Originally Posted by NEED-MORE-SPEED

Must say I’m having a great time with the 2013 ARC R10 and I'm already looking forward to this coming weekend. This past week also the weekend was full of excitement regarding the build and also the anticipation getting to the track. There were ups and downs learning a new chassis on the track and to make clarification the "downs" was purely an error from my part and not the chassis (building error)

The build went smooth (so I thought) and was impressed with the quality coming from an Xray T4'14. There aren’t any comparison apples/apples here. The 2013 R10 has its own unique character, quality also fit/finish which IMO separates this platform from the rest. I did make a critical mistake on the initial build and didn’t catch this until the evening of the cars first shake down. I did make the mistake, building the spool incorrectly and running the car first time out with the front pulley 4mm out of line. This made for an interesting first day out with the car, I did however find a set up that was “OK” with the drivetrain not working properly and was on pace with my T4’14. The entire day I was negligent of the front spool pulley not running 100% true with the lay shaft pulley until that evening when I went through the car for the following morning. At the point I discovered my error, fixed my mishap and was congratulated with a drivetrain that was super smooth and IMO, a better drivetrain than my Xray T4’14. I also come to realize that entire day, shaking the car down and struggling with a set-up, the wacked out drivetrain was tweaking the car to the point of, finding a good set-up wasn’t going to happen.

Fit/Finish - I'm going to be brutally honest here. The composites are top notch and there is very little play/slop once fitted together if none at all. Nothing on the composites has excessive play, however just enough to keep all the composite parts moving freely (Arms, Rear Uprights, Caster Blocks, Steering Knuckles) all meshes well together, very good fitting. The silver/chrome finish of the aluminum material looks extremely well and feels light weight once placed in your hand. The silver/chrome finish makes it very easy to add your own look by adding your choice of colored aluminum shims, giving your car that personal character and looking good at the same time.

Quality – There is nothing about this chassis that screams half @ss. The developers on this product has clearly done their homework and put together a superior kit, everything just works and works well. For the price point at the low $400.00 range, there just isn’t anything to complain about. Keep in mind this is a race car, “so out of the box”, with “all” race kits I’ve experienced there isn’t one manufacture (I’ve tested) that does it perfect. There always seems to be some minor tweaks and some cases a lot of tweaks to get a consistent race car. In this case very minor and I’ll explain below, but for the ARC there was minor changes with the build “per” manual I’ve done making this car a fierce competitor. But with all kits the performance is during the initial build.

• Per Manual & Kit – The kit provides you with two types of Ball Joints for the turnbuckles and Camber Links (Open & Closed). I found the (4) “Closed” type Ball Joints, the manual wants you to use on the outer position camber links, doesn’t allow the steering knuckles, rear uprights and overall suspension to move 100% freely. This was an easy fix using some spare (ARC Open) type Ball Joints in replacement making for, 100% free moving camber links. I’m sure within time the Closed type would free up, I even squeezed the Ball Joints with pliers, which did help but wasn’t to my satisfaction.

• Arm Mount Spacing (Wheel Base) – The kit provides you with 1MM & 2MM plastic spacers to shorten/lengthen the wheelbase of your racer. The manual for initial set-up is using 1mm for the FF/FR – RF/RR for a total of (8) 1MM shims used. I did use the following shims provided and found the arms are a snug fit between the arm mounts, but the arms still moved freely. However in the event of tapping a board the right way, you run the risk of the arms tightening up making for an inconsistent race car. I did replace all (8) 1mm plastic shims with (4) 1mm aluminum and (4) .75mm aluminum shims. This gave all suspension arms “.10mm”play, almost zero slop tolerance, also adding the insurance needed of100% no binding issues in the event of a tap. More importantly 100% free moving, no slop and a non-binding suspension.

Durability - No complaints at all, tough little race car

The very next morning I hit the track after a long evening rebuilding my racer, discovering the front pulley not running properly, tweaking the wheelbase spacing, replacing the closed type ball joints with the open type and going through the entire car after a first day of learning the car. My results were impressive, considering this was my 2nd time out with the car, but in all honestly was the cars first time out with how the chassis actually performs due to the front pulley being out of line, the chassis didn’t have a fair shot of showing it’s abilities from my negligence.

Once on the track the car was very easy to drive and shot out of the turns like a bullet, carries more corner speed than any other kit I’ve tested and has more steering than you could ever ask for. What I found interesting about ARC, the car responds very well to adjustments (adding or removing a 1MM shim for more/less camber gain) does reflect lap times for better or worse. So finding a setup for track conditions doesn’t seem to be an ongoing battle as track conditions change. During practice, prior to the first qualifier I was consistently turning more fast laps and also turned my new HOT lap only 3 others have got down too. Fellow racers at the track blamed me turning faster times because “you always go faster with a new build”, I’m calling there bluff lol.

Needless to say the first qualifier with the car was amazing and 4 minutes in, I was killing my previous times by 4 seconds until a smashed square into the chicane, exploding a suspension arm. This same chicane I smashed into with my T4’14 and broke a Steering knuckle and Caster Block. This same chicane I’ve witnessed other cars fall apart upon impact as well so it’s not a durability issue at all (I think it’s something to do with the 50 pound sand bag directly behind the board). The bummer of it all, since the impact was so hard I had some “bad luck” the rest of the day as the car just wasn’t the same. As the day went on and continued my wrenching, the car got better but wasn’t the same prior to making that impact. The end result was Qualified 4th and finished 3rd

I already went through the car to investigate why the car wasn’t the same after its introduction to the chicane and found a bent sock shaft when replacing the shock fluid.

Now I have a good handle on what this car likes and doesn’t. This weekend coming will be another 2 day testing on two different carpet tracks running 17.5 and can make the necessary adjustments getting this car dialed and showing much better results than the first weekend out.