Latest Upgrades and updates for the Alcyon II in 2026.

 I got two aliexpress 2.5mm carbon chassis made up with differing flex levels. Right now I have the "stiffer" one installed. Weight if the chassis is 51g. Notice the very large holes under the diffs and the joining of the slots under the motor and the battery. This is to both lighten the chassis and allow more flex since it is rather thick.

Next, new graphite rear knuckle extenders. This is to raise the camber links above the rear tyre, to lower the roll center. In other words I can use the original plastic rear knuckle which holds the wheel bearings much better than the Alcyon II Ultimate's rear alloy knuckle.

 

The hollow 1.5mm pins are weak, so i strengthen them by using a fine pin tack and adding a little 2 part epoxy inside . Push the pin in all the way, then dremel of the excess length. The pins are now very strong and do not collapse anymore.

 New surpass Hobby V3  13.5T motor. it is an old tech motor but its very cheap and lightweight. My old turnigy motor weighed 173g. This new Motor weighs 154g. That is a 19g weight savings.

 

New front belt tensioner that is placed above the 3racing plastic floating servo mount. it is 3D printed. the purpose is to raise the front belt above the battery, while at the same time making sure the belt does not touch the steering arm.

 Front belt is currently from sakura zero, S3M 519. it is a little tight when new but when after a few packs will stretch and be perfect. This belt length is also same as TRF417 so i bought a few low friction front belts.

 Previously I used S3M 177 belts for the rear, but after the belt stretch even my 3d printed tensioner couldnt take up all the slack, so I now use S3M 174, from TRF416X. The tension is a little tight when new but will be perfect after a few runs. No need tensioner at all.

 

 I also added newly designed front and rear shock towers. That has a bit more upper link mounting positions .

I ground the original Alcyon II plastic C hub and remove the "nub" that places the camber link horizontally.  It is now vertically placed over the kingpin. So 3 degree caster C hub but verttical camber links. The ground off C hub is still stiff and strong. 

 

 New 3D printed bumper and new slim body post and notice the upper bumper brace to prevent bumper from bending.

 

So now, the ride height is 6mm front and rear, front less droop than rear, springs are 295g/mm front, rear 240g/mm rear, arb medium both F/R. the roll centers are a little bit higher than what is with the Alcyon II ultimate's suspension knuckles and hubs, but still lower than the stock Alcyon II pieces.Will be testing the car soon. From the last test with the Alcyon II ultimate pieces , the car rolled a lot and was easy to drive with lots of steering. It should be rolling less that before yet still have a lot of steering with this setup.

 

Update : 24th May 2026.  Tested the car at Kota Raja klang. traction low, temp typical tropical heat.

Tyres well used Rush 36X VR3 with about 10 runs already. Car was very easy to drive. With enough steering. However when i went against three other guys with modern 4wd touring cars, it was apparent I had not enough steering. I could catch up with 1 car but not the other 2. It was obvious they rotated into corners better. But then again it might just be tyres that are too old. I am not planning on drastically  changing setup. One problem was the front end of the body was scraping on the surface. So I need to trim the front edge of the body. I also added more steering lock but it still understeered. Next round I plan to use my New Volante tyres and lower ride height from 6mm to 5.5mm

The car setup itself felt good so I am not going to change it. But from what I recall with higher roll center, it reacted much quicker with high roll center. Just do not place the roll center too high or will ose rear grip. 

Back to Touring cars in 2026 and discovering flaws and fixes.

 Running the Alcyon II in 2026 with boosted 13.5T, many flaws of the car become apparent .

I encountered some durability issues and my proposed fixes.

1. I got my brother to machine slots into 3racing D3  17T too pulleys, so I could change the ratio from 2.3125 to 2.176. The pulleys are now 17-37. The original Kawada serrated spring pins are weak. They shear off after 3 packs, losing drive of the top pulleys. The fix for now is replacing the serrated 1.5mm lock pins with slotted spring pins. The pins are very cheap and should be stronger. I also bought 1.5mmx10 dowel pins to try if the slotted spring pins are not strong enough.

2. The ride height keeps dropping after every run, especially at the rear. I traced the problem to the kawada Sigma shocks. These are great shocks, I love them as they are easy to rebuild and easy to get zero rebound. However, there is a major weakness. Kawada uses a very thing o ring to prevent the collars from turning loose. It does a very bad job at this. After hard cornering, the springs push against the collars and spins it upwards, causing a lower ride height. The fix is simple . Install new O rings, and after setting, insert shock clips to take up the space above. I left a very small gap to ensure that it doesn't push on the collars, but this fix is very effective, I find the ride height no longer drops.

3. Since I am experimenting with a lot of different suspension pieces  and c hubs and knuckles,I just noticed my bumpsteer on the front is less than optimum. There is too much change in toe during compression. I have some solutions in mind and will test them out.

I will upload photos soon.  

 

 

 

Lost information about the alcyon

 I stumbled upon a french guy's site by accident. He found some really unheard off information about  japanese hop up company name KAI.

They had made parts for the SV-10 Alcyon and they are very unique, I have never seen these parts before.

Here is the link :

 https://www.overrc.com/news/news2013/kai_models/kai_models.html

How long has been it since my last post, jeez a little over a decade !

 My god, the last post was in late 2014. So what happened ? I gave up the alcyon II and bought a used VBC wildfire D06. Ran it a few times. Very even flex characteristics, lighweight , handled really well. But I got tired of touring and moved on to vintage buggies. 

Last year got myself an Airwolf 470 size RC helicopter. 

I met up an old friend of mine  who now has a 19year old son getting into RC touring. 

He was showing me his 7700mah lipo and I was shocked how light it was. Back in 2015 a 7700mah lipo would have been 300+ grams. 

Suddenly the gears start grinding in my head, hmm..my Kawada.

A month later I went looking for my Kawada. It was in a state of dissaray. Some parts were missing. It was setup for countersteer drift. So i decide to put it back to how it was in 2014-2015.  Bad news is the layshaft i got in there is for drift ratios, so I need to create a new layshaft. The TRF 417 gear diffs are also in bad shape and no longer available , so after some investigation found that TRF420 gear diffs can fit also. took note of parts i need like 32mm turnbuckles, some special length M3 screws, 3mm, 4mm and 5mm beairng shims, diff oil, shock oil, ordered them .

Spent  the last sunday building up cleaning  and putting back the suspension together in the Alcyon II ultimate guise. Found all my 44mm CVDs, cleaned them and regreased., shimmed the wheel bearings. Also needed new alloy 6mm thick hexes. as the 5mm ones seem too near the rear 0 offset wheels to rub slightly on the vertical part of the rear knuckle.  It took me the hole day and didnt get much done. It will take me a few weeks more . But little by little I am determined to get it back working. 

This time when I retire it again. It will retired as is it. with all parts intact. It deserves respect as it was a very important part of my life. Stay tuned. 

 

 

 

List of modifications and hop ups on my SV-10 Alcyon II

Ok, you may be curious on the total list of hop ups and modifications thus far to transform my Kawada SV-10 II EX into the SV-10 III.
Here is the complete list.

1. Kawada Sigma Arms SY-08. Same dimensions as Alcyon II arms, but with extra shock mounting hole for rear arm, and arms has holes for droop screws.
2. Kawada Sigma shocks , threaded shock bodies.
3. Tamiya TRF417 Geardiff unit II. Front filled with ride putty, rear with #900 oil. O rings are orange 5mm from o ring shop to prevent leaking.
4. Front Tamiya 44mm DCJ shafts.
5. Rear Tamiya 44mm CVDs.
6. 3racing 17T top pulleys. One pulley has been machined to shorten the hub and add a slot for 2mm pin.
7. Custom machined top layshaft from ASSAB 705. Has one pin hole for 2mm standard pin for the new pulley, and one more area with flats to tighten one 17T pulley grub screws.
8. Custom lower graphite chassis plate 2.4mm cut by fibrelyte. This chassis is designed with the narrowest possible width of 70mm , wider area at arms so that droop screws can be used, and also VBC floating servo mount holes for symmetric flex.
9. VBC D05 floating servo mount.
10. Kawada SX-52 anti roll bar kit, used medium roll bars.
11. Custom designed rear shock tower with 30 mounting positions.
12. Blue alloy china drift car front body posts mounted on bumper.
13. TRF 416 rear belt. S3M 174
14. Bando front belt S3M 519
15. Complete set of TRF416 roche ceramic bearings.
16. Titanium screws for 90% of screws.

If you need any drawings for the custom parts I designed I am willing to send it to you.

Driving the SV-10 Alcyon 3...a second opinion

My friend bryan tan was with me last night among osa and nenas. Bryan was having some handling problems with his vbc wildfire. I tried it out and found his car understeered . I asked bryan to drive my kawada. He exclaimed how much steering it had while still being rear end stable. He kept exclaiming that it was so easy to drive. At the pits he gave me his report of how my kawada handled. He said you can have as much steering as you want. The choice is given to the driver unlike his vbc. If you want more steering just turn the wheel on the transmiter. The car drives the way the driver wants it to..not the way the car wants to drive. He says the feeling of a lot if steering occurs at 70% wheel travel. I was really happy at his opinion.

Kawada SV10 Alcyon III vs Yokomo BD-7!

Since January, there is this guy at the track with a Yok BD7 who kept beating the heck out of me and OSA. He used the latest 7200mah batteries while ours were shorties. Week after week he left us eating dust. Then since march i stopped tc because i snapped my layshaft. While getting the layshaft done i concentrated on my optima mid.
when i got back my layshaft i bought a vbc floating servo mount and modified my ver 1 chassis to fit it. I couldnt drill the holes straight so i kind of tweaked the chassis while tightening the mount. The car did not handle well. It was frustrating..is my kawada headed for retirement ? So i took another 2 months rest and then had are look at the car. I noticed the rear diff was noisy. I was  using ta06 steel bevel gears. I decided to take it apart and change the side gears to plastic and kept the 4 middle gears steel. The diff was then super smooth ! Then i installed my new chassis designed for the vbc floating mount. I tried the car last night with old tyres and the car was twitchy. Mr bd7 again was quicker. The next round i installed a set of new rides re32s. My god what a diffrrence it made. The car worked the way it should. It was on rails ! Mr bd7 didnt know what hit him. I hounded his bd7 then overtook it then proceed to leave it eating dust..eventhough he had far better equipment.
suffice to say he wasnt happy and he kept gluing his tyres thinking there was something wrong with them. The irony was everytime he saw us he would keep implying that we were slow because we drove such old cars. After i beat him he just kept silent and he seemed to think there was something wrong with his car. He kept regluing his tyres. What he did not realize was there was nothing wrong with his car. Its just that finally there is nothing wrong with my kawada anymore..thats why i beat him good. The way the car handled was superb. It neither understeered nor oversteered. The balance was just right it had nuetral steering and drove on rails. Mr bd7 said his battery failed. Well lets see nexy week if he can beat me back.