Brushless HPI RS4 Rally for my kids to race with me

[ssdub33]

So I've never had a rally car and have always wanted one. I've had crawlers, sc trucks and buggies, and drift cars but never a rally car. My daughter is getting a crawler for Christmas so I figured my son should get a rc too. I didn't want to get him a crawler too since they both love to go with me to the lhs and watch the races. I swooped this up on eBay for $150 shipped. I think it's not too bad of a deal since it came with a novak brushless system, very old by the way, a pile of extra parts, and quite a few upgrades. I picked up a 2s and a new body for it. This isn't going to be necessarily a build thread but may end up that way. I am very curious what people have found parts wise that crosses over from other hpi cars like the Sprint 2 since parts are becoming more rare. And help is appreciated in regards to parts interchange, upgrades, and any tips or tricks. Thanks in advance for some help. I will shut up now and get to the pics lol

[jeepgeek2002]

i dig the inside body that cover the internal parts.. thats slick!
watch for rocks getting caught in the belt pulleys..

[jeepgeek2002]

HPI RS4 Rally - R/C Tech Forums

[ssdub33]

Originally Posted by jeepgeek2002

HPI RS4 Rally - R/C Tech Forums

Thanks for the link I know I can find some bits and pieces on eBay for it. My real main concern is finding out what pulleys are interchangeable. The rear a arms are aluminum, so I'm not too concerned about those. The front a arms I am a little curious how hard they will be to find. The diff parts seem easy to find and so are the belts. The car will mainly be played with on pavement in front of my house or at the lhs indoor carpet track. There is a couple indoor clay tracks in Portland I will try out after I get used to driving this thing. Most of the time it will probably have drift wheels and tires on it. I am definitely on a time crunch to get this car done and finish building my daughter's crawler by Christmas

[MikeGozz]

Nice pickup! I also have a RS4 Rally that my son uses. It's a great little chassis. Parts are not the easiest to find for it though I have picked up a number of RS4 roller over the year though so I have plenty of control arms and other bits to use if it gets crashed.

Did you make the christmas deadline?

[ssdub33]

Originally Posted by MikeGozz

Nice pickup! I also have a RS4 Rally that my son uses. It's a great little chassis. Parts are not the easiest to find for it though I have picked up a number of RS4 roller over the year though so I have plenty of control arms and other bits to use if it gets crashed.

Did you make the christmas deadline?

Barely I was up til 3am Christmas morning getting it done. My daughter's crawler was way easier and done days ago. The only disappointing thing was the brushles setup was garbage. I had to steal the tekin rs esc out of my crawler and then I went and got a Holmes 13T torquemaster from the lhs. Holy crap it's fast on 3s Both my kids went nuts when they opened presents from daddy with rc cars inside. The paint scheme didn't turn out too bad with my son's favorite colors, but the paint quality was not the best. I used duratrax paint. I don't like it. I will stick to my stash of pactra and good ol tamiya paint. Well enough talking here's a pic

[jeepgeek2002]

interesting paint scheme! Pink/yellow or salmon/neon..
Drift tires? oh man. can drift for 45mins on a 5000mah battery!

[ssdub33]

Originally Posted by jeepgeek2002

interesting paint scheme! Pink/yellow or salmon/neon..
Drift tires? oh man. can drift for 45mins on a 5000mah battery!

My phone flash was on so the clot looks weird. It's just bright red and bright yellow. The drift tires are because I like to drift occasionally and I wasn't handing my 2 yr old the control with rubber tires on the car. Otherwise it would have hit 50 before running into the living room wall This thing is insane on 3s On 2s, with the mildest settings I could do on the rd esc, it was still a handful. I might need to gear it down just a little The battery I picked up is a electron 2s 4600 100c shorty hard case. It is just the same width of the chassis, which is nice cuz normally they stick out on each side

[ou812]

when I had my rs4 rally till a couple years ago.I found that a google search on the hpi parts numbers found a lot of left over parts for the rally rs4,its a shared platform only with the rs4 pro.Very few parts crossed over with any other rs4 model.
Very nice score

[alexchen86]

The biggest gripe I have about belt driven rally or best driven shirt course is the pebbles and sand eventually finding itself in!

Sure it's smoother but I'd rather have dependability. And great find! Those rs4 rally's are super rare these days! Almost as rare as the Associated TC3 rally conversion kit.

Probably the toughest rally car out right now would be Losi's but not too scale looking unfortunately.

[ssdub33]

I like it so far and it has held up so far with my son and me driving it. I definitely need to gear it different cuz the motor and esc temp is a little more than I like. It's not too hot to touch, just hot enough not to want to hold your hand on it forever. That's an easy fix though. They made so many versions of the rs4. I am curious what versions of the rs4 pro have parts crossover. Now that this car is running and so is my daughter's crawler, I've been trying to focus on getting my rig up and crawling. That rig will have its own build thread, which will be my first actual build thread, due to the body I'm using has never been done. That's right nobody has done one yet