LC Racing EMB-1 - You get what for less than $200? Who forgot a zero.

Todays project is about ading carbon fiber....  Wait that's another project.

Well after that I got home, played a bit of Gran Turismo, decided I wasn't tired enough, and dug into this car.

... Flippantly I asked a friend (2000 miles away..) if they wanted to get their hands dirty with me.  Shockingly, she said yes.  The result was the following 80+ photos of taking Betty through a car build. 

Welcome to the build and construction review of the LC Racing EMB-1.  A 1/14th scale 4wd buggy.  It's cheap.  Dirt cheap.  Well, as 4wd buggies go.  For less than $200, you can get this car, which has everything you need, except a battery and receiver. 

The kit screams quality.  Just a short list of the "wooah really?" features this car has for that price:

• TiN coated shock shafts
• Machined Shock pistons
• Special rear droop screws
• Aluminum shock towers
• Molded wing
• Metal body shocks
• 5 sets of springs
• 3 sets of swaybars
• 3 pinions
• Motor
• ESC
• Huge bag of spare screws and "bits".
• Slipper clutch
• Velcro battery strap

All you need to have a running car, proper like, is paint the body, throw in a battery and a receiver.  

But then we hit the letdown.  The manual.  It, exists... but it's not good.

Obviously, we start on page 1.  Well, page 3.  That ends up being significant, as the whole "useful instructions" section of that book ends on page 15.

This thing is T I N Y.  I have fat fingers, so, consider that.  But those parts are really, very small.

You will need some needle nose pliers to get both the o-ring, shim, and drive pin installed.  You can probably drop the gear on by yourself.

Then we drop the gears into the diff housing.

Here's the cover.  You'll note that there isn't a seal.  Mine haven't leaked yet.

Then we make two of them...

Add the oil.  Yes, this is a very stiff oil.

There you go, a 4wd diff.  With all metal gears.  To give some idea of how significant that is, my TC4 has plastic gears.  My TT02, and TT01 both have plastic gears, and they are 1/10th scale cars.

NEXT PAGE!  I felt that needed emphasis.  3/4 of this set of pages is about building shocks.  If you're buying this.. I hope you've built a few.

This is something important too.  The bags are labeled, and are actually sorted by step.  Honest to goodness, you go bag by bag and you're never sitting on one bag for half the steps.  They are genuinely well sorted.

Somewhere along here, I'm gushing about the kit quality to Betty, and she asked how I could tell. So I showed her these, the shock hard parts.  You can see the TiN coated shafts.  What is hard to see, is the adjustment collars are fully threaded, so very easily screw onto the shock bodies. 

And the plastic and rubber parts.  Shocks are always an intimidating pile of parts.  

Yet another high point of this build, aluminum captured pivot balls on the shocks are a nice touch.  

While we're looking at plastic bits, these shocks have separate upper and lower plastic shock shaft guides.  That's a very nice touch.  

Seals in place.  They fit well, and because they were machined are just a wonder to install.

I need to drop this into every one of these builds.  A M3 thread forming tap.  Spend the $7, it speeds the build immensely.  

The ring grooves are tight, so the e-clips were not the best to install.  The pistons were really tight on the shaft.  

The shocks are 100% normal 1/10th scale size shocks. Betty was remarking about just how tiny those shocks were.  These shocks, are "very normal sized" for me.

Worth noting, I use green slime when building shocks.  It's also sold as Noleen SF3.  It makes shocks much smoother, none of the sticky feeling when a shock starts moving.

I use wire cutters to hold the very top thread of the shock shaft while I screw on the ball ends.  All of the black plastic on this car is some pretty soft stuff.  So it threads on reasonably easily.  

And now we're ready to seal these things up.  Betty said: "Well now you're just making jewelry."  Yup.. that's exactly it.  At some point we need to show her the guts of a high end Tamiya or Xray.

*rings bell*  Shocks, are done. 

Now it's time to do plastic.  The builds the front, and rear, as separate assemblies.  Which later get bolted to the chassis plate.  The plastics.. are soft.  Really soft.  Soft enough that bottoming out screws isn't always a certain feeling

The parts are pre trimmed off of sprues.  And I like that from a manufacturer.  There's not a lot of flashing.

They are good looking parts though.  Better than cheap companies.  Not quite Tamiya or Xray.

So lets build the front end.  The molds are tight enough that bearings are a very slight press fit.

And the car comes with aluminum hexes.  This is usually an upgrade part.  I like seeing that.  Betty didn't understand what these parts were.  

So I took this photo.  Once the arms are on, they're pretty clear as to what they do.

Next page. 

Typically, for on-road 4wd cars, the swingarm shafts are held by blocks on the chassis tub.  Well... on this car, the suspension mounts are part of the diff mounts. 

The front suspension mounts are not really well labeled.  Take care that they are in the right orientation.

And I didn't get a shot of the differential being dropped in.  But here's the whole build, minus the next bit that I found to be really neat.

Turnbuckles.  The car comes with nice turnbuckles.  The soft plastics are a benifit here, the cups are easy to thread on.  

The turnbuckles pop on to the shock tower.  What's nice, is that the factory shock tower only shows two holes for roll center adjustment.  This car has three holes.  This then gets bolted to the diff case.

Like that.  Then you click on the control links too.  

A thing that really impressed me, was that the car comes with the full tuning set of swaybars.  And they install easily.  

Here I was showing Betty how the swingarms worked.  

Here are the shocks, installed.  While we're on the "this is a quality kit" slant.  The car came with a full set of springs for the front and rear shocks.  That's 5 weights of springs at both ends.  Color me pleased. 

Second verse, same as the first.  Erm.. lets do the back end.  Uh... a touch of the rear?  Uh... Yeah.  Lets move on.

Here we go, I didn't point this out on the front end.  The car comes with CVD's. 

Betty asked why CVD's are good, so... I'll explain to you too.  See that "T" section at the end of the driveshaft?  Cheaper cars have those at both ends.  And those slip into cups with slots in them.  There's lots of rubbing that happens there.  But because they're not retained, they can pop out, and because they rub a lot, there's some frictional losses.

CVD's retain one end, and have better bearing surfaces, so have less drag than dogbones. 

So the hub retention is "ok" in my book.  I prefer pins to be retained by the hub.  On these cars there's a screw head and the pin is free to rotate in both the arm and hub.  

And the retaining screw installed. 

Now we get to build the rear diff housing and "transmission".  The car has a slipper clutch.  (Seriously, a 1/14 scale car with a slipper..)  Since we're there, lets talk about what a slipper clutch is.  A slipper clutch is there to "break" and slip when you land off a jump, so you don't strip gear teeth.  It's a mechanical fuse that self resets and lets you keep driving.

This pile of parts.. becomes the back end.  Yes, my tools are pink.  They don't get lost.  I'll let you do the math on that.  Lets go. 

This part is exactly like the front end.  Except, the inserts are easier to figure out. 

Next page!

So, here's the first part I screwed up on.  Really.  This is the rear transmission assembly, and the input to the rear differential. 

So where did I screw up?  I cross threaded the 2mm screw that retains the bevel gear.  Thankfully, the spare parts bag, had an extra screw so I could put it on there properly. 

Through the magic of photography, here's the slipper clutch, and spur, on the car.  The red plates are the pressure plates of the slipper clutch.

And here we go, the "transmission" is inserted into the rear differential housing. 

The rear shock tower has the same extra holes in it for roll center and camber gain adjustment.  

And the wing mount.  

Finally we get the shocks, and swaybar on there.  

NEXT PAGE!

The kit came with electronics.  Both the servo, motor, and ESC. 

Here's the servo mounted, and ready to go in the chassis.

Getting the bellcrank parts set up.

So, the chassis is nice too.  The annodization is solid, and it's nice and stiff.  

The chassis sides are protected by more of the soft plastic...  Boy it's soft. 

The motor mount, and transmission support go on, along with the dust cover.  A feature I really like about this car is how complete that dust cover is.  You'll see more in a bit.  

A battery strap.  It's a GOOD battery strap.  And the mounts are solid. 

Next was the steering pivot posts. 

And then the car, kinda became a car.  The suspension bits were bolted to the main chassis. 

Suddenly, it's a car. 

This might have been the most satisfying part of the build.  I was suddenly looking at a "car".  

Steering servo installed.

Next up was getting the steering bits installed.  This, was less than perfectly clear in the manual.  The "hats" to brim up.  The bridge being aluminum is a nice touch.

So our discussion while building the car was how tiny the thing was.  So to bring the cars scale into perspective, I brought out my TT02b.  This thing IS really tiny. 

Next up, I installed the transmission retention block, which also is the second part of the gear dust cover.  

What covers both the top of the steering rack, joins the diffs, and covers the rest of the spur gear.  If it weren't a "soft plastic" piece, this would be a great top deck.  Being soft means it's unlikely I'll ever hurt it. 

Also.  For the mechanical build, we're done. 

NEXT PAGE.  So this section is about the electronics install, and tires.  The kit came with pre-glued tires, so that's "not a thing" for this build. 

So the car came with a nice brushless motor, and a 35 amp ESC. 

I know I keep doing this.  And I'm sure I gushed to Betty about this.  The car comes with three pinions.  Many cars come with zero.  And they're GOOD pinions.  

So the motor goes in here...  There's a snap on cover that also seals the pinon in.

I didn't do the last bits of hooking up the servo until now. 

Then there's the ESC install.  I ended up having to move it much further forward on the chassis to clear the body.  

The manual details a lexan wing.  This kit came with a molded one.  I expect this wing will be a lifetime part, instead of disposable.

The body comes pre-cut.  It's really well done.  Motor wire clearance is a bit of a problem.  

It looks properly aggressive.  I am reminded of the old mini inferno.

And with the shoes on, it looks like it could go anywhere.  

Betty thought the end result was impressive.

I enjoyed the build.  Mostly.  But I'm an experienced builder, so the manuals shortcomings were not a real problem for me.  I can't really say this thing would be a good choice for a first build, or even an impatient builder.

We've got enough of these cars to have a race class at the local off road events, so this thing will get some real exercise soon.

Driving impressions will come after I get the body painted and the cobwebs shaken off.