Sixtysixdeuce
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- RC Driving Style
I'm sure a few here recall the Turbo Z, sold by Radio Shack in 1990. I got one for Christmas that year, just before my 8th birthday. Lot of fond memories with that thing, and I didn't experience hobby grade RC until I bought an RC10 CE kit at 12, so in the interim, it seemed pretty good, what with 4 wheel suspension and 2 speeds.
Of course there's really no semblance of performance when compared even to my smaller and cheaper hobby grade kits today, but that doesn't detract from the fond memories, and wanting to relive that on some level.
About 10 years ago, I had found a Turbo Z on ebay, and wanted to have my kids play with it. Which they did, briefly, until the cheap plastic gears stripped. It went in a box, and that's where it lived until a couple weeks ago.
I pulled it back out, considered just rebuilding the gearbox with metal gears, but then there's still a craptastic chassis that is made of now-33 year old plastics, unlikely to survive my youngest (almost 5) learning how to drive them. So I felt grafting it onto a 1/16 4WD brushed buggy chassis made the most sense. But I still wanted it to look right, so a little more complicated than drilling holes and installing tall body posts.
The wheels were another component I wanted to preserve, which meat fitting the hub from the new kit. That was easy enough, just bored the wheels out and turned down the hex adapters on my Hardinge HLV, pressed them into the webbing and epoxied them.
I also had to shorten the wheelbase slightly, which for now was done by just modifying the rear hub carriers to straddle the front of the arm, though I'll probably make offset aluminum carriers later.
Mounting the bumper to the 1/16 buggy chassis required a custom aluminum bracket:
But the body mounting was the most involved part, using existing features of both body and chassis. Decided to still use the posts on the buggy, just install pins with needle nose pliers through the fenders. That meant more custom brackets. I know 3D printing is all the rage for such things these days, but I'm a machinist, so they're billet aluminum. Not worth modeling and post processing in Fusion 360 to CNC one-off simple parts, I just whipped them up on the manual mill with hand finishing of outside radiused corners.
Worked out pretty well in the end! I don't know if I'll put brushless power in this, it's decently fast with the 380 brushed motor on the cheap buggy chassis, and I'm not looking to destroy the vintage wheels and body. As-is, much, much quicker, better handling and more capable than the original product!
Of course there's really no semblance of performance when compared even to my smaller and cheaper hobby grade kits today, but that doesn't detract from the fond memories, and wanting to relive that on some level.
About 10 years ago, I had found a Turbo Z on ebay, and wanted to have my kids play with it. Which they did, briefly, until the cheap plastic gears stripped. It went in a box, and that's where it lived until a couple weeks ago.
I pulled it back out, considered just rebuilding the gearbox with metal gears, but then there's still a craptastic chassis that is made of now-33 year old plastics, unlikely to survive my youngest (almost 5) learning how to drive them. So I felt grafting it onto a 1/16 4WD brushed buggy chassis made the most sense. But I still wanted it to look right, so a little more complicated than drilling holes and installing tall body posts.
The wheels were another component I wanted to preserve, which meat fitting the hub from the new kit. That was easy enough, just bored the wheels out and turned down the hex adapters on my Hardinge HLV, pressed them into the webbing and epoxied them.
I also had to shorten the wheelbase slightly, which for now was done by just modifying the rear hub carriers to straddle the front of the arm, though I'll probably make offset aluminum carriers later.
Mounting the bumper to the 1/16 buggy chassis required a custom aluminum bracket:
But the body mounting was the most involved part, using existing features of both body and chassis. Decided to still use the posts on the buggy, just install pins with needle nose pliers through the fenders. That meant more custom brackets. I know 3D printing is all the rage for such things these days, but I'm a machinist, so they're billet aluminum. Not worth modeling and post processing in Fusion 360 to CNC one-off simple parts, I just whipped them up on the manual mill with hand finishing of outside radiused corners.
Worked out pretty well in the end! I don't know if I'll put brushless power in this, it's decently fast with the 380 brushed motor on the cheap buggy chassis, and I'm not looking to destroy the vintage wheels and body. As-is, much, much quicker, better handling and more capable than the original product!
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