I've just been overhauled
Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 6:14 pm
What you're about to see might look like a subtle make over, but this car had issues, and it needed work from the ground up. This is the subject:
Can you believe this car is just about 2 years old already? I can't. (That's like 128 bit years.
) This car was a couple first for me, my first FET mod, my first Tomy pullback conversion. I thought it was perfect at the time, little did I know it was to become what I considered a failed experiment.
What issues did it have? Where do I start? Just sit back and I'll try not to be too long winded.
First off the major problem was that the FETs, combined with a Perfection 4.2 Pro, and the stock 9.86:1 gears is way too torquey for driving on a track. With the traction from the pullback tires, this car doen't steer very well for the first foot or two, until the front tires start to make contact with the ground again. Then when the front wheels were on the ground they had trouble centering from too much traction. So the pullback wheels were not the set up for me. I do have plans for them though. I just couldn't part them from this body, because I loved the way they looked together. Now I got some new 5-spoke wheels (Thanks Finks
), that were the inspiration of this make over.
Now after 2 years of shoving clone and Zip Zap motors in the car, at some time or another, recently, the whole back half of the chassis split. This is a picture of it glued. I should have took a picture of the split before I glued it, to show how dramatic it really was.
Here's the part I'm embarrassed to show you. See at the time I hadn't figured out to tab lower the rear of a bit, and I wasn't very good at slot lowering. I thought it was pretty neato how the stock tabs would fit in up above the slots on this body. I thought it just needed a little shimming. Then over the months, the body would settle, and I'd shim some more. Everytime I picked it up to play with it, I'd end up having to shim it more to keep the tires from rubbing. It got to the point where I'd crack the front wheel wells everytime I took the body off. So here it is, a serious case of overshimming.
Everytime I cracked the wheel wells, I'd sand off the excess glue, and rub it out with rubbing compound. I eventually went through the paint, so the body needed to be repainted too.
That's why I'm saying this car was completely overhauled.
So first thing to do was get the chassis back in order. Here we see a nice proper tab lowering. You also get a glimpse of the new shoes wrapped in Thunder Charger rubbers.
I set the new wheels up with a teal MS gear, and its just running a Tomy 2.6 for now. My preferred short track set up for FET modded cars. I can always throw the 4.2 back in if I want to get nutty.
The rear end got braced with a piece of plastic, to make sure it don't crack again.
Since I was having to repaint it anyways, I thought I might remove the wing. Then I thought everyone else has done that, do I really wanna copy cat, but after seeing it off then on, there was no question. It had to go. It hinders the classic 911 lines.
While a single color paint job is usually short work for me, it didn't get any easier. Monday morning this car was light gray metallic, but there was surface imperfections. I tried sanding them down, but they weren't really surface imperfections, they went all the way through. Had no more of that paint, so I dug around, and found some aqua. So by Monday night, this car had been three different colors.
Ok, finally, here we are all done.
Can you believe this car is just about 2 years old already? I can't. (That's like 128 bit years.
) This car was a couple first for me, my first FET mod, my first Tomy pullback conversion. I thought it was perfect at the time, little did I know it was to become what I considered a failed experiment.What issues did it have? Where do I start? Just sit back and I'll try not to be too long winded.
First off the major problem was that the FETs, combined with a Perfection 4.2 Pro, and the stock 9.86:1 gears is way too torquey for driving on a track. With the traction from the pullback tires, this car doen't steer very well for the first foot or two, until the front tires start to make contact with the ground again. Then when the front wheels were on the ground they had trouble centering from too much traction. So the pullback wheels were not the set up for me. I do have plans for them though. I just couldn't part them from this body, because I loved the way they looked together. Now I got some new 5-spoke wheels (Thanks Finks
), that were the inspiration of this make over.Now after 2 years of shoving clone and Zip Zap motors in the car, at some time or another, recently, the whole back half of the chassis split. This is a picture of it glued. I should have took a picture of the split before I glued it, to show how dramatic it really was.
Here's the part I'm embarrassed to show you. See at the time I hadn't figured out to tab lower the rear of a bit, and I wasn't very good at slot lowering. I thought it was pretty neato how the stock tabs would fit in up above the slots on this body. I thought it just needed a little shimming. Then over the months, the body would settle, and I'd shim some more. Everytime I picked it up to play with it, I'd end up having to shim it more to keep the tires from rubbing. It got to the point where I'd crack the front wheel wells everytime I took the body off. So here it is, a serious case of overshimming.
Everytime I cracked the wheel wells, I'd sand off the excess glue, and rub it out with rubbing compound. I eventually went through the paint, so the body needed to be repainted too.
That's why I'm saying this car was completely overhauled.
So first thing to do was get the chassis back in order. Here we see a nice proper tab lowering. You also get a glimpse of the new shoes wrapped in Thunder Charger rubbers.
I set the new wheels up with a teal MS gear, and its just running a Tomy 2.6 for now. My preferred short track set up for FET modded cars. I can always throw the 4.2 back in if I want to get nutty.
The rear end got braced with a piece of plastic, to make sure it don't crack again.
Since I was having to repaint it anyways, I thought I might remove the wing. Then I thought everyone else has done that, do I really wanna copy cat, but after seeing it off then on, there was no question. It had to go. It hinders the classic 911 lines.
While a single color paint job is usually short work for me, it didn't get any easier. Monday morning this car was light gray metallic, but there was surface imperfections. I tried sanding them down, but they weren't really surface imperfections, they went all the way through. Had no more of that paint, so I dug around, and found some aqua. So by Monday night, this car had been three different colors.
Ok, finally, here we are all done.
looks good without wing. but i like the other rims more.
