heckler
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After after being out of RC for ~20 years and watching from the wings since right before COVID, I finally put the radio I bought in 2019 to some proper use and raced the weekend of Thanksgiving.
I purchased a SCT410SL in September 2023 after seeing that Losi stopped making their SCT and even after finding out Short-Course is a "Dead class" in most places, I still got it; at the time it was the most recent SCT platform, I figured it being light was better than the inverse and saw Tekno was well represented #ebuggys at my local track.
I spent a good part my youth racing open-wheel off-road and was immediately jazzed to see something that was closed-wheel. Currently, I'm going to have to travel to mix paint with fellow short-coursers, but right now I'm happy just racing the clock (I'm also shopping for an e-buggy) and trying to corrupt friends/family into this addiction.
Parts List:
- Tekno Lightened Outdrives
- Tekno CF steering top-plate
- Tekno CF center diff top-plate
- Tekno CF front/rear shock-towers
- Tekno alum shock caps (why aren't these included in the kit?!)
- Tekno EB410/ET410 Alum center diff support
- Tekno brass weight (added after initial build)
- Klinic titanium turnbuckles (added after initial build)
- Prostar 240SL Rear Bumper (added after initial build)
Components List:
- Tekin RX8 Gen3 ESC
- MKS HBL550 servo
- Tekin Pro4 4600kv Motor
- Basic B*tch Futaba FHSS RX
Initial Build:
I got the shell a few weeks before the kit and spent a bunch of time designing a "slick" livery, which I realized was a very dumb mistake with an SCT, but especially an SCT w/ a Proline shell (more on this later) and the 410SL's rear bumper (or lack thereof).
Everything went together well, I had some grindy-ness happening in the rear diff->outdrive while assembling and after playing around with shims and trying to get the diff to be buttery smooth, I took it to my local hobby shop to get a 2nd opinion and to make sure I wasn't crazy. The fix ended up just pulling the outdrive gear as hard as I could away from the diff gear and securing it. That seemed to fix the mesh (more on this later) and the local guy assured me it would break in after running some packs through the drivetrain.
Post backyard dead-grass shakedown run (time to go see what we can break at the track):
Tuning / Playing
Leading up to the club race I put in 3 days of practice over the course of a month and some change to get the car as dialed as I can (with me presently being the biggest inconsistency) and I can offer the following advice for anyone running a 410SL on a 1/8th scale track: Add weight. Until I added weight (chassis weight + heavier shell) the car was schizophrenic in turns, regardless of my tread/compound. Gluing my tires like I wasn't mostly sniffing the glue helped, but the weight (30g) to the rear changed the entire dynamics of the car.
The setup I'm running (currently) is stock, except:
- 30K diff all the way around (will be science-ing this more)
- +1 level stiffness on rear sway-bar
- shocks on outer most arm-hole
- +30g to rear
- slightly thinner shock oil
- lengthened wheelbase: front arms 1 washer front/back, rear arms all washers front
This setup has seemed to fix most of the issues with the out-of-box setup, which could be summarized as 'calming it down':
- Instability entering turns at highspeed (off-power)
- Oversteer exiting turns (on-power)
- Rear-end washing out mid-turn (praise droop)
I'm fortunate to live near to one of the off-road mecha-like tracks; I took some pictures of the layout for my 1st time on the driver stand at a proper track in 20+ years:
The layout that 1st time out was great for SCT; I've seen some wild layouts they've run there and back in the day we never had off-camber back-straights, so that was fun/challenging to navigate.
Leading up to this, I read constantly online about people having 'nose diving' problems with SCTs, I never experienced that (unless I screwed up and hit the breaks in the air), my issue was staying on the throttle too long after taking flight, but I was able to rectify that pretty quickly, but not before taking a massive hit off a feature gone wrong.
Aftermath of 1st day on the track:
Two packs. This happened on the 2nd pack. :|
Post 1st Track Day Improvements
I'm a big fan of breaking stuff and improving it, to make sure my shell didn't get pulverized again:
Added an actual rear bumper:
Didn't spend days on the shell:
Added RC BodyArmor:
The 1st shell lasted 2 packs; this one presently has probably 15-20 ran through it. It's not perfect (am shite still) but it's structurally sound. This isn't an ad, but I'll 100% of the time put this stuff on my SCT bodies until I die.
2nd Track Day
The track was run wet this day; I had picked up some new tires to try after the blockades I was running felt sloppy (the glue job wasn't helping). I picked up some AKA Chainlinks which were phenomenal for the first 4-5 laps after they watered, but were all over the place once the track dried a little. What seemed to really hook were the AKA Impacts; it didn't matter if it was wet or dry, so much so I grabbed several more sets of them. I also became a lifelong member of the Church of Droop this day.
I put 7-8 packs through the truck, things were feeling good, I could feel the edges of that focus pocket (aka wasn't constantly wrecking and hiking my ass down to self-marshal) and on my last pack before packing it up a horrible grinding sound started; that rear outdrive pinion was KAPUT.
Aftermath:
Easy fix, replaced and the weird fitment it initially had was gone with the replacement outdrive-pinion. No clue if I just hit an out-of-spec lotto or what? /shrug
Post 2nd Day Improvements:
- Installed rear weight, added blingy-titanium turnbuckles, said prayer to the God of Droop.
Day 3
Everything is starting to click, I finally understand how the voltage on my batteries and charger work, droop has changed my life, I'm now consistently cranking out laps (which are 10-15 seconds slower then the expert ebuggy guys lol). The last pack out, I was pushing it and a good friend (a proper rear bumper) saved my shell:
It's been great getting back into the hobby. I've learned a lot about SCT this last couple months. Lots of people just have them sitting in their closets, I've talked to so many racers who fondly talk about the class... I can understand why it is dead in some places though, the propensity for an SCT to eat your money seems like a real thing. The tires I started the race day with had like 85% tread left at day start, they're essentially bald now, certainly no use for going fast on dirt and without the ProStar rear bumper, I'm pretty sure I'd have had to buy another $40+ shell plus time instead of a $4 replacement part. ...but man it's fun AF.
I purchased a SCT410SL in September 2023 after seeing that Losi stopped making their SCT and even after finding out Short-Course is a "Dead class" in most places, I still got it; at the time it was the most recent SCT platform, I figured it being light was better than the inverse and saw Tekno was well represented #ebuggys at my local track.
I spent a good part my youth racing open-wheel off-road and was immediately jazzed to see something that was closed-wheel. Currently, I'm going to have to travel to mix paint with fellow short-coursers, but right now I'm happy just racing the clock (I'm also shopping for an e-buggy) and trying to corrupt friends/family into this addiction.
Parts List:
- Tekno Lightened Outdrives
- Tekno CF steering top-plate
- Tekno CF center diff top-plate
- Tekno CF front/rear shock-towers
- Tekno alum shock caps (why aren't these included in the kit?!)
- Tekno EB410/ET410 Alum center diff support
- Tekno brass weight (added after initial build)
- Klinic titanium turnbuckles (added after initial build)
- Prostar 240SL Rear Bumper (added after initial build)
Components List:
- Tekin RX8 Gen3 ESC
- MKS HBL550 servo
- Tekin Pro4 4600kv Motor
- Basic B*tch Futaba FHSS RX
Initial Build:
I got the shell a few weeks before the kit and spent a bunch of time designing a "slick" livery, which I realized was a very dumb mistake with an SCT, but especially an SCT w/ a Proline shell (more on this later) and the 410SL's rear bumper (or lack thereof).
Everything went together well, I had some grindy-ness happening in the rear diff->outdrive while assembling and after playing around with shims and trying to get the diff to be buttery smooth, I took it to my local hobby shop to get a 2nd opinion and to make sure I wasn't crazy. The fix ended up just pulling the outdrive gear as hard as I could away from the diff gear and securing it. That seemed to fix the mesh (more on this later) and the local guy assured me it would break in after running some packs through the drivetrain.
Post backyard dead-grass shakedown run (time to go see what we can break at the track):
Tuning / Playing
Leading up to the club race I put in 3 days of practice over the course of a month and some change to get the car as dialed as I can (with me presently being the biggest inconsistency) and I can offer the following advice for anyone running a 410SL on a 1/8th scale track: Add weight. Until I added weight (chassis weight + heavier shell) the car was schizophrenic in turns, regardless of my tread/compound. Gluing my tires like I wasn't mostly sniffing the glue helped, but the weight (30g) to the rear changed the entire dynamics of the car.
The setup I'm running (currently) is stock, except:
- 30K diff all the way around (will be science-ing this more)
- +1 level stiffness on rear sway-bar
- shocks on outer most arm-hole
- +30g to rear
- slightly thinner shock oil
- lengthened wheelbase: front arms 1 washer front/back, rear arms all washers front
This setup has seemed to fix most of the issues with the out-of-box setup, which could be summarized as 'calming it down':
- Instability entering turns at highspeed (off-power)
- Oversteer exiting turns (on-power)
- Rear-end washing out mid-turn (praise droop)
I'm fortunate to live near to one of the off-road mecha-like tracks; I took some pictures of the layout for my 1st time on the driver stand at a proper track in 20+ years:
The layout that 1st time out was great for SCT; I've seen some wild layouts they've run there and back in the day we never had off-camber back-straights, so that was fun/challenging to navigate.
Leading up to this, I read constantly online about people having 'nose diving' problems with SCTs, I never experienced that (unless I screwed up and hit the breaks in the air), my issue was staying on the throttle too long after taking flight, but I was able to rectify that pretty quickly, but not before taking a massive hit off a feature gone wrong.
Aftermath of 1st day on the track:
Two packs. This happened on the 2nd pack. :|
Post 1st Track Day Improvements
I'm a big fan of breaking stuff and improving it, to make sure my shell didn't get pulverized again:
Added an actual rear bumper:
Didn't spend days on the shell:
Added RC BodyArmor:
The 1st shell lasted 2 packs; this one presently has probably 15-20 ran through it. It's not perfect (am shite still) but it's structurally sound. This isn't an ad, but I'll 100% of the time put this stuff on my SCT bodies until I die.
2nd Track Day
The track was run wet this day; I had picked up some new tires to try after the blockades I was running felt sloppy (the glue job wasn't helping). I picked up some AKA Chainlinks which were phenomenal for the first 4-5 laps after they watered, but were all over the place once the track dried a little. What seemed to really hook were the AKA Impacts; it didn't matter if it was wet or dry, so much so I grabbed several more sets of them. I also became a lifelong member of the Church of Droop this day.
I put 7-8 packs through the truck, things were feeling good, I could feel the edges of that focus pocket (aka wasn't constantly wrecking and hiking my ass down to self-marshal) and on my last pack before packing it up a horrible grinding sound started; that rear outdrive pinion was KAPUT.
Aftermath:
Easy fix, replaced and the weird fitment it initially had was gone with the replacement outdrive-pinion. No clue if I just hit an out-of-spec lotto or what? /shrug
Post 2nd Day Improvements:
- Installed rear weight, added blingy-titanium turnbuckles, said prayer to the God of Droop.
Day 3
Everything is starting to click, I finally understand how the voltage on my batteries and charger work, droop has changed my life, I'm now consistently cranking out laps (which are 10-15 seconds slower then the expert ebuggy guys lol). The last pack out, I was pushing it and a good friend (a proper rear bumper) saved my shell:
It's been great getting back into the hobby. I've learned a lot about SCT this last couple months. Lots of people just have them sitting in their closets, I've talked to so many racers who fondly talk about the class... I can understand why it is dead in some places though, the propensity for an SCT to eat your money seems like a real thing. The tires I started the race day with had like 85% tread left at day start, they're essentially bald now, certainly no use for going fast on dirt and without the ProStar rear bumper, I'm pretty sure I'd have had to buy another $40+ shell plus time instead of a $4 replacement part. ...but man it's fun AF.
Last edited:
If you know anyone trying to move an e-buggy, let me know!
