Tuesday 22 February 2011

The HPI RS4 Pro Clone

In 1997 the HPI RS4 pro took the RC Touring car world by storm. its efficient twin belt drive train, fixed to the graphite saddle pack chassis, made it a formidable competitor in 1997-1999. In fact it was so popular and well loved that RC Car Action named it the 1998 car of the year !
Kawada at the time was and still is a 3rd party aftermarket manufacturer maaking hop ups for other brands. Owing to the success of the RS4 Pro, Kawada set out to make their own Touring Car to capture some of the glory HPI ammased for themselves, hence in 1997, Kawada started prototyping work on the SV-10, not named ALCYON yet at the time. Here is a RC world March 1998 review of the second protoype of the SV-10. The Sv-10 ALCYON was only released in the US in october 1998.
As you can see in this article, the protoype uses HPI RS4 Pro suspensions arms, uprights and turnbuckles ! and the antiroll bars look like they came from a TA03. Look at the bulkheads, and you will see they are hand machined. Also notice that the chassis uses a raised graphite piece to place the saddle pack batteries. The monocrank is also different ,uses 4 screws to hold them together. You would also notice that the shocks are placed more upright than the final production car. i guess kawada have tested the best shock angles for the suspension arm. The dead giveaway that this was a RS4 Clone? the arms with 2 hingepin posistions, one inner and one outer, so that you can increase width to 200mm, just like the RS4 Pro. Kinda dumb if you ask me, but kawada went along with it. In my mind, that was bad decision, and i will explain why in another post.

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