dragnse7en

I'm restoring two 25 year old Tamiya minis. I have two great working nicd packs, one for each, and even have the resource to make my own packs, identical in size to the original but with alot more juice. My cousin Ja-Rome and I went on a year long hunting spree for vintage Tamtech cars and their parts on ebay, and he was the only one of us two that purchased an original Lancia Delta GTP.

He now has about three or four and I've snatched up two and a fair amount of spare parts, considering the level of popularity and age of the cars. I just want to document this rebuild and share, in case the mini racer guys want to see old skool 1986 action! My GTP is almost as fast as a stock 1/12 scale pan car! I'll post the beggining pics this evening.

dragnse7en

Before restoration:

Notice that the front end of the car is too high in the air. I looked at it and it's an easy fix.

dragnse7en

I noticed while restoring the chassis that there were some small cracks along the screw holes. I glued them for now, and I will think about a stronger fix like epoxy if I run into any problems down the road. The chassis has a million scratches on the bottom and the bumper that came with the car was chipped up pretty bad and cracked.





Wherever it was possible, I switched out the original brass and brass alloy hardware with identical gun metal colored ones that I set aside as spares for my other R/Cs. The car was inexpensive but had a long list of problems, but yet it still worked. Around five months after I got the car, I was able to track down all the replacements I needed to restore it.





I found a spare set of wheel covers and bought them because my cousin Ja-Rome said that if they're not glued in they'll fly off and are pretty easy to loose. He had only one wheel cover left from the kit he bought back in the mid 1980s, but he also bought a spare set at the same time I got mine. I started restoring this car over a year ago, but it got sidelined for other projects at the time. Here are the old wheels made new with a polished silver color. The wheel covers are also painted pure white, and all these parts were sealed with two spray coats of clear gloss lacquer.





I bought a new in box Porsche 962C body kit for this car, especially since it came to me as a Frankenstein machine. It had the sport version's rear end system, which uses a different linkage setup than the GTP or longer wheelbase cars. The body I got was from a Ford Mustang Probe, but that too was beaten up badly thru the years. Since the only manual I could get in print was the Porsche, I decided to restore it as that car. The other cars are the Lancia Delta, the BMW, and the Ford Mustang Probe.





The controller is bigger than the car - it reminds me of the Walkera 4#3b! The CPR unit is a receiver and esc built into one, and has a single steering servo, hardwired in the chassis compartment with a smart length of wire attached. The on/off switch is located under the chassis, and is a clicking round dial. The instruction manual even called out to install all the switch parts - fancy, eh?





I know that next to the name of the transmitter says "digital proportional R/C system", but it's from 1986 and uses 75mHz AM. Maybe it is, perhaps the first basic form of digital tech in controllers. Who knows . . .









I added a leftover Tamiya sticker to the front of the chassis, and then hand-painted the raised surfaces of the top of the CPR unit. All six racing bearings were well cleaned and oiled, and reinstalled. I had to make two attempts to assemble the rear axle carriage and chassis; the splits along the screw holes got bigger, and I even broke off two standoffs for the carriage linkage. After fixing that for good (hopefully) I put them together again without a hitch.





The planetary gear and pinion were the dirtiest gears of the bunch, and I was really worried that a car this old was going to have bad problems with the tranny. After taking it apart, there wasn't anything to worry about at all. Ja-Rome said that the diff gears are really small (about the size of two 3mm diff balls) and he lost one for his diff and ended up making the rear end into posi/ direct drive. I used an old toothbrush and some soft scrub on all the plastic parts and they cleaned up fantastic, and there's no chips, cracks, or pits anywhere on any of them. The soft scrub also brought back the whiteness of all the gears and made them look brand new.







I had trouble installing the axle into the bearings and realized that my epoxy repairs made a mess where I couldn't see. I ended up able to drill thru a channel that runs along inside the carriage body and clear away all the gunk. I put a 3mm washer up behind the axle drive hub, to take up any slack from decades of wear and tear, test fitted it, and was pretty happy. The drive hub polished up nicely on the dremel tool, and the assembled diff works pretty well considering it's protected with a double layer coating of molybdenum grease.


I'm still working along, getting this project completed so I can shelf queen it for good and move on to the next project.

I will post more pics when the whole car is complete, which I hope will be late next week.

Stay posted

Haddi Taha

nice work so far, and nice find too 

dragnse7en

Well, I happened to finish this project earlier than I thought. About three days ago, I finished up the rest of the chassis and assembled the front axles, new custom front springs for the different tires, rear axle carriage, and steering linkage. After that was finished, I moved onto painting the body, or at least picking up where I left off around a year ago.








I assumed I would pick up where I left off painting the body, and when it was done and I pulled all the masking off, all the windows were frosted!!!!!! After a couple of hours and some 1000grit sandpaper, I polished the windows back to normal. I haven't pinstriped with a paintbrush much, but I was happy with what I was working with. There were some problems I ran into painting, but thanks to some tricks of the trade I did a few re-dos here and there. As far as 25 year old water slide decals go, there is no re-do. I highly doubt I would have been able to use the decals at all if I didn't have the same amount of experience in plastic modeling as I do in R/C cars. I used every decal tool and setting solution, conditioner, you name it, and I barely pulled it off. Some of the decals crumbled on their edges and others shattered like glass after they dried and cured, even though they appeared to look fine for 20 minutes. I salvaged as many decals as I could, and again considering the kit's age, I was very surprised with the end results. I didn't expect miracles with them, but with a ton of patience and a butt-load of TLC, everything worked out better than expected.






So, that's a wrap! I want to take it to the carpet track with me this summer when I race my touring cars - I'll rip it around during practice and wow all my new friends! Thanks for reading this thread - I appreciate sharing projects such as these with everyone.

Off to Shelf Queendom she goes! Oh, and it's not for sale if you want it

dragnse7en

Just in case you young kids think an R/C car the same scale as a common model (1/24th) can't go fast - BETTER BELEIVE IT

Zero tire traction compound added, so please don't mind the donuts

s298.photobucket.com/albums/mm280/dragnse7en/Radio%20Control/

dragnse7en

Here's a scale comparison, by hand: