Thought I would put my build up here is well, to share my thoughts and experiences so far.
First of all the kit contents were all top notch, the maching of all metal parts were probably the best I've seen in RC cars and the plastic mouldings were also very accurate and seemed to be pretty damned tough.
The build requires several parts to be threadlocked in place, but none is provided in the kit. I prefer to use the low strength blue type threadlock (i.e. Loctite 221), this is more than enough for RC cars. Using medium strength red type threadlock (243) could lead to problems with undoing bolts/nuts and rounding out capscrews in the future.
I also used a M3 and M4 tap to help start several of the threads in the plastic mouldings, this seemed to help a lot as the plastic mouldings are very tough and the clearances seem to be nice and tight.
I know there has been some critism of the fasteners used by Serpent on rctech.net, with several complaints of the hex head rounding out. But all of the capscrews in this kit were marked up as either grade 10.9 or 12.9 so these should be more than up to the job. With any problem threads tapped out there were no issues found execpt with the receiver box lid M2 screws.
The manual also isn't very clear in places, so I will try and fill out some of the parts that I found. Perhaps Serpent could do some build tips or videos on their website to help with this.
I started with sealing the carbon parts with cyan to help stenghten them and stop splitting in the future. A good tip I found on rctech.net is to use a black permanent marker on the edges prior to applying the cyan, the gives a nice gloss black finish to the edges thats a bit different to just using cyan.
Stage 1 in the manual is to build the centre diffs, and then the front and rear diffs. Alll three diffs are the same except for the spur/crown wheel gears in their respective places.
All of the parts again appeared to be of good quality, with the gears and pins all well cast or machined, and all parts went together very well.
The only issue I had was with the front gearbox, with the recommended new shimming on the seperate sheet. With three shims behind the diff pinion I couldn't even assemble the gearbox cases, with one shim removed all went together well with the gear mesh a little notchy.
Here I think the manual could be a lot clearer, or maybe a build video on the Serpent website. The new shimming is only a recommended starting point, if the gear mesh is too tight then try removing a shim from behind the pinion. The gear mesh from new should be a bit tight or notchy, this will bed in after a few runs when it should be nice and smooth. Then it would be best to check the gear mesh again and adjust as necessary.
The pictures below show the build of one of the diffs.
The spur gear is steel, so although will be a bit louder than nylon should be more than up to the job.
The next stage in the manual is to attach the centre diff mount/motor mount to the chassis, the manual doesn't mention to use threadlock on these capscrews, but I did for security.
