Born to be "Something" Falcon

[MrBeno]

Born to be "Something". Here is my old Falcon, I feel real bad I let her get like this and now left with a descision. I would love to rebuild her, she would need a new chassis since it has a cracked screwhole and possibly other stuff. Also missing all the yellow rear end parts. Missing screws, The shafts and and rims/tires and the rear right arm. I know they are around my storage area, but no luck finding them yet after searching a few months (I just can't access about 5 boxes because they are deep in the storage.) The gear box seems to be intact.

My dillema is that I have other ready to be runners or shelfers and don't want to pore the money in her because the others require less work. And at the same time don't want to let her go but to sell as a donar scrap or rebuild could help another vintage car run. This includes would be getting my Vintage Tamiya Porsche 956 and/or Fox running again.

Let me know what you all think.

[Coelacanth]

I'd say that Falcon is too far gone and would be a major money pit to get it back up to running condition. Brittle vintage plastic, broken chassis, beat-up body, missing bearings, no doubt some stripped-out screw holes...unless you have too much money lying around, I'd clean it up and sell it as a parts car so that someone else with a more complete build can get theirs finished. Just my 2 cents.

[Mr. ED]

The key to this hobby is patience. Just put it all back in storage (in a single box this time) till you got an idea or are lucky enough to stumble over a donor car.
You'll get those other cars built without having to sell this one off for cheap no prob if you gave them time too.

Or: if you're like me: try to build a nice double deck chassis with some GF10 and make the falcon fly again without loosing a leg on new-old stock

[Mad Racer]

Not up to speed on the Falcon. Not for me but hey that's just me.

I agree with Mr Ed. I have brought back a lot worse cars from the dead than that. If you get rid of it you will be sorry later.

A new shell can be sourced easy. The Chassis is the same as the Stadium Thunder/Blitzer. ( I'm pretty sure as my S/Tunder has Falcon on the chassis. Screws are easy. You can fit Top Force Uni Joints with differen't out drives in too i think. Do a little research .. You have most of it there.

Or find a Donor car as i feel this is too good to be a Donor

[DennisM]

I´d let the Falcon go and restore the Fox instead.
The Fox is a good looking race buggy and quite rare these days.
Be ware that parts for it is going to be hard to find and will leave Your wallet dry

[Coelacanth]

Of course, the car costs nothing to put back in a box...but you have to consider the cost to make that a working car again. A new shell, chassis, electronics...that's gonna be one expensive entry-level-grade Falcon.

[MrBeno]

Thanks for all your replies everyone, I will consider everyones advice. Also I thought it would be interesting to show my Fox here and what it needs.

As you can see the front chassis is cracked, it actuly happend recently when I picked it upby the front end The bottom of the bumper is also a little cracked but should not be an issue for a runner. I also did a stupid thing a long time ago and cut the top part of the chassis in half to gain easier access when sharing serfos and esc. I used to run a Futabba MC112B in it. But now it has the original inside of it and still works. Just missing the original motor, it could probably also need new resistors. But other then that and a good cleaning it should be good, plus get a new shell. The one there is called the sly one, I think it was a direct replacement for the Fox, I saw a fox with it in the original tamiya video. SO I guess if I were to part with the Falcon, I would hope to get a fox one, but I know they are hard to find. I can always epoxy the current chassis to let her run again while I look out for a new chassis.

But above all I first need to get a new battery and charger for a runner that is compatible with the tamiya plug and compaitble with a Novak T1-X vintage white plug any ideas? Thanks again everyone and here is my Fox. They were bought at the same time. The Falcon was my brothers but he lost his interest in cars and gave it to me back in the day.

[Coelacanth]

That's an unfortunate crack in your Fox chassis, and even more unfortunate, the rest of the plastic parts have probably been similarly affected by the aging process. That's kind of the problem with Tamiyas and their use of plastic. Nylon can also become brittle but can be restored by boiling the parts; the same cannot be done with plastic.

None of the above really matters for a shelfer, but will definitely be a problem for a car you intend to run.

[Mad Racer]

That crack in the chassis is very typical of the Fox.

I have over 10 chassis with that crack. I still ran mine with no problem till it broke off. ( Just bashing)

The front mounting points of the bumper is another. The biggest problem is the rear arms. I bought a set of Custom made rear arms made out of nylon . We had to put in order of 100 to get them done & weren't cheap. We don't buy Fox's just to get arms now.

The Fox still holds up well otherwise. I run mine at least once a month.