So, apart from the obvious (is it fast... yes!), what are the main things to follow about building the A700?

To keep it simple, I'll go through by stage of the manual. Mostly, the manual is pretty accurate on what needs doing, so I'll just try and highlight certain bits that need a little extra explanation, or areas to pay attention too.

Pre-build
I would suggest bringing together all the usual tools for build, and also a lot of parts trays. I think for my build I had about 10seperate trays for parts, and they proved very useful for putting all the small parts into. I found the easiest way was to try and divide the bags up by the section, so shock parts in one tray, drive train in other, screws in another. There are a lot of small parts, so if you can keep them separate, it can make them easier to find later.
Oh, and thread lock…. ;)

Step 1 - Hubs
When screwing the lower ST03 in the AM06 hubs, you will need to provide a decent level of force to get them fully seated, as the ST03’s will cut the final thread in the AM06, and this helps to keep them in the hub. A good hex wrench is a must!
I've noticed on my car that the rear carbon plates (C05) were a very tight fit. I just used a reamer to put a slight bevel on the holes, and this allowed them to sit flush against the AM06.

Step 2 – Front universal
Make a very clear note about not using a screwdriver with a blade bigger then 2.5mm. Opening up the clip too much could result in bending the piece, and having it open up under running. To help avoid that possibility, I also placed a piece of heatshrink over the ST17.
Be aware of the very small c-clips to hold the pin (SPR07)… quite easy to lose one! I also built my car up straight away with the ST11 round bushings front and rear, simple theory dictates that is should allow for the shafts to move with less friction.

Step 3 – Rear universal
Same as step 2 really…

Step 4 – Axles to hubs
Don’t forget the crush spacers (AT15) on the front hubs, or the SH0.1 shim… don’t ask me how I know (RTFM! ;) )
Also, the lock rings (P16) are white clear plastic pieces, can be a bit confusing trying to find dark metallic parts that the manual implies!

Step 5 – Hub to wishbone
Again, relatively simple, just take care to make sure the P04 arm hasps are not too tight, and that the hub can move freely, but with little slop.

Step 6 – Mounting the wishbones
Don’t forget to glue the P06 parts in place, but be careful, as these are used for the droop screws later. Just take care not to fill the hole with glue…
Make sure that the P07 clips have been located into the slot on the P03 cups, it's a tight fit, but if you don’t do this, they will pop off.

Step 7 & 8 – Roll bar mounts
This is all pretty self explanatory, just do pay attention to the size of the holes on the roll bar mounts if used. And don’t overtighten the screws holding the roll bars in place, there should be a small amount of movement, but not too much.

Step 9 – Damper mounting
Again, not much to run through here, just make sure you get the RHS and SRS screws the right way round for each shock. Also don’t overtighten the SRS screw, as you can strip out the P09 holder easily, as this is just plastic. (if you do strip it, just turn it round and put the RHS in the stripped hole ;) ).
Some people have had trouble with a bit of slack in the where ST05 slots into SPR01 and SPR02, there’s been a few solutions on this, but I’ve settled on using an O-ring, hooked over the parts to keep them tight together. You can see it in the following picture.

Step 10 - Damper mounting to the car
This can get a little tricky. Best advice is to losey mount the central screw first (making sure to use the correct SH1.75 shims), then mount the two outer screws to get the dampers in position.
Do make sure to get the AM08 part the right way up, otherwise you won’t be able to fit the gear covers later.

Step 11, 12, 13 – Steering
Make sure to mount up the ball joints in step 11 the right way round for your intended servo location.
Step 12, tightening up the central bearing can be achieved by dropping a second 2mm drive in the top of the ST08 nut. Make sure that the movement of the rack is smooth, but without too much play. It might take a little jiggling, but don’t be afraid to go a little tighter.

Step 14 – Front gearbox
Simple, just follow the manual, don’t forget the SH0.1 shim.. I found my car didn’t need any more than that.

Step 15 – Steering onto gearbox
Nothing really needs to be mentioned here…

Step 16, 17, 18 – Rear gearbox
So, it’s pretty simple. Don’t worry at this stage about not having the fully secured rear gear, this comes later. Don’t forget the SH0.1 shim though (I know, said many times ;) )
The lower gear covers are just a press fit into the bulkhead.

Step 20 and 21– Centre gearbox
At this point, you need to make a decision on which motor orientation your want to run. For the longitudinal motor (which most will build), you need to put the bearing on before the pin. You’ll also need to line up the pin as centrally as possible for both systems.

Step 22 – Mounting the centre mount
Biggest one here… don’t forget the SB3X5 screw, this holds the centre shaft to the pinion gear…. Did take me a while to figure that out!! (yes, RTFM again!)

Step 23 and 24 – Motor mount attachment
No special requirements really…

Step 25, 26, 27 & 28 – Gear diff
Follow the instructions, and you’ll have no issues here. You can also follow the modified ST20 advice from Oleg here.
Make sure to have the DT02 parts the right way round, they only slot over the bearing one way.

Step 29-34 – Ball Diff (Optional)
I’ve not got one of these, so going to skip over these steps…

Step 35 – Spool
As per the gear diff, make sure to have the DT02 parts the right way round.

Step 36 – One way
Again, don’t have, so skipping over it… ;)

Step 37 – Upper links
The link dimensions given are for the short links, if your using the long links from the start, then these will need to be adjusted later. To be honest, I’d not worry too much about the link lengths now (apart from matching the two sides to be the same), as these will most likely need adjustment later anyway.

Step 38, 39 & 40 – Camber plates
Again, if your using the LA kit, you won’t need to mount up the AT21 on the camber plates (jump to page 38 for how to mount them up). Just follow how to mount the rear toe link ball joint (replacing the SS3X14 set screw with a SB3X6.

Step 41 & 42 – Centre shaft support
Nothing much to talk about here… just make sure to mount the support the right way round in the car, otherwise getting the batteries in the car will be tricky!

Step 43 – Spur mounting
Relatively straight forward, although be aware the Kit doesn’t include a spur gear, so you’ll need to purchase one with the car. My personal preference is for the Kawada gears, as these fit the longitudinal mount lugs well.
Don’t worry about the lack of lugs on the transverse mount, as the spur nut tightens up under braking… clever stuff!

Step 44 – Centre shaft
Again, not much needs explaining here, just simply slot and snap the driveshaft into place… this is what makes it possible to remove the spur without taking off the top deck. Again, well thought out.

Step 45 & 46 – Motor mounting
For the longitudinal layout, it’s pretty straight forward. However, for the transverse layout there are some special requirements, namely for the motor shaft. Given the centre shaft, this places some tight restrictions on the length of the motorshaft as the manual states. Now you can space the motor out, but this does then have an affect on the weight distribution. Shortest shaft I’ve found so far is the LRP motors at around 13mm… although some are up to 5mm longer, so you can imagine the effect on motor position!

Step 47 & 48 - Body mounts
Pretty self explanatory, but to help with initial positions… front in hole 9 or 10 from above the bumper plate (lower for an LTC, higher for a Speed6), with the rear in hole 7. Now, I personally don’t use the plastic mounts, and use a 4mm thick foam pad on top of the clip. This means I have to use one hole lower on the posts to get the right body position, but this get it closer to the rule limits ;)

Step 49, 50, 51 & 52 – Servo
This is just your standard Tamiya style servo saver, so the usual tips apply. Use some grease over the springs to help them move if needed.
Also, when mounting up the servo, leave the main screws loose until you’ve put the mounts (AM07L&R) onto the chassis, then lift the servo up so it’s not resting on the chassis plate. This helps to avoid tweaking the chassis.

Step 53 – Top deck
Pretty straight forward, although if you are using the long arm kit, you’ll need to use set screws in the positions you want, refer to page 38 for that. One quick note is on the ST09’s collars, as they help to serve a couple of purposes. The main reason is to help locate the top deck centrally in the car. Secondly, they are a little thicker than the top deck, so the screw doesn’t push down on it. This is so that when used with softest flex setting, the top deck can swivel a little around. So defiantly worth using them!

Finished!
Anyway, with the top deck on, that completes the build of the car! All that is left is to mount up your electronics, and set the car up… I’ll be doing a separate guide later for setting up the car.

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Evening all,

Given I'm still on Holiday due to Chinese new year, and not having a lot else to do with everything shut (and I literally mean everything!), and not being able to go to the track and run due to yesterday's, umm, driver error, thought I'd sit down and have a fiddle with the car. Mainly wanted to try out how fast I can switch out between transverse and longitudinal motor (not as long as I thought), and the standard and IAS (the same ). I also wanted to check the weight balance with the transverse, which is something I could do even with the broken ball cup.
Finally, also wanted to make it a little easier to remove the top deck without poping off the ball cups. So excuse the following ramblings... I'll try and keep them to make sense!!

First up, Top deck ball joints. Given I've been regularly loosening the top deck screws as part of my general habits vs tweak, I was finding having to pop the ball joints off each time a little concerning. Could also see them starting to look ragged due to my pliers.. Anyway, I've switched out all the inner ball joints on the long links for Tamiya 8mm hexheaded Ball studs, and Tamiya ball cups with the top cut off... bingo, can now drop a 2mm wrench into the hex head, and not have to pop the cup off. Also means only one tool to take the top deck off the car, me likey!
Only difference is that the Tamiya ball joints are 0.5mm lower than the kit ones, so have to add an extra 0.5mm to the shims to raise the link back up to the correct height.

Next up, Transverse motor switching. I was really surprised at this, as it didn't really take as long as I expected to switch this over as I thought. Could easily have it completed and ready to go in ten minutes at a push, as long as you don't have to resolder wires (truth be told, I was waiting on some 14AWG wire before I could do this, all my stock is the wrong colour... yellow, urgh!). In terms of motor positioning, I think I'll forget looking for a motor with a short shaft, and buy what I think will be fastest and cut the shaft down. The X12 I had for trial fitting only required 2.75mm of shims between the motor bracket and mount bar. Even then had a comfortable amount of clearance between the end if the shaft and the centre shaft, so could still bring the motor in closer if needed.
Whilst I had the car in that config, I wanted to check the weight balance as well, as having the motor hanging out is always going to change the balance. With the transverse setup, I've found having the cells flush with the side of the chassis gives a pretty good L-R balance, and tweaks up well on the station. For the transverse motor, I had to move the cells out 4.5mm from the chassis edge to achieve the same L-R. Couldn't put it on the tweak station, but I'm pretty confident that will be good too when I can.
Obviously this would change a bit with a) lighter electrics (I'm using Savox 1251MG, Sanwa RX451-R, and HW v2.1 120A), and b) motor spaced out differently. But that should give a pretty good ball park figure to work in.

Thirdly, IAS trial fitting. Ok, got to admit, this is the one I've kept putting off testing before, mainly as it looked like it would require a pretty big dissemble to fit, and I always had other things higher on the list to run through. Anyway, sitting down with some time to think out it, I figured out it's not so difficult to switch out, and with a bit of magical screw balancing through holes, can fit it without taking out the front gearbox . Wouldn't be as quick to fit as the transverse, but a good 20mins, plus setup time on the gauges (as the links need shortening), and would be good to go.

Anyway, the above then led me to have a look at the bump steer spacers, and this is when I realised that I haven't been adjusting the bump steer spacers when sorting out the castor... This was especially noticeable on the rear, in that I was gaining a fair bit of toe-in with compression on the rear, and this would possible explain the mid-corner push I had been experiencing. Since the first test, I had reduced the rear castor from 7.5° to 2.5°, so quite a large change. Also on the front I was having a bit of toe-out under compression, although I was running the spacers that I had seen on other setup sheets.
To solve the front, I dropped 0.5mm shim out off the rack, whilst at the rear had to switch from having 1mm inboard, to 1mm outboard. This pretty much made the links flat, and completely removed any bump steer.
I think this is a pretty important point to remember, so lesson learned for me.

As a question for Oleg, do you have any advice on how to adjust the bump steer spacers when adjusting castor on the front/rear? Or just play it as you see it?

Good first step for removing of bump steer is to keep the steering rods approximately parallel to corresponding upper arm (or something between the upper and lower arm) if you look at the car from behind or from front.

Please use setup station for fine adjusting of bump steer.

Oleg

Anyway, enough of the ramblings... I'm off to bed, one more day of holiday, then the city wakes back up again

HiH
Ed