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. 

SNRC Blaze R2 - It's here

So, the collection of touring cars is growing.  The Blaze R2 is supposedly a close clone of the X-Ray T4. 

It comes in a nice box, with a body!  For $99. 



Opening the box, you're greeted by this:



A partially trimmed body, a completely assembled car, with a decent manual, and a small parts kit. Lets pull the body and manual out.



I can't say much for it.. yet.  I'm still testing the Sakura XI Sport.  but.. what this car comes with that few cars come with... is a Pinon!

The 3 Racing Sakura XI Sport ver.Nu - The first 4 hours.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX!

Well, what's in the box, is a 3 Racing Sakura XI Sport ver.Nu.   This is the "Hey, I just wanna race" version of the Sakura XI.  The full XI is a full boat touring car, carbon, aluminum, adjustments everywhere, and the price to match.

The Sakura XI Sport, is a little bit different.  It's cheap.  Dead cheap.  This one was $110.  I got it from www.tqrcracing.com, if you wanna get one from the same place I did.

I picked up this car, to see what "building a really cheap conventional touring car" would end up like.  And then compare it to the better chassis out there.  That's a subject we'll come back to in another article.

So... lets get into this. 

The kit is packaged really well.  Those plastic bags are like 8mil, and beefy.  Nothing got out of the bags.  The box is expensive, a custom job, with good ink.  Real money was spent on this packaging.

Happily, the car comes with a set of shoes, again that makes me wonder where the money on the car went.  Looking through the bags, it seems to come with the right stuff.  The diff oil is 2000wt, and the shock oil is 350w.  This, so far, is better than Tamiya.

So, lets get started.


Manual, kit, towel.  What else might you need?  Oh yeah, parts bag number 1.



The manual is very good.  If Tamiya instructions are a 10/10, these are a 9/10.  I'll note the bits that could be improved when we come to them.  There aren't many points.  The parts are in numbered bags, and each bag is labeled on the pages that use it, and are sequential in the build.

The instructions start with building the driven pulleys.  So the diff out back, and the spool out front.



Huh, I wonder where my picture of the built diff went.  I had some trouble with the screws that held the diff shut. The allen wrench didn't really feel right, and popped out a couple times. 

But here's a spool!  Of note, the front spool is of the all plastic variety.  Lightweight, to say the least.  But it does look a little bulky.  It almost looks like it's got a diff hiding in there.

After the drive pulleys, you get to build the driven pulley.  This whole assembly has 4 screws in it.

After the drivetrain bits are assembled, we get to build the chassis.  The car is "mostly" a flat plate of fiberglass.  This is one of the parts that differentiates it from a full XI.



Enhance *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* Closer....

Enhance *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* Closer....

There we go.  Each mount, is clearly labeled.  First letter tells you which end of the car.  Second letter tells you front or rear mount.  Last letter tells you the side.  The rear suspension mount even has the degrees of toe clearly indicated.  Instead of the "dot" (X-Ray, Team Associated, etc) method or cryptic letter language of Tamiya.

And so you can see the rear mount.  This is labeled "Rear of car", "Rear suspension mount", "3.0 Degree".  Nice!  

Those mounts need to go on the car sometime.  We start with the center mounts.  It's here where I first seriously considered that the fasteners with the car might be a problem.



Next up is building the arms.  The front arms are actually "somewhat" built up, but not quite at this stage.  Here they are with the droop screws and pivot balls installed.

Then like any other car, the hinge pins get trapped between the mounts.  The suspension parts have a very tight fit.  Expect to need to sand/file/smooth the ends of the arms to get the clearance you need for free movement.

And then we swing the chassis around, and do the same thing out back.

That's it for bag two.  Bag 3 has the motor mount, and steering.

The steering rack, is surprisingly good.  It's plastic, but fully bearing supported.  A nice touch, are the aluminum steering towers.  It feels "stiff" but it's not binding.  I believe the bearings that came with the car are packed with some really stiff lube.   This usually breaks in after the first pack or few, but if it doesn't, I'll need to strip and clean them.



After the steering, we move rearward.  The motor mount itself, is aluminum, as is it's front mount bracket.  That's where we get to build this monstrosity.



The center drive isn't captive, so you don't need to strip it to pull the spur.  Just take off the top deck, and undo three screws, you can have the spur assembly in your hand.

The motor mount then gets bolted into place.  You need to take care of belt alignment as you get things lined up.  There are no locating pins on this, and it's centering is done entirely via the tapered screw heads.



The steering rack goes inside the front belt, because racecar.

It's starting to look like a car now.

We should talk about a cheat I use when building plastic based kits.  They expect you to huff and puff and drive screws into the plastic, and have the screws build their own threads.  And it sucks.  And it's slow.  That's where thread forming taps come in.  Most taps cut material away, and we don't want that.  Thread forming taps push the material away, plasticly (they do it in metal too, look up plastic deformation.).  Your reward for using a thread forming tap, is screws that go in easily, tell you clearly when they've bottomed out (so you won't strip them) and have deeper thread forms, so are stronger.  For $7-10, you can pick up one of your own.  I recommend a slow speed drill to run them in and out of all of your 3mm holes when you're building cars.

It saved more than an hour while building the TA07.

Finally we reach the distinguishing feature of modern 1/10 touring cars.  The bulkhead assemblies.

The bases get screwed down first.  To help in the tweak department, they have locating pins, so they can't really be pushed around by other things on the chassis.  I like that feature.  they are molded from a very soft plastic.  For a part that can get severely loaded in a crash, I think this is a design choice, and one I agree with.

the steering tower gets

The front towers are FRP, and the tower mounts are the same soft plastic as the lower bulkheads.  It's just peaking out from behind there, but there's a bracing aluminum post that links the tower mounts.  I wonder how much that helps, or hurts.

Lets turn that tower around..



There we go, there's the reinforcement post.

The instructions have us get the front diff in first.  They also specify a belt tension.  The tension seems, rather high, but like most asian models, I'm assuming they intend for this car to be run with a 10.5 turn motor, as opposed to say, a 21.5 motor.  The belt tension is adjusted by twisting the bearing carrier, but instead of popping them out, and moving them to a new notch, you can just pull out that tiny silver screw, push the carriers around and put the screw back.



This seems like it's something I wouldn't mind adjusting, while doing belt tension on a Team Associated or X-ray requires popping the bearing carriers out.

Shock towers are one of those spots in building a car, where things really change, and the car seems to make a great leap towards completion. 

Next is to prep the upper deck.  It gets fitted with a belt guide.  I suspect it's not needed for lower power models, so I may be removing that bit. We'll see how deep I get into this car.  

Putting the upper deck on, means threading it through the drive belt.  It's mildly annoying, but no real trouble.  I could see it being "a thing" if you were fixing something between rounds and being in a hurry.  

Suddenly, it feels like a car.  

I've always done swaybars as a "we'll do it later" part.  So I was a little caught off guard when before the knucles and such, the instructions called for doing the swaybars.  The kit comes with 1.2 and 1.3mm swaybars.  As well as labeled collars for them.  The bars themselves are color coded too.  The 1 is assumed, and the number of stripes show the thickness. 

The front swaybars go into pockets that bolt into the lower arms.  This is the first time I've seen this implementation.  I wondered how that setup worked on other cars.  I believe this is the "normal" method, as opposed to the Tamiya method.

The front swaybar with their linkages attached.  Oh wait, is that a knuckle I see?  Yes it is. 

The knuckles are STIIIIIF if you don't take time to file them down.  Take your time, and you'll end up with nice, free, slop free knuckles.  You'll also need to take a few hairs off the lower pivot, as that's tight in the lower arm.  

You need to do the same treatment to the rear uprights.  This is also where I deviated from the plans. They want you to build and install the turnbuckles before switching ends of the car.

Ok, lets get some control over those floppy bits on the end.

And, really, that's where I ended for the night.  The turnbuckles are steel, so should be ~rather durable~.

To hint at what else is coming, I also ordered the full Sakura XI suspension bits.  We're gonna get a comparison between the sets of arms and knuckles sometime. 

... after I do that on the TA07...