Project: Cool Cat

Repairs & Modifications

9/13/06

Right, so about that wavy shape in the plastic that goes over the battery...

Well, HEllo massive heat-induced blister, bye-bye battery pack! That's some pretty ugly damage right there. Though I could probably build some forms and do a lot of meticulous heating, setting, smoothing, & sanding and restore this tray to its original glory, I don't want this to turn into another 3-year lingering project. So, I did just a slight bit of work with heat, followed by some clean slices with a Dremel, followed by a sandpaper regimen that went down to 600 grit wet, to do this:

What remains is very smooth and I hope the gaping hole in the chassis looks like it was designed that way. I still want to keep dirt out of the inner tub, though, so I will try to cover the hole from the outside with a piece of Lexan. I tried heat-molding a piece and failed miserably, but my buddy Rimmy insists that it can be done. I will likely end up making a form to accomplish the task.

Extricating the damaged ABS and cleaning up the wounds was decidedly unglamorous work, so for the next update, I think I'll reward myself with a little bit of bling.

The car has normal marks of wear, but nothing too serious on the surface. The biggest problem is the wing, which has been re-mounted to the roof after the back of the body (where it belongs) tore off from roll-overs. No biggie, I'm going to give it a different body eventually anyhow.

9/16/06

I'll spare you my normal opening chatter for once and get right to the pictures:

These beautiful, like-new (though old & discontinued) shocks are brought to you by Duratrax. The upper mounts will be secured by Traxxas Rustler/Stampede/T-Maxx shoulder bolts, as soon as I get some extras in from Tower Hobbies. At the rear, I'm going to be able to use the stock lower eyelets with 3mm screws (the ones shown are temporary). Up front, I actually had to do a bit of work to adapt the lower mounts. The clip-on lower half-eyelets from the stock shocks were first drilled & re-tapped to accept the larger Duratrax shafts. Unfortunately, these held the lower spring clips up way too high, limiting how far the shocks could compress. Fortunately, the Dremel saved the day again -- I just shaved down the eyelet from the top and then extended the narrower diameter portion downward to allow the spring clip to go almost all the way down to the mounting point.

Now I have suspension travel that's very close to original specs, but with much smoother shocks that don't leak everywhere. I think these look better than the yellow plastic ones, too, but that's just my opinion. Most importantly, the new springs are significantly softer, so the suspension should actually be able to do its job now (what a concept!).

I also quickly hooked up the steering:

Here, I went the easy route, dropping in the full assembly straight out of the Spirit. Everything fits well and the new parts look good, plus the new servo saver feels better than the old.

Next up: Wheels!

9/21/2006

Time to get this Cat off of blocks and onto some wheels of its own. At the rear it uses a single, normal axle pin on each side, so I could slip any 12mm hex adapter right over it. The problem is, the axles extend a long distance out to the sides. The Cat itself makes up for this with thick wheel hubs, and the Spirit does it with extra-thick hub adapters (that mate to odd x-pattern wheel hubs). Lucky for me, Tamiya has exactly what I need:

Talk about a perfect fit, and I mean perfect. For wheels, I fitted another Tamiya set, these unused Dyna Storm rims from 1991:

I couldn't help but do a little color matching with the wheel hubs & shocks. Up front, I went with matching Dyna Storm wheels again, using a Rustler 5x8 steering bellcrank bushing as a spacer on the inside, a thin fiber washer outside, and Bandit/TCP nylon nuts (the thread is a very odd size, larger than the usual 4mm). I will swap in some good bearings soon.

So, there's how she sits now. With no motor hooked up, it rolls around with almost no resistance -- smooth! I think I'm gonna like this car.

Next I'll get caught up with some hardware do-dads like the shock mounts and transmission screws, then clean up & reinstall some more of the original plastic parts.

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