Panther Chariot makeover
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 12:48 am
Back when that Panther Chariot fiasco went down, Asimov was kind enough to hook me up. I've reserved doing a review because by this point Asimov's review was out there, and pretty fair and unbiased.
So in a nutshell here's what I think. Stretched chassis dual cell clone, with a 3 step throttle. Since the lowest step is so slow as to be unusable, I consider this right on par with a dual celled zip Zap with a Tomy/Perfection booster board. Which aint bad, my favorite fast car set up, so I'll compare it to that. The advantages, a nice comfortable pistol grip controller. Way more comfortable than a bit controller, but it is much bigger. The disadvantages? Where do I begin. Well they all seem to relate back to crappy clone quality, so we'll leave it at that. It is a car with alot of potential, marred by crappy clone quality.
So I'm sick of cars with potential, and I didn't play with these much. Until now. I was supposed to be trying to edit together my Iwaver vid, but some how I got sidetracked by this. Never know what I'll end up doing.
So the biggest issue to be dealt with were the wheels and crappy looking body, and mostly the wheels.
The hard ribbed tires are crap for traction, and standard tires don't work at all on the wheels with the odd off set. So a wheel mod is order, and I hate doing wheel mods. Nothing will mess with your handling like messing with your wheels. So I went with Zip zap wheels, to keep it simple, and that gives me options, like putting Import Racer wheel fronts on them later.
The body is the easy part. The tabs are configured just like a stretched clone car, so you have to shorted the front, and lengthen the back. Figure since I'm messing with tabs, might as well lower it. I went with the Skyline body, because like the Panther I've been meaning to mod it forever now, and I'm pretty sure that the ugly ass body that came on it was supposed to be a Skyline.
I wish I took a before pic, and I thought I had, but that was months ago, and I guess I didn't. So, oh well, here it is now.
I just extended the front end a little, and filled the rear deck before adding this wing. I did a torn paper graphic, which I love, because it's just so damn easy to rip up tape.
Here's the original body next to it for comparison
And the Chariot chassis, in case you were curious.
So in a nutshell here's what I think. Stretched chassis dual cell clone, with a 3 step throttle. Since the lowest step is so slow as to be unusable, I consider this right on par with a dual celled zip Zap with a Tomy/Perfection booster board. Which aint bad, my favorite fast car set up, so I'll compare it to that. The advantages, a nice comfortable pistol grip controller. Way more comfortable than a bit controller, but it is much bigger. The disadvantages? Where do I begin. Well they all seem to relate back to crappy clone quality, so we'll leave it at that. It is a car with alot of potential, marred by crappy clone quality.
So I'm sick of cars with potential, and I didn't play with these much. Until now. I was supposed to be trying to edit together my Iwaver vid, but some how I got sidetracked by this. Never know what I'll end up doing.
So the biggest issue to be dealt with were the wheels and crappy looking body, and mostly the wheels.
The hard ribbed tires are crap for traction, and standard tires don't work at all on the wheels with the odd off set. So a wheel mod is order, and I hate doing wheel mods. Nothing will mess with your handling like messing with your wheels. So I went with Zip zap wheels, to keep it simple, and that gives me options, like putting Import Racer wheel fronts on them later.
The body is the easy part. The tabs are configured just like a stretched clone car, so you have to shorted the front, and lengthen the back. Figure since I'm messing with tabs, might as well lower it. I went with the Skyline body, because like the Panther I've been meaning to mod it forever now, and I'm pretty sure that the ugly ass body that came on it was supposed to be a Skyline.
I wish I took a before pic, and I thought I had, but that was months ago, and I guess I didn't. So, oh well, here it is now.
I just extended the front end a little, and filled the rear deck before adding this wing. I did a torn paper graphic, which I love, because it's just so damn easy to rip up tape.
Here's the original body next to it for comparison
And the Chariot chassis, in case you were curious.