I know I have been talking about the Alcyon II a lot, and not the car that started it all, the 1st Alcyon .
It was a prototype in 1997 and was finally slated for release in April 1998.
Here is a magazine article in Original Japanese and translated.
Take note it was just called SV-10 at this time, no Alcyon
I was watching this youtube Channel Quiet RC and notice the Alcyon box in his shelf.
I went back a year and I still saw it there. He had it for sometime. What a coincidence.
Here is the video link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67F4nfYzE-g&t=2s
Recently I contacted Kawada About the Ultimate, they got back to me and gave the box art, and production photos and supplementary manual. And I just realize the Ultimate does not come with the rear toe in system.... What a letdown.
I took to the track with my new low shock towers, thicker rear arb. The car was little better than before but still was slow through the turns, it understeered a bit.
I then crashed several times bent one rear aluminium turnbuckle. I managed to find a spare and replaced it. Then my volante tyres started to wear out on the front, so i replaced with new Rush 36X, the car was faster than before, but it was not very easy to drive. I put 2+2 togther and realized why, the little molding line in the middle of the tyres cause the car to have not consistent traction, and I crashed another time, destroying a right rear arm and bending another 32mm turnbuckle, plus bending a Kawada titanium hingepin.
So i found spare rear arm and hingepin in my toolbox and replaced it. I also needed new turnbuckles, so I found 2 shorter tamiya 28mm turnbuckles from the Alcyon II ultimate suspension set up and they are about 7mm shorter. So i placed them at an extreme angle which raises the rear roll center and made the rear camber rise pretty high. I then used the Blitz GSF II body, and wow, i really like how the car works with the rear roll center raised. I suspect the rear roll center is now same or sligthly higher than the front, the car turned it very sharply and reacted very quickly to my inputs. I was able to undercut my friend's cero ultra V1 in the corners. It was really nice to drive.
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| Notice the extreme angle of rear camber link, this raises the roll center while also increase camber rise.In 2014 Billdelong on rc tech tried this on his associated tc5 and he got good results. Post #81 |
After this session, I also noticed the rear end was hunkering down too easily and scraping the chassis and the last 4 screws. Eventhough I liked how it dorve, setup changes had to be made.
At home , I removed the rear Sakura 2.4 springs and replaced with Sakura 2.6 springs. The front remain unchanged at 2.95. I also lowered the rear roll center, but not as low as before. I surmise since I increased the spring rate, I should lower the rear roll center a little to compensate. Hopefully it would still drive good. It would be another month before I can test again. The modern Blitz RS5 body worked great on the new shock towers, but I somehow liked the older GSF II body better. They both performed very well.
I was studying and looking closely at the rivals of the SV10 Alcyon II , like the TRF414 M and the X Ray T1, and some things really stood out, and made me thankful I chose the Kawada.
So here are those reasons.
1. Ease of removing the differentials from the car . have you guys tried on that on T1 or a 414? On those cars you need to remove the bulkheads from the chassis to remove the diff. On the Alcyon, remove 4 screws holding the shock tower from above and you can slide the diff upwards and out.
2. For its time it had very big 36T pulleys, compared to the 414 which had 32t pulleys. Because of that fitting a TRF417, 418,419 and 420 , 37T gear diff is not a problem. There is still plenty of space around the bulkhead, mounts and chassis for clearance of the diff. You can't fit a 37T gear diff on a 414.
3. The servo placement is close to modern touring cars. The angle of the servo horn is placed perpendicular to the chassis front to back, instead of inline like on the xray T1 and TRF 414, because of that it is easy to adapt a modern floating servo mount to fit on the chassis. The positioning of the belt from center of chassis is also conducive to this.
4. There is enough space on the front plastic C hubs to fit a double cardan joint.
5. The motor on the Alcyon II slides up and down for ratio adjustment, meaning with careful spur and pinion selection you can get the motor very low in the chassis.
So when I came back to this hobby in 2026, I realized that after 2020, a new type of swept forward touring car body shell was invented that complements the ultra modern super short shocks cars. These new cars have very short shocks and springs and the towers are very very low, hence they could fit these modern bodies.
I bought a Blitz RS5 modern body and sure enough especially at the front, this body is a problem on the Alcyon. the Sloping front hood cannot go down as low as it is supposed to be because it hits the top of shock mounts .
So I designed my own short towers, I lowered the front and rears down by 6mm.
I also had to use short rod ends to shorten the overall length of the shocks. I use Tamiya parts for the front and 3 Racing for the rear. the front shocks are now end to end 62.1mm, and rear shocks 65.5mm. The rear shocks I use 3racing ball cups.
It is a success, but while the body clears the shocks now, the front anti roll bar linkage is a problem, if i go any much lower than 5mm, it touches the linkages, but anyway this is already an improvement.
