Caster Racing S10N 1:10 nitro buggy
08-18-2015, 11:45 PM
#1
Caster Racing S10N 1:10 nitro buggy
Would you buy this buggy? The price is good, but...perhaps too good.
http://www.casterracing.com/b2b/inde...roduct_id=1672
http://www.casterracing.com/b2b/inde...roduct_id=1672
08-19-2015, 04:55 AM
#3
I guess it depends on what I was wanting to do with it. Do I want to race? I doubt you'll find any track with a 1/10 4wd nitro program. Do you want to just bash it around? Looks like it would be a fun little car. Will you be able to find parts easily? This is where its very tough to be major brands such as AE, Losi, Kyosho, Mugen, and Traxxas.
Figure out what you want to do with it, then buy the car you can gets parts for.
Figure out what you want to do with it, then buy the car you can gets parts for.
08-19-2015, 11:10 AM
#4
The price is just over $200. It has a GO .15 engine and metal-gear diffs. No idea how strong the chassis plate is, though.
No, I'm not looking to race, just looking to bash. I've heard good things about the 1:8 Caster nitro buggy, but I have no idea if that quality has trickled-down to the 1:10 buggy. Of course, I suppose for $200 RTR, if it turns out to be garbage, it wouldn't be too painful a lesson.
No, I'm not looking to race, just looking to bash. I've heard good things about the 1:8 Caster nitro buggy, but I have no idea if that quality has trickled-down to the 1:10 buggy. Of course, I suppose for $200 RTR, if it turns out to be garbage, it wouldn't be too painful a lesson.
08-25-2015, 10:59 PM
#5
Well, I went ahead and bought one. $230 with shipping. I have too many vehicles already, but this way I won't regret not buying one when it's inevitably discontinued.
I don't really understand what happened to 1:10 buggies. There used to be a lot more of them. I think 1:10 is a good scale for most vehicles, and the size is more convenient to put on a shelf between uses. Oh well, what do I know.
I don't really understand what happened to 1:10 buggies. There used to be a lot more of them. I think 1:10 is a good scale for most vehicles, and the size is more convenient to put on a shelf between uses. Oh well, what do I know.
08-31-2015, 10:26 PM
#7
It showed up today. Shipped from China. At first glance it appears cheap but not *too* cheap.
It has a center diff and separate brakes for each axle, which is nice. The brakes are fiberglass discs with metal friction plates. (not really "pads" since the discs will be the parts that wear-down.)
The engine is a .15 made by GO, which means it'll need to be inspected for burrs and then carefully broken-in, but should produce good power. The air filter is tiny and is stuffed with a very fine-cell foam, so it will need to be replaced with something better, perhaps one of HPI's high-flow air filters.
The clutch has two shoes and uses a 0.8mod clutch bell; the bell should be replaceable with one for the HPI Firestorm and the clutch should be replaceable with anything that fits the Savage.
The tires are generic pin-treads, which will be replaced by something better just as soon as I'm sure the buggy is worth investing money in.
The fuel tank has a primer pump on it; I'll have to see if that means it leaks like crazy, in which case I'll remove the primer pump and seal it somehow, unless there's a primerless tank available for this chassis. The top of the fuel tank has a tiny drain that goes straight through to the underside of the chassis, which is a nice touch, but I don't know if it's wide enough to actually drain any spilled fuel.
It came with a rechargeable glowplug heater but no glowplug and no charger. An odd choice, but whatever, glowplugs don't cost much.
The axles are steel. No idea how strong the diffs are yet; I'll have to open them to take a look.
The chassis has two upper braces, one that connects from the top of the front diff case to the top of the center gearbox, and another that connects from the chassis plate just behind the center gearbox to the top of the rear diff case.
The steering has an adjustable servo-saver built into the bellcranks. No idea yet how adjustable it is.
The shocks feel underfilled, but the springs feel like they're a good stiffness for the weight of the chassis. The shock bodies and caps are aluminum, which pleases me; it looks like there's a place to snap rubber boots onto the shock bodies, but there are no boots installed.
Almost all of the fasteners are hex, which is nice for a buggy this inexpensive.
The body is cheap. If I decide I like this buggy I'll have to find a nicer-looking body to put on it.
It has a center diff and separate brakes for each axle, which is nice. The brakes are fiberglass discs with metal friction plates. (not really "pads" since the discs will be the parts that wear-down.)
The engine is a .15 made by GO, which means it'll need to be inspected for burrs and then carefully broken-in, but should produce good power. The air filter is tiny and is stuffed with a very fine-cell foam, so it will need to be replaced with something better, perhaps one of HPI's high-flow air filters.
The clutch has two shoes and uses a 0.8mod clutch bell; the bell should be replaceable with one for the HPI Firestorm and the clutch should be replaceable with anything that fits the Savage.
The tires are generic pin-treads, which will be replaced by something better just as soon as I'm sure the buggy is worth investing money in.
The fuel tank has a primer pump on it; I'll have to see if that means it leaks like crazy, in which case I'll remove the primer pump and seal it somehow, unless there's a primerless tank available for this chassis. The top of the fuel tank has a tiny drain that goes straight through to the underside of the chassis, which is a nice touch, but I don't know if it's wide enough to actually drain any spilled fuel.
It came with a rechargeable glowplug heater but no glowplug and no charger. An odd choice, but whatever, glowplugs don't cost much.
The axles are steel. No idea how strong the diffs are yet; I'll have to open them to take a look.
The chassis has two upper braces, one that connects from the top of the front diff case to the top of the center gearbox, and another that connects from the chassis plate just behind the center gearbox to the top of the rear diff case.
The steering has an adjustable servo-saver built into the bellcranks. No idea yet how adjustable it is.
The shocks feel underfilled, but the springs feel like they're a good stiffness for the weight of the chassis. The shock bodies and caps are aluminum, which pleases me; it looks like there's a place to snap rubber boots onto the shock bodies, but there are no boots installed.
Almost all of the fasteners are hex, which is nice for a buggy this inexpensive.
The body is cheap. If I decide I like this buggy I'll have to find a nicer-looking body to put on it.
Last edited by fyrstormer; 08-31-2015 at 10:49 PM.
09-01-2015, 08:34 PM
#10
Correction: The clutch in fact has 3 shoes. However, the person who installed it went crazy with the threadlock on the clutch bell retaining screw, because I stripped it and ended up having to blowtorch the freaking thing to get it to come loose. Fortunately it's a standard M3-size cap-head screw, so it won't be hard to replace. The clutch shoe springs feel too stiff, but the shoes appear to be a direct fit for the HPI Trophy Buggy clutch, so the springs for that vehicle should work too. Since all but one of my vehicles have HPI clutches, I'm just going to put an HPI clutch on this one too, to reduce the number of spare parts I need to keep on-hand. This will also give me a chance to test the aluminum clutch shoes I have, to see what I think of them; I've only ever used Teflon shoes before.
I have the engine out right now so I can install a better clutch. I'll post some pictures once I have it all back together.
Yes, it uses standard 2.2" buggy wheels.
I have the engine out right now so I can install a better clutch. I'll post some pictures once I have it all back together.
Yes, it uses standard 2.2" buggy wheels.
09-15-2015, 08:04 PM
#12
Yes. I ran it today, after finishing building a new clutch and doing a bench break-in on the engine over the weekend.
The clutch bell is very strange; the teeth look like they're Mod 1, but they only mesh properly with a Mod 0.8 spur gear. The teeth are cut in an almost triangular shape so they slide a lot as they mesh with the spur gear. I didn't like the look of it, so I ordered an HPI 17t Mod 0.8 clutch bell (made for the Firestorm) and fitted my go-to clutch assembly, consisting of a mishmash of parts from the Savage 4.6 and the Trophy Truggy 4.6. So needless to say, the clutch can withstand anything this 2.5cc engine can dish-out.
This is the first engine I've ever broken-in using my 30% nitro spiked with 1% extra castor oil, and I noticed the oil that I poured out of the exhaust pipe afterwards had two distinctly different qualities compared to what I've seen before:
1) It was tan instead of being the same orange color as the fuel;
2) There was much less black residue, indicating less wear on the engine during the first run.
I continue to be impressed by what adding 1% extra castor oil accomplishes.
Anyway, overall the buggy is cheap but effective. Running it around today, even though the gearing was higher than stock (17t instead of 15t), the engine barely reached 210°F despite running on grass and mulch, and a couple full-speed runs down the sidewalk towards the end of the run. So even though it comes with a 2.5cc engine (or a .15, if you prefer English Imperial units), the engine produces plenty of power for the weight of the chassis.
The brakes gave me nothing to complain about; though I like my brakes to be able to lock the wheels if I hit them hard, they still stopped reasonably quickly. A stronger throttle/brake servo might do the trick there; the servos that come with this buggy are just about the cheapest I've ever seen, but at least they don't twitch. I should also remove the metal brake pads and sand them flat, to make sure they're contacting the fiberglass discs as thoroughly as possible; with all the nitro vehicles I've run, I have never, ever seen pads or discs that were properly flat from the factory.
The suspension was soft and compliant, but it resisted bottoming-out pretty well. It kept all four wheels on the ground quite effectively, so the springs are probably fine, though I'll fill the shocks with thicker oil once I get the buggy fully broken-in and running faster.
The tires are unimpressive, but at the same time it didn't get stuck in grass, so I guess they must be grippier than I'm giving them credit for. I was never a big fan of pin-tread tires, but if I raced I might feel differently.
The front suspension is wider than the rear suspension, so front- and rear-specific wheels are necessary; using the same wheels front and rear will give the front axle about 3/4" wider track-width than the rear.
The rear and center axles are all dogbones, but the front axles are CVDs; I believe there are rear CVDs available as option parts. I'll be getting those soon, because I have no patience for dogbones. No thoughts on the diff setup yet; I'm inclined to say they could all use thicker oil, but they didn't diff-out like crazy so they're usable out of the box.
The fuel tank doesn't have a built-in fuel filter, so I added an Align fuel filter to keep the cat hair that is all over my apartment from getting into the carburetor. The priming pump doesn't work, but on the plus-side it doesn't leak either (unlike the priming pump on the HPI RS4's fuel tank), so it can be safely ignored. The fuel tank appears to hold about 75cc, which lasts quite a while with such a small engine.
The body is garbage; it doesn't fit right at all, especially with the HPI 2-stage air filter I put on the engine. So I'll need to get a new body. But thats no great loss.
The shock towers are plastic, but from the look of it, the aluminum shock towers from the electric version should fit, so I'll probably give those a try. They're flat-panel shock towers, so someone inclined to spend all day cutting their own shock towers could make a carbon-fiber set without much fuss.
The clutch bell is very strange; the teeth look like they're Mod 1, but they only mesh properly with a Mod 0.8 spur gear. The teeth are cut in an almost triangular shape so they slide a lot as they mesh with the spur gear. I didn't like the look of it, so I ordered an HPI 17t Mod 0.8 clutch bell (made for the Firestorm) and fitted my go-to clutch assembly, consisting of a mishmash of parts from the Savage 4.6 and the Trophy Truggy 4.6. So needless to say, the clutch can withstand anything this 2.5cc engine can dish-out.
This is the first engine I've ever broken-in using my 30% nitro spiked with 1% extra castor oil, and I noticed the oil that I poured out of the exhaust pipe afterwards had two distinctly different qualities compared to what I've seen before:
1) It was tan instead of being the same orange color as the fuel;
2) There was much less black residue, indicating less wear on the engine during the first run.
I continue to be impressed by what adding 1% extra castor oil accomplishes.
Anyway, overall the buggy is cheap but effective. Running it around today, even though the gearing was higher than stock (17t instead of 15t), the engine barely reached 210°F despite running on grass and mulch, and a couple full-speed runs down the sidewalk towards the end of the run. So even though it comes with a 2.5cc engine (or a .15, if you prefer English Imperial units), the engine produces plenty of power for the weight of the chassis.
The brakes gave me nothing to complain about; though I like my brakes to be able to lock the wheels if I hit them hard, they still stopped reasonably quickly. A stronger throttle/brake servo might do the trick there; the servos that come with this buggy are just about the cheapest I've ever seen, but at least they don't twitch. I should also remove the metal brake pads and sand them flat, to make sure they're contacting the fiberglass discs as thoroughly as possible; with all the nitro vehicles I've run, I have never, ever seen pads or discs that were properly flat from the factory.
The suspension was soft and compliant, but it resisted bottoming-out pretty well. It kept all four wheels on the ground quite effectively, so the springs are probably fine, though I'll fill the shocks with thicker oil once I get the buggy fully broken-in and running faster.
The tires are unimpressive, but at the same time it didn't get stuck in grass, so I guess they must be grippier than I'm giving them credit for. I was never a big fan of pin-tread tires, but if I raced I might feel differently.
The front suspension is wider than the rear suspension, so front- and rear-specific wheels are necessary; using the same wheels front and rear will give the front axle about 3/4" wider track-width than the rear.
The rear and center axles are all dogbones, but the front axles are CVDs; I believe there are rear CVDs available as option parts. I'll be getting those soon, because I have no patience for dogbones. No thoughts on the diff setup yet; I'm inclined to say they could all use thicker oil, but they didn't diff-out like crazy so they're usable out of the box.
The fuel tank doesn't have a built-in fuel filter, so I added an Align fuel filter to keep the cat hair that is all over my apartment from getting into the carburetor. The priming pump doesn't work, but on the plus-side it doesn't leak either (unlike the priming pump on the HPI RS4's fuel tank), so it can be safely ignored. The fuel tank appears to hold about 75cc, which lasts quite a while with such a small engine.
The body is garbage; it doesn't fit right at all, especially with the HPI 2-stage air filter I put on the engine. So I'll need to get a new body. But thats no great loss.
The shock towers are plastic, but from the look of it, the aluminum shock towers from the electric version should fit, so I'll probably give those a try. They're flat-panel shock towers, so someone inclined to spend all day cutting their own shock towers could make a carbon-fiber set without much fuss.
Last edited by fyrstormer; 09-15-2015 at 08:15 PM.
09-23-2015, 08:40 PM
#14
I ran the buggy again, this time after buying and installing an extra 0.2mm shim for the GO .15 engine from RC-Willpower. This engine doesn't have to work very hard to move this buggy; even with higher-than-stock gearing and intentionally mashing the throttle in grass, the engine barely touches 215°F. Of course, that's with the body cover off, because I'm still looking for a body cover that will fit properly. It handles well, a bit twitchy when first accelerating, but I haven't bothered to change the wheel alignment because I've got other projects on the front-burner right now, so that should be pretty easy to tune out.
The servos are complete garbage. I expect to have to replace them soon. They work, but I would never accuse them of having lots of torque or precision.
The servos are complete garbage. I expect to have to replace them soon. They work, but I would never accuse them of having lots of torque or precision.