Please Recycle: Scrapyard Score

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:46 am

My buddy works in a scrapyard, and on Saturday he found this in a pile of scrap.

At five cents a pound for scrap, he paid 10 cents for it, and gave it to me. When he told me he had it for me, I thought I might be able to identify it right away, but when I got it, I had no idea what it was. Decent race quality design, pillow ball suspension, lots of adjustments, with a bunch of sport level composite pieces. The only markings are on the motor, which has a "SMT" on one side, and "15" on the other, and the radio gear is labeled "Smartech".

I did a search, found this, and said, "Yep that's what I got."
http://www.hobby-estore.com/smartech.html

So it's apparently a decent quality clone. It's missing the front dogbones, a rear stub axle, a wheel, and the Tx, and I already have some CEN parts that will work in their place. It's also missing a pair of 5x10 bushings. Which frustrated me, because I have a bunch of extra 5x11 bearings, but since it is a bushing equipped car, I dremeled down a couple 5x11 bushings to fit. So right now I have four wheels on it, but I need to go back and put the CEN stub axles in all four corners so it matches, and I still need to get the dog bones in the front end. I should have it all ready by this afternoon. Then I just need to hope the engine fires, and the radio gear is good. I have backups of all that, so I'll get it going one way or the other, but the motor is tight, seems to have plenty of compression, and seems to have been stored properly (It was full of after run oil), so I'm really hoping I can get it to fire.

The CEN wheels narrowed it to 190mm, which kinda sucks. I want to try to put as little money into it as possible, so I'm looking at 190mm bodies, and considering a Porsche 911, or a Lotus Elise. I'm broke so that's going to be at least 2 weeks, but I will keep you guys updated, and hopefully soon we'll be seeing this car running.

BilboBaggins · Post by **BilboBaggins** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 11:39 am

You have cool friends.

So is this a Phoenix project, raising a car from the ashes of the scrap heap?

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 5:09 pm

BilboBaggins wrote:You have cool friends.

So is this a Phoenix project, raising a car from the ashes of the scrap heap?

I don't have many, but the friends I have are the coolest.

Say, that's pretty good, I should call it "The Phoenix Project". You know I live in Phoenix, right?

sidewinder · Post by **sidewinder** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 7:32 pm

Damn, I would have paid 5-10 times as much for that

Great friend, I have a feeling if any of my friend found something like that they would have told me the ebay listing number and wished me good luck.

Great score, sould be a great project. As for the body...

How's about:

BilboBaggins · Post by **BilboBaggins** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 8:19 pm

BilboBaggins wrote:You have cool friends.

So is this a Phoenix project, raising a car from the ashes of the scrap heap?

crazydave wrote:I don't have many, but the friends I have are the coolest.

Say, that's pretty good, I should call it "The Phoenix Project". You know I live in Phoenix, right?

I knew you lived in AZ wasn't sure how close to Phoenix.

I need a better class of friends.

45tr0 · Post by **45tr0** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:36 pm

you lucky son-a-bitch...
you gots good friends.

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:53 am

sidewinder wrote:
How's about:

I'll refer you to my original comment on the new Chargers
http://bitpimps.lixlink.com/pages/phpFo ... php?t=6011

I said it then, and I stand by it.

Alrighty, I believe I have a working chassis. Got four wheels, and an equal number of dogbones, and everything is spinning freely, well, as much as bushing equipped car can. Looking down in the radio box, everything looked good, but pull it all out and you can see there was a puddle of water in there for a while. I had to clean the rust off the battery terminals with a wire brush, and I didn't even bother with the Rx. I just stuck a CEN one in there to match the Tx I'll be using with it. Radio gear is confirmed working, I have steering and throttle. Now it's all up to the motor firing.

Hopefully I'll try it tonight. We'll see how I feel after I get off work.

BilboBaggins · Post by **BilboBaggins** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 11:24 am

Personally I would go with one of these bodies. Taken from HPI website (all 190mm bodies)

The Viper. Something about snakes and racing.

A little Honda NSX

A Lotus Sport Elise

An Italian Super car, the Lamborghini Gallardo

And of course a German Super Car, Porsche 911 Turbo

Saleen S7R

Now if you aren't looking Super Car but say Sport Sedan or Touring Coupe then these might be your cup of tea.

BMW M3 GT

Saleen Mustang

Vauxhall Astra BTCC

or the Lexus IS 200

Just say no to this car. No sense of style.

Dodge Stratus

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:42 pm

Ya know, I try to be open minded, and I try to consider other options, but I usually have tunnel vision when it comes to what I want. I was looking at the Elise 2000, I like that better than the sport Elise. I would love a BMW M3. A Galardo, or Diablo would be great, but I always come back to the 911. They just have sexy curves. I've loved them since I was a kid, and they still have that same feel. I also found this Yokomo one for $17 at Stormer, which is a pretty good deal for a 1/10th scale body.

So I guess that's settled... now where is my paycheck, I need it! I just blew all my money on a Lipo charger. I had no idea I was going to get sidetracked on this project.

payaso · Post by **payaso** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:03 pm

Great score man. Can't beat FREEBIES....

Damn straight you need a 911 on top of it. Doesn't get any sexier than that, unless you want to throw a 67' Camaro on it.

Can't remember, but aren't the RS4 lids 190mm? They have some nice ones.

EDIT.... Just find you some offset wheels and paint you one like this.
http://zielkeracing.com/items/car-bodie ... detail.htm

silla

sidewinder · Post by **sidewinder** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:19 pm

That is sweet...I don't know if its $109 sweet, but sweet.

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 12:38 am

payaso wrote:Great score man. Can't beat FREEBIES....

Damn straight you need a 911 on top of it. Doesn't get any sexier than that, unless you want to throw a 67' Camaro on it.

Can't remember, but aren't the RS4 lids 190mm? They have some nice ones.

EDIT.... Just find you some offset wheels and paint you one like this.
http://zielkeracing.com/items/car-bodie ... detail.htm

silla

Actually, if I didn't have to buy wheels for it, the Camaro would be my #1 choice, but you need to run HPI's vintage series wheels, it's 200mm in the front and 210mm in the rear. You need the rear wheels with the 6mm offset for it to look right. I've got this stuff all memorized. I have a HPI catalog I've been studying on the john.

I'm just looking at the Yokomo one because it $5 cheaper. I'm trying not to put any money into this, because of that charger, and really that should have been my spending for the month, but I'll get a body when I get paid next week. Then that's it, no more RC stuff! My kid's birthday is coming up in 2 weeks.

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:08 am

It fired right up! At first I gave it couple tugs, and it didn't quite feel right. I already started to think it wasn't going to start, but I pressed the fuel priming button one more time, and it fired right up on the next tug. Kinda startled me, because I wasn't actually expecting it to fire up so easily.

I just ran a tank through it, and it ran great, it was faster than expected, but I need to replace the bushings with bearings ASAP, because the whine the driveline was making was a little annoying. The CEN tires are rock hard, so basically it drives like a drift car. I want to replace those right away too, but I don't have money for all that, so I guess I'm just going to go ahead and buy a body for now, until I can afford the other stuff.

45tr0 · Post by **45tr0** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:38 pm

thats awesome! considering the way that nitro motors get treated, they are amazingly resilient.

When i first read "bushings" in this thread, i thought - yup, those'll be gone soon enough.

So what wheels are you considering?

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:37 am

45tr0 wrote: So what wheels are you considering?

I've grown kind of fond of the style of these wheels. Something in silver, maybe black out the centers, unless I end up getting that Camaro body. I don't know, I'm just daydreaming at this point.