Associated RC10 Worlds Review: Unboxing!
And we’re BACK! With another super-in-depth build review, this time of the RC10 World’s Car from Team Associated! We don’t need to tell you how important this car was – not only was it a successor to the RC10 Classic (built and reviewed by RCTV, as well!), but it set the stage for the off-road dominance of the 1990's by Team Associated!
This build is a total build review, with not just step-by-step pictures of every single build step, but also with videos that show you the completion of all the major assembly steps! When we’re done, we’ll show you the car actually running, too! This is NOT destined to be a shelf queen, oh no!
If you want a quick review of the build and run, check out the October 2014 edition of Radio Race Car magazine, who organized this review in partnership with RC Racing TV! We’d also like to thank CML Distribution for supplying the kit!
So let’s get started!
First, let’s go over the outside of the box. Like the RC10 Classic re-release late last year, the RC10 World’s Car features a box that is very much like the original kit box. You’d have to look pretty closely to spot some of the differences, but if you’d paid attention to all the hype around the release you’ll already know the updates the AE team made to this re-release. We’ll get to those further down, but let’s just say if you stuck this on your garage shelf, your friends would be hard-pressed to know this was any different than the original kit released back in ’93-94.
We’ve already shown you the front of the box, and from what I remember (when I built this kit back in 1994 or so) it’s the exact same size as the original.
I’m pretty sure that this body isn’t Brian Kinwald’s original 1993 World’s-winning body (since that was stolen not long after the race!) but it’s a very good copy of the original. Of course, the box art shows the updates that Associated have added to this re-release. What jump out immediately are the aluminum shock collars!
The ends of the box are mostly smaller versions of the box front, except for the bar code on one end…
And a notification that ‘this is not a toy!’ on the other. Note the ‘KIT’ log0 – not something we see too often these days, and I for one am very glad the RC industry is swinging back towards BIY (Build It Yourself) kits for specialist cars like this! RTRs are great, but BIY is Better!
Turning the box over shows us the ‘flap end’, where you cut the seal to open it up – and we can read a bit about the history of this car, plus a picture showing us some of the details of the kit.
Brian Kinwald, the kid that upset the greats in Basildon, Essex, in 1993! He’s sitting on the shoulders of Craig Drescher, the top UK racer at the time, who helped Brian win the World’s. If you want to watch a UK-produced video of the race, including all 3 A Mains, check out this video on YouTube!
A closer look at the features of the kit.
Flipping the box around, we get a good view of the updated features of the re-release…
Names the V2 slipper, the new CVA drive axles and the V2 threaded shocks (with bleeder caps! oh the joy my heart felt when I saw that…). There’s also a complete listing of the standard features of the original car, such as the 6061 alloy tub chassis, 3-gear transmission, fiberglass shock towers and more.
Another picture of the assembled car, this time with the body – how many times have you already seen the replicas at your local track? (trust me – we’re not going to go down that route!)
On the bottom of the box is the features list in different languages.
Opening the box up, we are greeted with the Turbo Mirage body, some bright wheels and bags upon bags upon bags…yippee! Build time!
The Turbo Mirage body just looks awesome – exactly as I remembered it! And I won’t be screwing up the paint job this time! Promise!
The wing is massive! 5.5 inches across, I’m sure that’s much wider than the original. I think this comes from the current stock of Associated’s selection of wings, but I haven’t checked that out to be sure.
It looks like VRC Pro have teamed up with AE to include a voucher for free driving time in the online racing simulator – pretty cool! VRC Pro team up with RC Racing TV quite often to bring you free, HD coverage from the EFRA European Championships, so they’re good people – be sure to check out the program at vrcpro.com!
So now we start to dive into the box to find the various bags of parts that make up each assembly step. Just like the RC10 Classic, each build step consists of basically opening up a parts bag and assembling all the bits in that bag, or in later steps adding the parts you’ve just opened up to other parts you’ve assembled earlier. It’s pretty easy really!
So the first bag we open up (when we get there!) is bag A – this is all parts for the front end of the car, including the steering, which is thankfully proper bellcrank steering, instead of whatever it was on the RC10 Classic! If you remember, we had to add option parts to the RC10 Classic that drastically improved the steering, but so far it doesn’t look like we have to do that for the RC10 World’s.
Bag AA (the first several bags have double-letter additions, as you’ll see below) is the nosepiece of the car – in BLACK! Oh yes! The black fiberglass front shock tower is in this bag as well.
Next up: the front suspension and the rest of the steering, and there’s our first sighting of black plastic! Those suspension arms caused quite a stir back in the day, let me tell ya :)
Bag C is the Stealth transmission, a lightweight 3 gears instead of the very heavy 6-gear transmission of the original car. I’m not sure when this was released originally but it was a very popular option in the early 90's and really did a lot to improve the speed of the car.
Here we have the motor mount and the slipper pads, plus the diff prats, including the diff rings and thrust bearing.
This is the massive rear bulkhead, and one of the few parts that AE say you should alter to get the ‘original’ look – the World’s Car didn’t have the outer 2 rows of camber link holes, so you trim those off if you want the OG style.
Ah, graphite! That graphite transmission brace made a world of difference (no pun intended!) when it came to handling – it seriously stiffened up the rear end of the car compared to the slab of white plastic the RC10 Classic had. And the rear shock tower is just black fiberglass with an extra hole for tuning.
More black parts, this time the rear arms, plus bearings, pivot blocks, driveshafts and more.
Ugh. Turnbuckles. I *hated* doing these on the RC10 Classic, but at least these are real turnbuckles and not simple threaded rod.
Shock parts, plus 35 weight oil. Lots of shock parts.
The other side of the shocks bag, showing the threaded V2 shocks – these will be SO much nicer than the gold shocks!
Silver springs all around! I’ve got a good selection of RC10 springs from running the gold tub car, and you can usually find these in sets from people online (Facebook groups, forums and of course ebay).
Bag H has a bunch of various parts, including the nose braces, battery tray and a few other bits.
The white fiberglass battery strap would have looked better in black, but hey ho, let’s keep it a bit vintage where we can.
Servo arms! Awesome! I had to get a Tamiya servo saver for the RC10 Classic – and unfortunately it doesn’t look like this kit includes a servo saver either, so I might have to rob the gold tub car of its servo saver.
Wheel nuts, wing wire and a proper molded gear cover that looks quite sturdy indeed.
Yellow wheels! Nice! I still equate yellow wheels with racing, even though I never once ran bright yellow on any of my cars. Unfortunately no tires are included, probably to keep the price down, so I ordered Pro-Line 4-rib front and Holeshot rears, just like in the old days :)
A nice set of basic tools, but no way am I using those L-shaped hex wrenches – I bought a set of real wrenches finally! If I’m going to be working on this and the gold tub car, I’d better be doing it with real wrenches. The camber gauge is useful, though, but if you plan to join a vintage buggy race near you, get yourself a real metal 4-40 nut wrench, because the plastic one will strip out pretty quick!
And…the chassis! 6061 aluminum alloy, milled for lightness. Brian Kinwald was spotted racing this chassis not long after the RC10 Classic was released, which helped the speculation of an imminent re-release of the RC10 World’s…and boy are we glad AE went ahead and did it!
In the bag with the manual and decals, you get a strip of double-sided foam tape for the electronics, window mask for the body and a long black antenna tube.
A complete sticker sheet is included, so you can replicate the box art or go your own way – I love the retro Reedy and RCPS logos!
The manual is full color only on the cover, unfortunately, but inside it’s pretty easy to follow.
The full-size parts reference is in the front, not at the back fold-over page like on the RC10 Classic, but it’s still easy to reference.
As we mentioned before, every bag has its own set of steps, so it’s pretty easy to follow along.
Where the fold-out page with full-size parts references was in the RC10 Classic manual, there’s an option parts list and a setup sheet. Not really progress, to me, but it’s still usable.
So…that’s it! For now…
Follow along in the next couple of weeks as RC Racing TV builds the RC10 World’s Car from all the bits you’ve just seen!
If you want to see this unboxing in video form, here’s something for your viewing entertainment!
