Saturday August 15th 3 car bashing.

 I finally got a chance to retest my Alcyon II. Is it as good as modern cars ? Short answer, no. There were instances when It was very competitive againstmy friends X4 '26 and a Cero Zero. They were surprised by it, especially when track temps were at it's peak. I was cornering real tight and able to out corner my friends cars, not consistently though. I still am not braking consistently enough sometimes over shooting the apexes. But as the day wore on and surface temps incresed by a few celcius , I suddenly felt the car was no longer competitive, it was not able to hold corner speed anymore and the rear end started losing some grip causing lost time. So this is the complaints most TC drivers have about  changing track conditions affecting performance.As the day wore on, their cars improved while mine deteriorated. The difference is apparent when I could no longer catch up. I suspect the higher temps were lowering gear diff oil viscosity causing inconsistent handling.

So I have a plan. Yes my car is very old, but there were a few things I have not tried yet.

1. I bought a TRF420 spool with steel outdrives. I am curious how a spool will feel like vs the 500k front gear diff. The spool is a little lighter and It should also pull the car ahead on initial acceleration, I feel with the gear diff I am losing about half a second to 1 second of outright corner rip. That is basically the biggest thing I don't have on my car vs theirs. 

2. I also planning on leaning in the shocks a bit. All modern cars have the shocks leaning in a lot. 

3. The way I brake isn't good. I brake while turning, and this causes the car to suddenly straighten out while turning, which loses corner speed. I need to brake only when car is straight.

4. I now plan to use same shock oil on front and rear instead of harder oil in front.  It should balance out well with the spool.

5. The rear gear diff felt too light. When I opened up the rear diff it was apparent why. The oil has turned black and there wasn't much of it left. Two things were happening, the oil was leaking out from the side seals, and the remaining oil was breaking down and overheating causing it to turn black. I bought some special harder tamiya Blue O rings and they will come together with the spool. I will also up the rear diff oil from 3000 to 5000. 

It is a rather exciting time, learning more and more about setup , so many combinations to try. Lets see if I can improve the Alcyon II even further.  

 

 

The Alcyon II Ultimate Prototype -October 2001

 From Japanese magazine R C Magazine, October 2001.

Kawada was working on moving the weight forward. As both the Alcyon and Alcyon II are quite rear heavy cars. The Alcyon being like 55:45, and Alcyon II 53:47, For comparison, I managed to get my alcyon II to be 52:48 without moving the servo forward.

So they made a protoype with saddle packs shifted way far forward, servo flipped and shifted very close to the steering links, esc is very close to the motor and pushed far inwards as possiblie while still not touching belt.

  Notice also the laid down shocks and very low roll centers, but raised rear upper links to bring up the rear roll center so that it wont be too low. It shouldn't be too low in the rear or the car will understeer badly.

 

the final product was different though, it maintained the servo , battery and esc placement, but was only made for side by side packs, and  the front C hubs were lowered and had the camber link go over the kingpin instead of using C Hub Sx-58 like in the pic.

The rear hub also got its own alloy piece that goes above the rear tyre.

Which makes me wanna make my own version that moves the battery even further forward, but I am a bit lazy to do that now. maybe when I retire..Lol..
 

 

Finally found the SV-10 Alcyon II Conversion kit, very Elusive

 No I did not buy it, I saw it on mercari. I thought it came in a Optima Mid LWB kind of conversion box, but it actually came in a plastic bag and label clipped.

Here are the pics :

Part Number SX-100

 

If you look at the instructions closely, two things are not included, one is the SX-57 front knuckles, and rear Alloy bulkhead. So the conversion works right away on the EX and Limited versions only.

       

March 1998 RC Magazine Japan Kawada SV-10 Alcyon pre production review

 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 

 

Youtube Channel Quiet RC has a Kawada SV-10 Alcyon box/car in his collection

 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

 

All About The SV-10 Alcyon II Ultimate

 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. 

 

June 26th Friday Track time - learning a lot of new things for High traction

 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. 

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

https://www.rctech.net/forum/electric-off-road/703926-understanding-tuning-roll-center-6.html
 

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. 

Why modify The Kawada Alcyon II? What Plus points does it have compared to other Touring Cars of it's time ?

 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.

 

Shortening the shocks and lowering the shock towers by 6mm

 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.

 

So now its time to re setup the suspension and go for test run in a few weeks time.

 

 Kawada Catalog 2003 and 2002.