Mardave Meteor

[highwayracer]

I picked up this Mardave Meteor recently in order to complete my 2wd collection. I knew about Mardave from a UK RC mag that I picked up in 88, but I really didn’t know too much about them. I recently did some research and I think the car that fits in to the RC10/Jrx2/Ultima era was the Meteor. If anyone has more info on the company or car, I’d greatly appreciate if you can bless me with your wisdom.

I began looking and found this one a few weeks ago. I’m happy with the overall condition of the car…but what sold me was that it came with a new body, wing and driver.

I know I’ll need the following items...and hopefully they won't be to hard to find.
Red rod ends (6)
Red front body post
Rear antenna mount
Battery cup (I may try to fix the holes)
Mechanical speed controller (red version…there’s also a black one)

Here are some pictures of the car:

Regards,
Roger

[CAT3K]

I've had a few Meteors over the years. They were the cheap way into racing in the UK, the shocks are pretty poor but they whole car is pretty robust and they were hard to break.

Yours has an upgrade gold annodised long wheel base chassis. Just check that the bodyshell actually fits the length, as the true LWB bodys are hard to find. I think Mardave probably still sell some parts that you need.

Like these ball cups: http://www.mardave.co.uk/example-product-14913.html They might be the same size as the Meteor versions, and they're red You can still get Cobra battery holders too, they might be slightly different from the Meteor versions though.

Paul.

[peetbee]

Sadly Mardave only have parts for the Meteor that the later Cobra also uses, Meteor parts in general seem to be hard to come by.

Nice looking car you have there, I picked one up a few months back ago on a complete whim and think they're undervalued at the moment.

[highwayracer]

Thanks guys...that's great information. I checked put Mardave's site and I see they still sell 2 of the parts that I thought would be the hardest to find (antenna mount and speed controller).

The car is definitely under priced...like the jrx2. B I'm not complaining

If this was the cheap way to get into racing in the UK, what were some of the other options for 2wd off road? So far, I'm trying to represent each manufacturer that had this type of car. So far, I have:

Assoicated - RC10
Losi - Jrx2
Kyosho - Ultima (aluminum ladder chassis)
Tamiya - Astute
Schumacher - Top Cat
Traxxas - Bullet
Mardave - Meteor

Regards,
Roger

[peetbee]

I can't think of anything else to add to that list tbh, that would make a nice grid line up photo!

[naushad]

Strip down that mg motor...they are nice motors from the UK !

[terry.sc]

I picked up this Mardave Meteor recently in order to complete my 2wd collection. I knew about Mardave from a UK RC mag that I picked up in 88, but I really didn’t know too much about them. I recently did some research and I think the car that fits in to the RC10/Jrx2/Ultima era was the Meteor. If anyone has more info on the company or car, I’d greatly appreciate if you can bless me with your wisdom.

The Meteor came out around 85/86, when it's competition was the RC10, Tamiya Frog and Fox and the Kyosho Scorpion. It was still around into the 90s though, with a few changes such as the long wheelbase chassis, long front wishbones and 2.2" one piece wheels.

If you look closely at the design you should notice it looks like an RC10 with a Scorpion gearbox, and this isn't a coincidence. When Wes Raynor was designing a replacement for the Apache the Scorpion was the best buggy on the market and Wes was designing a cheap copy of that with trailing arm suspension, but he took so long to get it to developed that the RC10 came out before it went into production. Seeing how much better the RC10 was the original design was dropped and the RC10 suspension was copied instead, keeping the original Scorpion style gearbox.

My own Meteor was one of the first batch of kits, so all the ball joints and front body post were black, and the servo saver assembly was natural white nylon.

Yours has also got a common modification racers did, the metal plate between the motor and gearbox. The Meteor bolted the motor to the plastic gearbox and the kit spur gear had no bearings, so when racing the motor heat would soften the gear case and contributed to destroying the spur gear. A ballraced spur gear and a metal plate bolted to the chassis acts as a heatsink to make the gearbox pretty reliable.

[DerbyDan]

Nice to see some overseas love for the old Meteor

I started racing at my local club with my Tamiya Hornet & quickly replaced it with a Mardave Meteor which was a much better handling car, it gave me a couple of years of cheap racing (spares were literally 'pence') & allowed me to improve as a driver & learn about the mechanics of R/C cars. Various concoctions of oil were used in the shocks - from cooking oil, to washing up liquid, I ended up with a mix of Duckhams engine oil & WD40!! ... but they always leaked depsite lashings of the recomended PTFE plumbers tape!

Your car looks to be in good condition & appears to be an earlier car with the 6 hole design wheels & chunky tyres - the very last Meteors came with the 2" one-peice dished wheels (Cobra Wheels were 2.2" but came with the same ISF/ISR tyres), fixed moulded linkages, Mardave also did away with the brass bushed rear hubs (the bushes could be replaced with ball races) so the axles span directly onto the plastic moulding!!

I now have a box-art - new built Meteor which looks great, but I intend to turn in into a 'Full Option' car with ball raced wheels/axles & spur, narrow front LWB chassis with wider arms... I just need to find the my holy grail - a new Lexan LWB shell!