Touring Car Wheels On the RC10DS

BRP makes a simple aluminum spacer which you must epoxy to the inside hex portion of the wheel and run 3/16" x 5/16" bearings instead of the stock 3/16" x 3/8" (BRP #6746 Touring car front wheel adapter hub $5.95/pr). The main problem with this set-up is that you have to modify each pair of front wheels with these adapters. No modifications are required to the stock Associated DS, truck or buggy front steering and axles.

However, if you want to spend a bit more time, you can convert your car instead of each pair of wheels by following these instructions, supplied by Kevin Gearhardt:

Parts

For the rear end of the car, use 2 of the wheel hex hubs that come on the #6120 Super Star Rear Wheel Adapter Set ($2.00 each). These are the same hex hubs that come with most sedan cars. They have a 5mm center hole and are 12mm across. If you have a sedan car already, you may have a few of these lying around somewhere.

Converting the front end requires several parts that are used on the Traxxas Stampede. You'll need the following Traxxas parts:

The Traxxas parts total up to about $16.50. In addition to the Traxxas parts, you'll need four 5x8x2.5mm ball bearings (around $16) and two 4mm nylon locking nuts. That brings the total cost of parts for the conversion to around $38, which does not include tires and wheels.

Kevin used four HPI Super Star wheels in the super narrow, 3mm offset configuration, and four HPI super narrow, pro compound belted slicks. That's approximately $40 for tires and wheels, which isn't much more than you'd pay for a full set of the typical Dual Sport tires and wheels.

Construction

Now for the "how-to" part. To convert the rear end, you need to carefully drill out the HPI hex wheel hubs with a 3/16" bit. Be careful to stay centered! Once you've drilled them out, just slide them onto your DS rear axles and you're ready to mount your DS rear end with touring car wheels and tires. You may also want to drill out the 1mm offset washer that comes with the HPI wheels to get as much rear wheel track width as I could. You may have to drill out the center of the wheels with the 3/16" bit to get a snug fit against the hex wheel hub. Attach the wheels with the original DS rear wheel nylon lock nuts. For those of you thinking of just converting the rear end, the rear wheel track with touring car tires is much narrower than the front end with stock DS wheels, and the car's handling is lousy!

For the front end, remove the camber and steering tie rods from their outer mounting points. Then remove the Associated caster block and steering arm assembly and save it for converting back to stock DS form if you ever want to. (If you don't have extra ball ends in your parts box, you'll have to remove them from the Associated caster blocks and steering arms.) Now for some drilling and cutting. The Traxxas caster block will not fit in the Associated front suspension arm. Carefully trim away from the rear side of the block (used a rotary tool if you have one) until it just fits in the suspension arm. You'll then have to drill out the caster block with a 1/8" bit so that the Associated outer hinge pin will pass through.

Finally, you'll have to trim away the lower inside corner of the Traxxas caster block so that it will clear the Associated suspension arm after it's installed. That just takes a little trial-and-error fitting.

After you've modified the caster block, you're ready to assemble your new Traxxas Dual Sport front end. Put two bearings in each of the steering blocks, and mount the steering blocks in the caster blocks using the 2.5mm king pins and e-clips. Put the ball ends in the assembly, and mount it in the suspension arm with the original outer hinge pin. Reattach the camber and steering links, and adjust the camber and toe-in as necessary. (NOTE: The Traxxas assembly will dramatically change the camber link geometry such that you get a lot of negative camber when the suspension compresses. You should try moving the inner camber link mount up on the front shock tower to compensate for this.)

Now you can insert the Traxxas front axle through the steering block and bearings. Put in an axle pin and slip on one of the Traxxas wheel hex hubs to keep the pin in place. A tiny drop of shoe goo placed in the recess for the pin might help hold that first hex hub in place. Take a second hex hub and carefully remove the small rim around the center by the pin recess with an X-acto knife. Then slide that hub onto the axle with the pin recess towards the first hub. Drill out a 1mm offset washer with a 5mm bit and slide it on. Now mount your touring car wheel using a 4mm nylon locking nut. You'll have to use a pair of needle-nose pliers or a 12mm wrench to hold the inner wheel hex hub while you tighten the nut. Once again, you may have to drill out the center of the wheels to get a snug fit against the hex wheel hub.

That's it, you're done! Now your RC10DS is set up to run most of the readily available standard touring car tires and wheels that are out there. You might run into clearance problems with wheels that aren't super narrow or that don't have enough offset, but you'll have to experiment. The 3mm offset HPI wheels work great though, and you can take your pick from the tires that are out there.

We would love to have some photos of this process being done, in order to better illustrate the conversion process. If you have some photos you can send us, either actual pictures or scans of pictures, we would appreciate it! And so would the other DS owners out there! We can send you some stickers for your trouble.

HPI Note

We really have to thank Kevin Gearhardt for his work in transforming his DS car to accept standard touring car wheels. This is the entirety of the information we had on our site:

"To fit sedan wheels like the selection of HPI wheels available on the RC10 buggies or the Dual Sport, you will need to get Traxxas part numbers 3636, 3637 and 5 x 8 x 2.5mm bearings and two sets of HPI part #6120 Super Star Rear Wheel Adapter Sets ($2.00) and drill out the adapter pivots to 1/8"."

From this short paragraph, Kevin was able to work and work to get our wheels and tires on his DS, and I'm sure DS owners around the world will thank him! If you want to thank him personally, send him an email: kgearhar@ix.netcom.com.