Let me start by introducing myself- I am Douglas Rogers, a novice RC-er who was brought into this hobby as a way to cope with back problems that killed my competitive endeavours in my former sport. I used to race bicycles and duathlon, as well as build my own carbon fibre bicycle parts. I still do composites, and I have decided to try and "roll" my own pan car.

I like some of the designs out there (the CRC T-Fource is a pretty nice design), and I have completed a conversion on my 12 L3 and really like it. I had my own thoughts on how to improve on this design in a 1/10 scale configuration.

What I am looking for is some advice on building. I was thinking of using AE parts for the front end and rear. Any thoughts?

You are face to face with the problem all R/C designers face... The more unique and special your design, the more impossible it is to support... The more you use off the shelf parts, the easier it is to support, but then you just blend in with all the other semi-clones...

That being said, you almost have to use the AE front end, and you need to use standard rear axles and hubs... Corally uses proprietary wheels/hubs and it really hurts the cars due to a lack of availablity of tires, wheels, bearings, etc...

Yeah, I am just going to use off-the-shelf items in a different way. The only thing unique is the chassis (which I can cut myself very easily).

Cutting my own spur and pinion gears- that is something that frankly is not even worth it to me, as I don't have either the machine tools or the desire to come up with the new proprietary design. But what I am coming up with could be something interesting.

Stay tuned...