The rear wheel outers are vintage new old stock Pro-Line #2516 “nickle”. In removing flashing/burrs on these I realized that they seem to be metal-plated plastic. They’re slightly stiffer than stock plastic wheel outers. They weigh just a few feathers more too. We had to replace the wheel outers because one of the originals was badly mangled. These three piece rear wheels actually have a fourth piece – it’s a plastic shim that snaps onto the wheel outer pre-assembly. This is in addition to the plastic stiffener that you slip into the tire. In putting these wheels together correctly I realized that the tires are semi-pneumatic, which means that they’re air-tight but not inflated. I didn’t spend too much time analyzing how this works.
Since you’re probably wondering what the heck that rear swaybar is doing on an RC10 I thought I’d address that issue next. Recently I’ve developed a bit of a swaybar fetish and it has to do with being unable to get a single swaybar to work in my youth and finally figuring it out only very recently, after spending hundreds of dollars buying various parts with the hope that I would finally find a good and easy way to install a swaybar onto some of the more modern cars that I have in my growing RC car collection. My desire to install the rear RC10 swaybar has to do with two concrete observations. #1: box art on some of the early boxes shows an RC10 with what is clearly and undoubtedly a rear swaybar. (Side note: I am guessing that the car in photo on early boxes having rear swaybar is one of the original seven built after prototype, six of which went to nationals and the seventh of which was used to shoot photos for the early Edinger manual.)
#2: The rear bulkhead clearly has a groove in it, which is cradled by the fiberglass rear shock tower, groove being just wide enough to fit a nice 1.6 mm swaybar. Rear bulkhead clearly has screw holes in it which are clearly intended for buttoning down a rear swaybar using washers and/or flanged button head #4-40 screws, much like front swaybar is held down. Furthermore, the length of this groove matches the length of groove in front, namely it’s about 72 mm in length.
However, after examining, re-examining, researching, going online, searching, looking, investigating, inspecting photos found online, and so forth and so on, I did indeed come to the conclusion that the rear A-arms have no adequate mounting spot for a ball stud needed to have a swaybar. I did find photos online of rear A-arms that had a small hole drilled (this is where I got the idea for my mounting spot) but I did not find a single online source where a fully- and correctly-mounted rear swaybar for RC10 was depicted in photographs. This is one of the reasons I decided to write this essay – it’s because a lot of useful information that I now know has been gleaned from the internet – in order to reciprocate and encourage the idea that I believe in (which is to freely and openly share information that is correct and accurate) I am demonstrating my beliefs by publishing information that is correct and accurate, and that may be useful to someone such as myself trying to find information on how to properly mount a rear swaybar on an RC10, in the manner in which it was originally intended. By the way, the early Edinger manual does have instructions on how to mount a front swaybar. No mention is made of a rear swaybar. I got Matt’s permission to drill small holes in his vintage rear A-arms, carefully.
(Continued in next post.)
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