I finally got my hands on my shepherd v10 yesterday, Mr Hastings was kind enough to meet me at a indoor race meeting, I like my indoor meetings but couldn’t wait to leave and get building.
The first thing you notice when looking thought the box, bag 1 the chassis and lots of blue alloy bits, bulkheads ect, all looks really impressive! Where the alloy bulkheads fit on the chassis has been milled out and everything lines up as you when expect from a top end kit. Next comes the shock towers, have to say the rear tower looks mighty strong, at 4mm thick, seem shepherd have listened to customers gripes on other cars over the years.

Now on with the diffs, the front on is as small as I have seen, diameter wise is roughly the same as a 2p piece, I built this up as per kit with the supplied 100,000wt oil and went together smoothly, now the rear has the same size body as the front but obviously has the larger rear pulley attached same as any other ic car, until you come to the brake disc’s, I have to say 2 huge brake disc’s, wow, this is part of the main features of the v10, which I will get to later. On a building note, don’t do as I did, I built the diff up then tried fitting the disc’s, the diff seal sits ever so slightly proud and the disc doesn’t slide over.
I now have the diffs fitted, another well thought out part of the car, the eccentrics are nothing new to rc car diffs for tensioning your belts, but these bolt on the bulkheads either side with 2 screws, remove these and the diffs lift out, meaning its possible to change/tension a belt easily and very quickly. Then you install the layshaft with its 2 speed gearbox, the best part of this assembly is the fact there is no brake disc flapping about and brake pads falling out as you build, I think we may find that fitting/removing engines will be a lot easier too.
Thats all for now, had a power cut here and stopped play, typical.