Project: Cool Cat

Repairs & Modifications continued...

9/28/06

Fifth time's a charm! Bending a piece of Lexan into the battery hump that I cut open earlier turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected. I tried a hair dryer to soften the Lexan sheet, but it wasn't hot enough, so I had to use fire. The stovetop was too inaccurate and too easy to bubble or burn the material. I ended up going all out and creating a form to use in the oven. First I made an impression of a short section of a shotgun pack with some modelling clay, then baked that down. The form itself would be carved & sanded out of balsa, using the clay piece as a reference template to get the curve even from end to end. I then wrapped the Lexan piece in aluminum foil and clamped it all together into a peculiar mass that looked like this:

There you see the little clay bit on the right. That photo was taken is after about 40 minutes of cooking at a little over 300 degrees F, once all was said & done. Peeling everything off revealed the finished product underneath, gracefully draped over its toasted Balsa form:

I've since trimmed & painted the piece and have it in the car, waiting for glue to dry.

The next update will be bigger, I promise.

9/30/06

First off, Lexan battery tub insert thingy, in place. The one thing I'm not quite satisfied with is the joint around the edge. I may seal it up with some carefully-applied black silicone compound. The overall fit is just right, though, so that's one major hurdle cleared (and probably the biggest I'll encounter in this project).

Now for the good stuff. Tires! We have tires! I decided to "keep it real" with the Traxxas rears, stock Bandit fare with their silly retro knobs. Up front I had to go with ribs for authenticity, so I went with Pro-Line's proven 4-Ribs.

Alright enough of the excitement, back to the nitty-gritty. The bumper has been completely refurbished -- over 2 hours of scraping with an X-Acto knife, sanding, sanding, and sanding some more. After the sanding came a whole lot of burnishing (rubbing with hard objects like tweezer & X-acto knife handles). After the burnishing, I realized I had exposed some undyed white plastic underneath, so a RIT dye bath was in order. It still doesn't look new (some of the scratches were just too deep), but at least it looks "lightly used" now rather than bashed for years.

Finally, some anodized aluminum hardware bits have started to creep in for good measure, I dyed the front lower shock ends black, and swapped out the front upper spring preload clamps for some Associated clips to remove just a bit more preload, further softening the ride.

I'm sure I can find some more little stuff to do, but the motor & electronics installation isn't far away.

10/10/06

'Tis a good day for el Gato Fresco, a very good day indeed. Today she ran under her own power for the first time in who-knows-how-long. Though the most appropriate modern-day replacement for the stock Johnson motor (or was it a Mabuchi?) would be a Stinger like the one that comes in the Spirit, I had to go with something that has a bit more "oomph." Remember the Kyosho Endoplasma 16x2 with its extra-wide 5mm dual-shunt brushes for improved torque? Here's one now:

The brushes only have a few runs, and I just installed brand new springs from one of my dusty "I know I'll have a use for this some day" parts piles. In the chassis tub, I installed a nice old Duratrax Streak ESC. For a radio system, I wouldn't feel right throwing in something entirely modern and off-color, so I went with a trusty Traxxas TQ. Yes, the receiver is a 3-channel from an E-Maxx; I didn't have any non-BEC 2ch receivers.

And there's the whole car in all of its glory. I only had to modify the chassis slightly to open up the hole on the side for the battery & motor wires to go through -- the original wiring was of a much smaller gauge. The Streak's on/off switch even mounted just fine in the stock location, though the switch itself is much smaller than the original.

I need to beef up a couple of slightly worn areas on the rear of the chassis tub to take some excess side-to-side play out of the suspension, but after that, I'll be sealing the whole thing back up with the original cover. Once the cover is on, I'll need to attack the final main challenge of the project -- finding a body!

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