Share your embarrassing builds

[Coelacanth]

That's right, let's see examples of your craptacular car builds, horrible hodge-podges, fubar fabrications, Mickey-Mouse machines and inept engineering. Swallow your pride and show us your ghetto jobs. I'll start things off with how my original Optima looked after trying to make it into an onroad car, over 20 years ago, before it got a proper resto.




Dig the tape-job on that Novak; yes, that's hockey stick tape on there!

[kaiser]

I wish I had pics of the abomination's I created when I was a kid.

My favorite, or funniest was a rocket powered grasshopper with skis on the front and dualies on the back.

[Orange]

If I had it, it would be a Blackfoot I had that I made custom front shock tower for... Even had Kyosho Golds on that bad boy! ... They cost almost as much as the truck. Raced it in the original Heavy Metal class till everyone started converting RC10's and Jrx2's.... One guy I raced with even converted a Cat to a truck. That thing was cheating with the rubber band front arms. (Before rules were introduced for the class)

[RC10th]

No pictures but I took a Kyosho front wheel drive buggy, turned it around and made it go the right way. It had a volvo rally body and looked cool. It worked ok but it was a pile.

[Groomi]

No pics unfortunately, but I had a Bosscat with an 11T motor run through a mechanical speed control. Didn't rant to drill the carbon chassis so taped it onto the belt cover. Worked ok for a few mins until it got stuck and plowed into a kerb, breaking a one way driveshaft.

More successful was the Hornet carpet racer with sponge tyres, no shocks and a 14quad motor - oh yeah, and a wheelie bar!

[Coelacanth]

C'mon guys, this topic is worthless without pics! Share the nasty!

[kaiser]

sorry man, i didn't have a camera back in 86. lol

[losiXXXman]

Before the re-re FAV and then wild one came out, I decided I had to have something that at least had that "look." So picked up a set of wild one suspension arms and mounts, a FAV cage, and a hornet to donate a chassis...



Once I realized that the hornet tub could not be made to work the way I wanted, i took a LOT of measurements, and drew up a chassis design to possibly fold out of some aluminum. I even partially mocked it in cardstock.



I got impatient and bored one day, so then took my measurements, and applied them to some 1/4" ply and built this:





Unfortunately, when I started screwing components to the chassis, the screw heads wanted to imprint and dig into the wood, so that was out too... Long story short, the re-re FAV was announced and all this work went into the trash. Would you believe that after all that, I never did buy a FAV or Wild One? At least they will probably be available in one form another for a while now.

[markbt73]

I did something similar, except that I just made a cage and a hood out of styrene and grafted them onto a Grasshopper.



It looked all right, until it rolled over the first time, and I found out exactly how much structural integrity it didn't have.

Years ago, I converted a Bolink Eliminator 10 to nitro using an OS .10 engine and some Kyosho Sandmaster parts. It hit highway speeds, but had barely any brakes... I iknow I have photos somewhere, but I can't find them now. I'll keep looking.

[Coelacanth]

That's some good stuff, guys. Keep 'em coming!

[highwayracer]

I wish I had pictures of one of my old hornet modifications. I really liked the look of the vanning and the shape of the Lamborghini countach. I created a wire frame countach body using coat hangers To keep it looking neat, I wrapped the antenna around one of the wires (coat hanger...part of the body). I stopped using the body because my range wasn't very good

[Groomi]

I've just remembered another embarrassment (sadly again without pics)...

Aged around 12/13 and eager to join the fledgling local RC club, I set about making a car suitable to race in a school playground where they were racing at that time. I only had a Hornet as a base to work from, but I liked the design of the old Tamiya F1 cars of the era, so set about making a 'GT' equivalent.

Using aluminium sheet that was far too thick (Probably about 3-4mm), I made a delta shaped chassis with various acrylic blocks to hold the axles etc. The Hornet axles were used and the motor was mounted to run directly onto the diff without a middle gear and the wheels were from the Hornet with foam tyres mounted. I then painted (badly) an Opel Calibra DTM shell and mounted that and it actually looked reasonably good for a 12/13 year old.

A road opposite me was closed for repair works to a railway bridge, so I took the car down there and conducted some straightline (this bit is crucial) tests and it was impressively quick. So the next week I took it along to the club to give it a run in the playground.

Well a couple of tentative exploratory laps suggested it had some straightline speed but even taking it very slow in the corners there was chronic understeer. Being young, naive and lacking virtually all knowledge of vehicle dynamics, I decided to try going faster. Well it rocketed down the straight and barely turned as it ploughed into the kerb at the end, flipping end over end for about fifteen meters into the playing field. Bent and battered it still ran, but it was as I was straightening it out that somebody pointed out to me that I had fitted the steering servo infront of the front axle, with the uprights pointing the wrong way - so the Ackerman was actually running backwards and steering was all but pointless.

I did fix it eventually, but by then the club had moved to an indoor track where it wasn't nimble enough.

Good times though.

[Bormac]

Here's mine from back in the day.

What can I say, I was young, had little money and a plastic bottle would have to make do as a replacement bodyshell for a little while. But hey, check out the aerodynamics on this baby-

[Groomi]

Nothing wrong with plastic bottle bodyshells. Only recently I made one for my little boys Hornet basher.

[slapshot1979]

Started this one and never finished as a friend slapped me around alittle.