Restoring my SRB Rough Rider a bit

Well, the chassis of the Rough Rider was very good but the shell and the driver bugged me as they just weren't painted the way I would have liked. So I have decided to repaint them. Unfortunately I damaged the driver when extracting it off the shell but it should be relatively easily fixed. I will be trying to strip the shell paint using some Motsenbockers graffiti remover. For the driver it was just a case of covering with Tamiya primer and then digging out my Vallejo paints. Some pics of the driver to date...

BMT 95R Active Team Car

I have never been the hugest fan of BMT. Maybe it's the pukey green or the horrible grey plastic. Either way I never have rushed out to hunt down BMT cars. However, when this example popped up on eBay, I just couldn't resist.

The chassis is a 95R 4wd that has clearly been used. But what is interesting about it is the slew of custom made parts which include the carbon fibre radio plate and chassis, the thin aluminium sheet covering the chassis to the motor to (feebly) dissipate heat from the engine one would assume. Other custom parts include the rear radio tray mounts that appear to be machined items replacing the plastic molded components and other various bits.

The car also runs the non standard 3 speed gearbox. All very interesting stuff.

Am beginning to study this car more to understand some of the modifications on it including the strange linkages between the suspension front and rear. The car also appears to use the 2wd bulkhead of the 95R. Sadly this piece is damaged at the shock mount on the left so will need to source the replacement part in due course.

Delta P4

The P4 that I acquired below was another long drawn out affair (aren't they all when it comes to finding vintage Rc cars) as I reached out to various friends to see if there were any leads on good examples. Eventually most of these ended up as false leads and I was left waiting for something to pop up on eBay.

And pop up it did. Within a period of two weeks, two P4s appeared on eBay. One from the U.S. and another from Europe. After much frantic bidding I ended up with the more complete example from Europe. It was expensive but was another example of a car that I will never sell. Whilst not brand new, the condition was very very good and a full restoration job had obviously been done on the car as much as possible. These cars continue to fetch silly money today with no signs of slowing down.

Delta Super Eagle

Delta were the kings of 1/8 in the early days, and had an amazing habit of absolutely over engineering every component on their cars.

No doubt a result of their aircraft engineering background, the Campbell brothers brought a whole new level of machining to the hobby. This was perfect for a time when there was no such thing as permanent tracks and instead drivers were faced with wooden boards demarcating the track layout.

Taking a hit on the boards would become a very expensive exercise if not for the heavy engineering required in the early days of RC. Indeed, the arrival of the "tissue paper" designed Associated RC500 was the complete antithesis of the Delta ethos but was in line with the changing hobby.

Very rarely does a chassis look so good that you want to leave the body shell off the car, but to me the two wheel drive Eagle is clearly one that deserves this. The below example was acquired from a good friend in the U.S. and funny enough was prior to that held by a Singaporean collector, so this car basically did a full round when it found itself in my hands.

The chassis is a great restoration job with a chassis that shows the car was used but cleaned up very well. This is a work of art....