602]

Amazing build! I'm very interested in the 4wd version and this isn't helping! LOL.

[Pylon80 4231]

Gear Box

The box is using a series of small idler gears, an even number for the motor pinion, spur, idlers and diff to make the car move forward as the motor turn counter clockwise. Using many smaller idlers makes for a very low CG gear box.

More nice bearings with one side metal shielded and the other rubber shielded.

The diff goes in:

I heeded the manual's advice and applied a tiny amount of ball diff grease to the gear train instead of leaving it dry. A first for me, but I don't want to second guess Associated at this particular game  The buggy will only be run on the indoor manicured off road track that didn't seem to have much dust at all when I went there; so it should all be fine.

The aluminum part that hold the ball studs for the rear camber link is another superb piece of CNC work and blue anodizing.

All closed:

There is something ever so slightly notchy in one of the idlers... I will have to keep an eye on that. It's possible that it will break in by itself as I run the car.

The motor mount, which will do the talking for me:

Slipper Clutch

This is a first for me and a feature that is standard on all modern buggies, since the point is to fly high and land without the wheel speed matching the speed of the car; and repeat the abuse all day long. The kit came with 2 spurs, including a larger one for 21.5 and 17.5 which is the one I am using

It's very easy to put together and I followed the manual for the initial adjustment. I will have to learn how to set it correctly which I have been reading on a bit lately.

Installation on the Chassis and Rear Arms

And the entire gear box and slipper go onto the chassis along with the rear arms. The gear box is used structurally to hold many things (rear arms, camber links, differential, motor...) and so it is attached with an impressive 8 screws total.

It is definitely starting to look like a buggy. So much that I could not resist putting the body on just to see what it looks like:

One not about the rear arms, unlike everything else so far I have not tapped any threads into the arms before installing the long grub screws that will be holding the dampers. I even cleaned the threads with alcohol. The manual mentions that CA glue might be required to secure these so I wanted to have the best friction possible between the screws and the arms. It felt very secure when I was done screwing them in the arms.

Next up will be a part I really enjoy in any build: the turnbuckles.

[Anthroxoid 190]

Gosh I just love the proportions of that chassis. Those suspension arms are fantastically lengthened and are going to swing like butter. The whole design with the laydown gears and all just screams, “Made for racing!”

. 

6 hours ago, GTodd said:

Amazing build! I'm very interested in the 4wd version and this isn't helping! LOL.

I have two of the B74.1Ds and they’re gorgeous designs (was so impressed by first bought the second for later). There are some further optimizations . Following point releases as always, though even the 2022 and newer 4WD cars are just absolutely bonkers when set out in modified indoor tracks. They go so fast out of the corners that they look to defy Newtonian physics.
 

Additionally, they’re nice to work on which I’ve seen most manufacturers strive towards with their new 4WDs. Diffs pop out with ease, they’re super tunable, as is the entire car of course, and race ready OOTB. 
 

I’m loving @Pylon80’s build here and interested in 2WD off-road for the first time in ages due to the in-depth look at the engineering. 

[Pylon80 4231]

2 minutes ago, Anthroxoid said:

Gosh I just love the proportions of that chassis. Those suspension arms are fantastically lengthened and are going to swing like butter. The whole design with the laydown gears and all just screams, “Made for racing!”

. 

I have two of the B74.1Ds and they’re gorgeous designs (was so impressed by first bought the second for later). There are some further optimizations . Following point releases as always, though even the 2022 and newer 4WD cars are just absolutely bonkers when set out in modified indoor tracks. They go so fast out of the corners that they look to defy Newtonian physics.
 

Additionally, they’re nice to work on which I’ve seen most manufacturers strive towards with their new 4WDs. Diffs pop out with ease, they’re super tunable, as is the entire car of course, and race ready OOTB. 
 

I’m loving @Pylon80’s build here and interested in 2WD off-road for the first time in ages due to the in-depth look at the engineering. 

I think 'bonkers' is the word that best describes everything I'm seeing so far. 

When I saw the B6's at the track fly off the triple jumps I think I paused with open jaws for a few seconds 😉

[Pylon80 4231]

Rear uprights and Universals

The kit comes with 2 options for the rear uprights, regular ones and HRC, which does not stand for Honda Racing Corporation but rather High Roll Center. For starters I will use the normal ones as usual.

They are designed along the same principle as the front ones in terms of having the suspension shafts slightly tight fit inside the knuckles so that the rotation is entirely done by the shaft inside the arms; this reduces play to the absolute minimum since the arms are wider than the knuckles.

There are also 4 options of inserts that go inside the knuckles and I followed the instructions and used the starting point which is labeled as '+1'. The insert is held by 2 grub screws and you need to be careful not to poke through the insert! I used my reamer as a gauge to tighten the grub screws until I obtained the desired fit:

A blue aluminum insert is then attached to the knuckles and the ball stud screws over the insert with a shim that allows fine tuning roll center.

Then we move onto what is perhaps my favorite part of this superb chassis: the universals.

The axle is machined accurately to act as a bearing journal and it fits inside a very wide bearing: this is how the cross pin of the universal is held! Genius! This way there is no need for pesky springs or the dreaded grub screws of doom (that always come loose). This will make maintenance extremely easy and fast. All you have to do is unscrew the turnbuckle and extract the universal parts, dunk in alcohol and re-grease.

On the topic of grease I also went against my usual habit and heeded the manual's advice to use grease rather than oil. I don't think I should second guess Associated on this  There is a lot of debate on how grease will attract dust and damage the universal etc but I think that only applies to models that will not see much maintenance. I do use oil on my Tamiya postal racers and it is working ok. I just don't have the time to open and clean the universals and double joint cardans after every evening of Postal Racing. A racing buggy is meant to be raced, disassembled, cleaned and raced again. The supplied "black grease" seems very similar in thickness to Tamiya AW grease. I am wondering if it is a grease substrate with graphite powder inside? In any case the result is super smooth.

Needless to say, the hexes are blue aluminum clamp type. It never ends does it  Associated are obviously not using hop-ups as part of their strategy; or perhaps the competition with TLR and others is so fierce that they all need to supply "full blown" race kits as standard. Who knows.

Turnbuckles

I was looking forward to this part and I gleefully got my usual left hand and right hand rolling taps ready, only to realize that racing buggy turnbuckles are 3.5mm thread! Again this is all so foreign to me.

My trusty Hudy tool does fit though; however I ended up saving it for Tamiya blue turnbuckles that require a very accurate tool to avoid getting marred. The Associated turnbuckles are stainless steel and as such have no coating what so ever that you could scratch and are very strong. They get my other steel/stamped Hudy turnbuckle tool that I use on steel turnbuckles instead.

Unable to use a rolling tap I resorted to holding a turnbuckle in a small vice and using plenty of grease I was able to get 6 left handed threaded adjusters and 6 right handed ones. I always identify the left handed ones with a dot for future reference if I ever dismantle the links:

And now, it looks like a car:

My friend El Chupacabra (Race #5) is happy!

[Howards 836]

Updates plz....

[Pylon80 4231]

@Howards sorry I have been hitting a bit of a low in terms of motivation on the forum. As far as this thread is concerned, I wasn't sure how much interest there was in a B7 so the all thing felt like a waste of time. For some reason build threads and especially trying to correct all my typos takes me a ridiculous amount of time. So the car was completed a while ago  and run for a few hours already.

I will try and update the thread. It is hard not to sound like the car is lightyears ahead of any current or past Tamiya off-road offerings because it certainly is. So I might just let the pictures do the talking!

 

[Pylon80 4231]

Dampers

I was looking forward to the shocks as Associated shocks are probably the benchmark of off-road shocks. They are arguably to the buggy world what the TRF shocks 42102 are to on-road.

These shocks have the feature I always dreamt RC shocks would have: the piston is held onto the shaft by a tiny screw rather than floating between 2 E rings. This eliminates the slight dead band that you often feel on RC shocks. The pistons sit on a machined journal at the tip of the shaft and click in with total precision and zero play. The pistons are machined and the holes are different front to rear. This allows the base setup to use a single viscosity (30WT) for the front and the rear of the car. Note that I used a sharpy pencil to make the hole diameter markings easily visible even when submerged in oil.

Note the stack of 2 o-rings and 3 spacers. The o-rings are bespoke X rings.

The shock bottoms are very hard and you will need to roll threads into them in order to make them usable and not scratch the shaft trying to hold the torque. The kit comes with 3 lengths which is how you adjust downstops/droop. More on that later as I believe the stock setup calls for the wrong length at the front (+2mm should be 0mm).

These shocks are not big bore, they are huge bore! In fact they are called 13mm, probably will be 14mm one day. This reminds me of when mountain bike suspension forks manufacturers, led by Fox Racing started calling their forks by diameter, with a few more mm every couple of years. The picture above shows how the bottle will not allow you to build the shocks twice! The set of 4 holds about 5$ of oil in them...

I followed the instructions to bleed the shocks and watched the videos from Spencer Rivkin. He seems not to worry very much about taking too much time bleeding them or taking too much time letting any bubbles rise. He is really building them in a few minutes at most. I figured if Spencer got to that level without making shocks building any more complex than that I probably do not need to worry either. Still, it annoys me as I do not understand how the shocks can possibly contain any air at all once you have bled them. Yet they  do. Yet they truly are emulsion shocks. Yet if you cycle them 20 times and then open them you will see a foamy mix of air and oil. Yet they work so perfectly on the track. How you could bleed all the air, then a bit of oil, from the highest point in the shock head and still have air inside is one of the greatest mystery of science. Scientist are still scratching their heads.

If anyone has an educated guess on the matter I am all ears!

As usual you fine tune the stroke by screwing/unscrewing the bottoms. Even after rolling threads they are very hard to turn. I have decent pliers that leave no scratch on the shaft. This is a bit of a must have in your tool box.

Beautiful and buttery smooth. This is what the team drivers use (although some splurge on Kashima coating shock bodies). The whole project is certainly starting to feel grossly overkill for someone like me!

[Anthroxoid 190]

On 6/28/2024 at 5:45 AM, Pylon80 said:

The whole project is certainly starting to feel grossly overkill for someone like me!

No way! Everybody deserves nice toys!

Re: aeration, I’ve wondered the same after building many modern buggies with bleeders in their shock caps. I don’t like hearing the sound of an aeration damper but like you said they work fine. The important part is what you did in getting them to relax to almost entirely neutral pressure. I would not be surprised that a tiny volume of air gets drawn in through the X-Ring glands as the shocks are worked hard and a new equilibrium gets established as again, I’ve also seen how much “foam” gets created in a damper after you’ve carefully bled it out and then driven the vehicle or just pumped it a bit on the bench top. But that’s the design goal for aeration. That sloshy blend of silicone and air builds a different viscosity as the dampers warm up. 
 

FWIW while I’ve got no need for a modern 2WD buggy I’ve been badly tempted to buy this guy too. It seems so utterly refined and for a 4WD guy to get drawn towards a 2WD platform like this is saying a bit. They sure did a nice job on the design. Moar pics! And track report!

[Pylon80 4231]

I actually had to re-read my own thread to see what I had posted and what I had not - sorry for the delay. Here are some more pictures and incoherent ramblings.

Electronics

0ne of the reasons for not choosing the RB10 (simpler, lower spec and much cheaper RTR buggy from AE) was that I already had all the electronics required to build a B7D outright.

The ESC is my usual go-to, the HW XR10. This is even legal if I wanted to go racing, which I still might one day. It looks good, works perfectly and it is reasonably priced (drops to around 50$ at least twice a year).

The motor is a Tamiya  and it works great. Since the timing is adjustable I doubt it would be legal to go racing and so I will get the matching Justock motor at some point (Black Friday, hehe). That motor is a 21.5! Hitting all the jumps with a 2WD buggy, slick tires and a 21.5 is NOT easy but ultimately it might make me a better driver.

The receiver is antenna-less, which is how they should be and my airplane transmitter happens to support multiple protocols, including this SLT so I am using these on the cars. Sadly they just discontinued these for absolutely no logical reason... sigh... so I have a total of 3 of these and I just need to take good care of them. The 326 also supports high voltage which is better for the servo as well as the motor fan.

I use the pinion recommended in the manual (33t) and it turned out to be perfect on the track, speed wise. The motor does require a fan but I think the gearing is not the reason. It's the first time I see a brushless motor getting hot but then so far I mostly did "postal racing" kind of driving, on tiny areas where very little power is used compared to running this buggy on a full size indoor track.

I also adjusted the slipper clutch but in my case there simply isn't enough power to make it slip. So I just set it to the minimum spring tension and of course it does not ever slip under acceleration but it certainly protects the gears when landing jumps, as it was meant to do.

Rear Wing

I cut and sanded the wing, which has a cool "7" embossed into it. I am laughing today as I remember sanding it so nicely only to have the poor wing completely scratched and bent after only a few hours at the track. It is very exposed but available separately for 10$. My advice to anyone is to leave it clear, no paint and no stickers - which is the trend right now - and replace it when it finally breaks.

2 pilot holes and a few minutes with a body reamer will produce a nice pair of holes that fit the wing mount just right.

The wing angle is adjustable. I picked the least nose up (0deg) initially mostly because I didn't like the looks  then I saw that the car was really nose diving on every jumps so I went back to 3deg nose up. But I honestly didn't see much difference. the most important factor is driving technique; now I got the hang of applying throttle in the air and the car is flying a nice ballistic trajectory as it should. The wing angle is probably much more important in the higher power classes when the speed along the sweepers is much higher than what I am doing right now.

Completed - A few pictures for you @Anthroxoid!

That is it for the build portion of this thread. I am going to the track this Sunday and I promise I will remember to take a few real life pictures with scratched up wheels, body and spaghetti electronics! I don't really have anyone that might take action shots for me unfortunately so three will be no flying car pictures. Maybe in 3 weeks my buddy will help with that. After seeing the B7D on the track compared to his Slash he actually bought an RB10 so we are both very excited to run them together. With my very young family I don't really have enough time to go there every week and develop the skills and consistency required for racing; but I might still enter Novice a couple of times on Saturdays. Novice as the name implies is for people who are just figuring this out  and it mixes SCT's/buggies, AWD/2WD and any motor power, all together in one catch-all class. I should get rear ended pretty bad but that's ok

[RichieRich 846]

This looks fantastic! i too was amazed at the crazy amount of adjustments that can be done. It's more than the previous B6. I just started my B7 build this past Friday and had to stop. My kit was missing parts. Two of the 1mm blue washers and a diff spring. So, this has been put on pause until AE sends the missing parts to me. That's been a bit of a weird interaction too. I purchased the car back in late Feb. I guess it's passed the missing parts warranty so I have to pay for the parts. Whatever. I guess don't buy the next version until you are completely ready to switch over from the previous one.  ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

[Pylon80 4231]

On 7/8/2024 at 10:22 AM, RichieRich said:

This looks fantastic! i too was amazed at the crazy amount of adjustments that can be done. It's more than the previous B6. I just started my B7 build this past Friday and had to stop. My kit was missing parts. Two of the 1mm blue washers and a diff spring. So, this has been put on pause until AE sends the missing parts to me. That's been a bit of a weird interaction too. I purchased the car back in late Feb. I guess it's passed the missing parts warranty so I have to pay for the parts. Whatever. I guess don't buy the next version until you are completely ready to switch over from the previous one.  ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

Interesting. Nothing was missing from mine and every bag had it's weight checked and printed on the bag at the factory. I got my kit through Amazon, from a small hobby shop that still had 2 kits when the rest of the world had them BO. They might even still be BO actually. So it was probably from the first batch delivered to shops.

[Anthroxoid 190]

@Pylon80 it looks awesome except I’m so old that I cannot stand a clear wing! Sounds like you’re already making really good progress on driving technique re: jumping so congrats on the successful build and to more fun ahead. Appreciate the photos. I wonder if I could put a front gearbox into one of these? 😜

 

cheers,

—XOID