Xpress Execute cars club racer - some pictures and review

I don't really like to do to much behind the scenes stuff.  But this was a troubling build.  My camera screwed up, and I lost a lot of the pictures. 

Regardless, here we go.

This is an Execute XQ1s ClubRacer.  I like it.  It's good.  If you're looking for an inexpensive touring car, buy this one.

The list of reasons to buy one is long.  Xpress makes cars from plastic toys right up to high end machines.  They've been in business for a long, long time.  (not tamiya or team associated long, but I bought my first Xpress car in 2001..) 

Much like Tamiya, this cheap car, shares geometries with it's better cousins.  The swinarms, c-hubs, uprights, are all the same.  There's a clear upgrade path within this chassis, and if you stock spare parts, you could switch to the better cars, and not lose your investment in spares.

Something that Xpress does, that nobody else I've seen do, is they ship decent tools with their car.  The allen keys are good quality, so is the nut driver.  There is a ball end, and turnbuckle wrench.  There are also test gauges for doing the initial setup of all of the camber and toe links.  That's a really, really nice touch.  The test guages are also the blocks to stop the plastic bulkheads from tweaking in shipping, so they do a lot of jobs for this kit.

The hole in the left test guage, is the ball cup wrench.  It's not perfect, but it's totally better than nothing.

Now, this is the "dumbed down" version for us new drivers.  So we don't get as many camber link positions, the swingarm angles are fixed, and our ackerman choices are limited.  Not.. that.. that is going to really bother anyone this thing is the target market for.  And if you need those options, parts are available for making those adjustments.

Lots of things thread into plastic on this kit, so having a m3 thread forming tap is a really good idea.  It cuts assembly time by 1/3.

Even the manual is really good!



Seriously, take a look for yourself:  http://www.rc-xpress.com/manual/execute_xq1_manual.pdf

The build begins with getting the turnbuckles built.  I think I like this as a start versus the usual 'build some diffs" you get with most kit makers.  This is a good warmup.

The countershaft assembly is essentially the same as every other car on the market.  But this one has nice pretty red anno.  It's deep, and rich.



And here we go, assembled.



Next up is the diff, and spool.  The car comes with 5000cst oil for the spool, which is stiffer than both the ghost 18 and Sakura.



Speaking of spools, here's a spool.  Unglued, unscrewed, and unassembled.



Speaking of spools, here's a spool.  Glued, screwed, and assembled.



It has fully enclosed drive cups.  And I like that.

Now the manual has us move on to the steering gear.  But lets first take a detour.  This is my first kit, where all the screws were properly sorted from the factory.  Check out all these baggies!

That's top notch service. 

For these review cars, I don't like to "do anything" to them as I build them.  But for some reason, I couldn't resist this bit of carbon for the servo mount.



I'm using the Turnigy D99 steering servo.  It is cheap, and seems to be fast enough.  It's not quite telepathicly fast, but it's enough that I can't blame it.

This is where my camera started to ruin my day.  But all is made better with that big pile of bright red aluminum.  In the background you can see the steering rack.



Next up are the suspension mounts and bulkheads.  The cutouts in the chassis are odd shapes, so the bulkheads really key in well to the chassis plate.  I like that.



Now here's the worst bit of the build.  The manual doesn't tell you to install the red cross posts befoer the top deck.  So i'm telling you now, install those red cross posts before bolting anything else to the bulkheads.

When you're installing the diff and spool, be sure to get the adjusters oriented right.  The "thin" side goes down, or else you will have interference between the spool cups and the bulkhead tops. 



And then the usual mundane tasks of building suspension arms.  We reach one of my few criticisms of this car.  The hubs don't retain the pivot pins, and instead they're captured by an end screw.  This makes the hub less stiff.  But it may provide some crash resistance?  It's not how I'd do it.

The knuckles are interesting, in that the steering arms are separate pieces that are bolted on.  On the fancier cars they're harder plastics, and or carbon.  

And that's where the pictures end.  Poo. 

You'll need to assemble the shock absorbers.  They are plastic bodied.  They are also threaded.  Take EXTREME care when threading the spring adjusters onto the plastic bodies.  Turn it backwards until you feel the o-ring slip onto the threads, and then keep turning until you feel the thread lead in and "click".  Then you can try to thread the adjuster on.

It's very, very easy to cross thread.  Yes, I cross threaded one.

I'd buy another one.  

This all begs the question, of where does this kit save money?  Well the bulkheads are plastic.  The chassis and shock towers are fiberglass.  The shock bodies are plastic.  It doesn't come with wheels.  It doesn't come with a pinion. 

....  But that's really it.  I suspect this is a bit of a loss leader for Xpress.

This is a really good kit.

Soon, I'll get it on the track.  And I have some useful tuning parts to put on it.  Like swaybars.

New car. New bodies. X-ray T4 2018

In an effort to remove excuses, I got a new car.  A 2018 Xray T4.

Now, I have no excuses for being slow.  Excepting.. I'm slow.  Hah! 

That's a lot of Barracuda bodies.  Since I was getting a new car, I thought I'd paint some bodies too.  I got to correct my chevron strip angles on the new bodies.  They look GOOOD.

Except that nasty yellow paint.  Well they are race bodies.  So I don't mind to much.  These aren't concours bodies.

One last beauty shot of this chassis.  

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!