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.

TRF201 - Well.. it was broken...

My first time off road racing, and I completely wrecked my TRF-201.

Thankfully, the car still has good parts support.  Replacing the front arms requires essentially no disassembly of the car.  I ordered spares, so this isn't going to keep me off the track agian.

CRC Gen-X 10 R/T - Finishing the package.

When we left off, the car was complete, minus wheels.  The wheels came in, the motor came in, the ESC came in, the boost power supply came in..... yeah.  Lets do this thing.

Wiring up cars always looks really ugly until you finally zip tie it down. 

And here we go, everything wired up.  Zip tied down.  and nothing moves that shouldn't move.  

I think it looks very orderly.  That space between the battery and servo, will see a bank of caps, as I have a LVC that happens under high load.

Last naked shot.

I decided the car needed a nice RX-7 body.  

For $8, it looks pretty good.  

Next up, is driving the car.  

May a Puddle Duck go swimming?

I know it's been a while, but the boats have been moving along. 

When I showed up this saturday, Dan and Aga had already fitted his mast.  However... this is what it looked like when I got there.

If it's not obvious, that is both cats, and dogs, falling from the sky.  Thankfully, just a few hours later, we had this beautiful scene.



It's so pleasing to have a photograph actually represent what you're seeing in the sky. 

So lets talk about what happened to the boats yesterday.

Dan got his mast rigged.



And after I showed up, we got the sail raised.



There wasn't a whole lot of reason to do it... but it feels SO GOOD to get that sail up.  Dan, is a very happy man there. 

My goal for the day, was to get the rudders bedded into the tiller cassettes. 



We used great stuff construction foam to take up the nose shape of the rudder. 

The big concern was the foam was going to break apart the cassettes.  But in the end, we actually ended up with less foam than we really wanted.  But there's enough to keep the rudders stable, and we're happy.

Dan's boat didn't have his rudder gudeons installed yet. 



While the concept is simple.  A pair of blocks of aluminum that the rudder pivot drops through.  Sadly, the blocks we had, were over bored, so had to be sleeved.  A couple months back, we had Dave sleeve them down.  But their retention was poor.  When we went to bore the sleeves to the proer 5/16" one of sleeves spun. 

Cue a full hour of trying to pin that sleeve in there.  I am ~actually~ very good at drilling holes.  Yet the process took four tries, and the pin that's in there now, is a broken drill bit.  *shakes head*

Here is Dan putting the blocks in place. 



And that's really where we ended for the day. 

We're very close to the water. 

UltraFast Raceways - Cherry Bomb Trophy Race: My first time off road racing.

http://ultrafastraceways.com

And with that, racing in Chicagoland has is clawing it's way back to life.  Joe Sagan has orchestrated a place in Lombard to do r/c racing.  And it's a really neat venue!

TL;DR: The races were well run, the announcer (CB, our fav from Windy City) did a great job.  People were happy and said they'd be back again.  I couldn't tell this was Joe's first time running this race.  "I" will be back again. 

Everyone, say hi to Tony.  

Check that place out.  That's a bar on the right, and a lovely turf track set up where we'd normally see rockers drinking and yelling at the band.  .... Yes.. that bar is open. 

The track is small, with lap times in the six to eight second range.  But it was a fun, and drivable layout.  Nothing tricky, and it rewarded using different lines. 

Since this is more or less a concert bar, the facilities are an interesting mix.  Important to us, pits were to the left.



I mentioned the bar, but the kitchen was open too.  Burgers and other food was ordered and eaten.  It's hard to have better food than being "in a restaurant".    That was a serious high point, and there was lots of talk about it.  The attached restaurant is quite a good one, and isn't typical bar food. 

Pitting area was a bit small, and you do need to bring your own pit table and seating.  This leads to people bringing big tables and sucking up lots of space.  If you plan on coming, bring a power strip, an extension cord, and the smallest folding table you can get away with.  Everyone will thank you for it.

My pit was two square feet on the edge of the stage.  I... can't say it was the most polite thing I could do.  But nobody really complained.  I showed up with my TRF201, with the short wheelbase tub, and green dot tires. 



The hot ticket on this track, was a mid or forward motor car, with some hard carpet pins, and those floppy staggered cut front ribs.  Can you tell I wasn't properly prepared? 



That TRF needs taller gearing, more weight up front, more motor timing, and... maybe new tires.  As it stands, the car worked well enough for me to not be a rolling road block. 

I did fine the first qualifier, but I ended my day in the second. 



That pole, to the right of the jump under the spotlight, was the end of my car.  The fast line through the jump there, is to take it at an angle, and skip the kink.  Well I took the shortcut, and the pole jumped out in front of my car.

The "DING" was loud, and angry.  The poor 201 fell to the ground.  I saw a bit of plastic fall away from the car...  But the marshals were fast.  I managed to get the car going again, but by the time I had completed another half lap, both front suspension arms had sheered off.



That black plastic... was bits of my from arms.  Whoops!  I ordered parts.  I'll be back better for next time.

This was a great event.  The closest I could come to criticisms is a lack of advertising.  (Note that this IS advertising :-)  I am gonna help with that.) 

Classes:  17.5 buggy, 13.5 4wd buggy, 13.5 Short Course Truck. 

We ran two qualifiers and a main. 

Should you come out?  Yes!  Do you want to try r/c racing?  Yes!  Come on out, say hi to Joe, shake hands with racers, see what it's like.