VBC Ghost 18 - huge value for half the price? Let's build it.

We're going to start this off with a warning.  The story with this car, is not done yet.

The VBC Ghost 18, is a $200 kit, that hits way above it's weight class.  But to pack that much car, into that few dollars, there's definitely some compromises made.  We'll cover those as we go along.

The first place that the price of the cost becomes evident, is with the box.  the box is not glossy coated cardboard.  The labels are a sticker, instead of printed on the box.  And the box itself, is small, and of thin cardboard.

A closeup of the sticker, and box.

This is what must be 2mm cardboard.  It's some real thin stuff.  I think this is one of those places where saving money, is a good place to save money.

And now, we reach the second point, where they saved money.  The manual.

The manual is very nearly trash.

So why is the manual bad?  First, step one for building the kit, is printed on the outside cover.  That second paragraph to the bottom, says to sand and glue the edges of the carbon in your kit.  Why isn't that "in the manual".

Second, is the pictures in the manual, don't always closely match the parts you're assembling.  Often, parts that are specified in previous steps are miraculously missing in the next step.

Third, in some steps, they show you how to build a part twice, but don't tell you which configuration is for which.  The one that hit me the most, was there are descriptions on how to setup the upper control links, both on the shock towers and bulkheads.  You need to do one, or the other, but there's no notes on that.

Fourth, there's no exploded diagram.

Fifth, there's no parts list.  My kit came with some wrong parts, but I wasn't able to figure that out until the end of the build.

Sixth, the car comes with no "default" setup.  No toe, no camber, no real suggestions at all.  It does however, come with two setup sheets... so that's a plus.

Seventh, there's no guide for setting up the steering rack.  I'm clever, I can figure it out, but there's no guide.

Eighth, a fair number of parts are ambiguously labeled.  For instance, some of the plastic spacers in teh kit, are labeled 7075-T2.  7075 is an aluminum grade.  T2, is a temper grade.  I was looking for aluminum spacers for a ~really long time~.  And the plastic parts trees that they are on, aren't labeled.  At all.

Yeah, there's a lot wrong with that manual.  They do warn you, that you should be an experienced builder before getting this kit.  Still, this could, and should, be fixed.

So lets get onto what you get in the box.  Today's build surface, is an old blue towel.

You get a whole lot of bags.  But their organization is, haphazard.  There is a screw bag, and a bearing bag, yet there are bearings, and screws in other bags too.

There's eight or nine bags, but bag 5, is 80% of the kit.  It borders on "why bother" with that bag.

Oooh, look at all that carbon.  A $200 kit, with tons of carbon and as you'll see, lots of aluminum.  You could easily mistake this kit for one of those $400 kits once assembled.  

Starting the actual contrstruction off, begins in a most satisfying fashion.  You attach the front, and rear bulkheads, and the motor mount.

I need to think about how I control my workspace.  The towel stops screws from getting to... free willed.  The motor mount is four pieces, but only three are in place here.  

As seems common, building the final drive parts, comes early in the kit.  The front spool is all plastic.  As is common these days.  

The steering on the VBC Ghost 18 is handled by a steering rack.  I like it.  As long as you're running on a clean-ish surface, racks make sense.  It's all aluminum, and the slop in the rack is taken up by the middle bearing.  

You can set the center bearing quite tight.  Tight enough to make the rack pretty stiff.  The way I got it set properly, was by over-tightening it, then backing off the screw, and locknut a little, and re-tightening it.  This only two or three cycles before I got zero slop, and utterly free moment of the steering rack.

To install the steering rack, you need the spool installed.  The belt passes under the rack.  And the rack bolts down "only" on the center of the chassis.  If you're concerned about side to side chassis tweak, this is one way to eliminate it.



And then the control links go on...



I was doing a bad thing building this chassis.  I was building it "fast".  Which means my photo taking fell by the wayside. 

The top deck, the countershaft, and the rear belt installed.  There's a screw hole for the front of the motor bracket to the top deck, but that's not mentioned in the manual.

The rear diff is a little tricky to get in there, due to the size of the rear belt.  If you look closely, you can see the forward, rear suspension mount is in place. The rear suspension mounts only clear the belt when there's some tension on the rear diff.

Since we're here, you can see the pan head screws in the shock tower.  This is holding control link balls to it.  They aren't needed on this end of the car.

And we found arms!  The drive cups are large, and steel.  We'll talk about dogbones shortly. 

The hinge points are all quite tight, and while the manual says to use grease, I would also recommend breaking out the 3mm reamer to get things nice and floppy.

Uprights installed.  The manual says to put a .5mm shim in to suck up play at the upright, I was only able to fit a .3mm shim, on both sides.

And now I've removed those extra balls from the rear shock tower.  The CVD's come assembled, I greased them before installing them.  The pivot pins are retained by a very small setscrew, so you don't need to get crazy while trying to install the low friction buffers.  

So the front end comes next.  The car comes with DCJs!  That's amazing.  That's where I ran into my next set of problems.  One of those DCJ's isn't machined right.

So lets take a small aside.  Here's the problem. 

That's the ID of one of the front bearings.  They're all about that size.  Keep that 4.95mm number in mind.

Now, lets measure the stub axle.



5.03mm.  That's .08mm overlap.  That's a ~very tight press fit~ at a 5mm diameter.  And completely unacceptable for this.  This... was a dealbreaker.  (Mind, I am getting sent a new set by VBC.  But we'll talk about that after most of this article)

Lets get back into the build.  Here's the front end, assembled.  Swaybar links, arms, shock tower.  One of the front suspension mounts.

While we're here, we should talk about belt tension.  The tension system is done via eccentric bearing carriers.. like almost every other car on the market.  On this car, you set the tension, then there are some screws that screw in from the ends of the bulkheads, that go into notches, preventing the eccentrics from turning.

It's a nice system, and has been fairly easy for me to manage.

And that's where I stopped taking pictures.  A whole bunch of stuff went down right then.  After discovering the axles, I decided I could just move on.  Then, I found out I was sent the wrong suspension mounts.  I had two A's, and two B's, and no C.

But soldier on I must... so I finished up assembling what I could of the suspension.  With the bumper installed and the swaybars on, the wrong front suspension mount would stay in place.  (no screws, just trapped.)

And here we are, with all the ancillaries installed, minus the shocks.  It took me about 4 hours to reach this point.  Including the "hey, this parts are bad" bits. 

The next post about this car will have the car completed, and ready to run.  Hopefully there won't be any more surprises.

I did contact the North American distributor of the car, and they sent me a set of suspension mounts, and they are having VBC send me a new DCJ.  So.. I'm being made whole.  That's a good thing!  It is a strange set of circumstances that lead to this though.

It's also worth mentioning, that the fastener quality throughout the kit was great.  The ball ends all fit tightly, they snap on easily, and have no slop once in place.  They may be the best ball ends I've had the chance to use.

A full review will come later.  Since this is a sample size of one, we can't say ~all kits~ are messy like mine, but I can say, what I did get, is really worth the asking price. 

Conclusion time:  Well between TQ RC Racing, and VBC I did eventually get all my parts.  Completed, the car is quite nice.   It's not hit the track yet.. but that's coming soon.  It's worth every penny of the asking price. 

The only other thing to talk about, is the chassis is not "all carbon".  It's carbon over fiberglass. This doesn't hurt the stiffness much.  But it does show where they saved money on the car.  (this is a totally kosher move.)

Well that's all for now.  Further review when I get the thing on the track.