My Procat

[MattiasL]

Hello, I'm new here.

I just felt a bad urge to show off my Procat on a worldwide stage, so here goes:

I bought an old wreck unseen. It turned out to have some good stuff on it, and some not so good stuff.

[MattiasL]

I was a bit shocked at the state it was in, but spurred on by the fond memories of the cats of my youth I went on.

[MattiasL]

I tore it apart and thoroughly cleaned and inspected the parts. Luckily it wasn't all bad.

[MattiasL]

it came with some nice parts, such as this diff. Since it had two left feet, I had to get some new suspension arms for it. Being who I am (somewhat rushed) I bought a pair of Bosscat front arms. I put it all back together (with some sh*t parts) just to not lose interest.

[MattiasL]

The top shaft pulleys were badly worn, so on eBay I went. I found a nice top shaft and promptly bought it. I also made some parts for fitting lipos. With modern batteries being so light, I also made a couple of steel plates to add some weight and also to fill in the gaps left by the now removed NiCd trays. I fitted the electronics to see how it would look and feel. Felt quite good, actually.

[MattiasL]

By now it was time for some bodywork. I thought that getting a Parma Fat Cat body would be very difficult, but I got a tip from Lurking Cat (norwegian dude) that Penguin bodyshells on eBay made them, but couldn't advertise them for some reason. I sent him (Haskins2004 on eBay) a message and asked for the Fat Cat body, and he would make me one the following weekend. It turned up in Sweden a little more than a week later. I got my painting things out and got to work.

[MattiasL]

I decided to do the body the old school way with sticky tape. I remembered a car that was raced back in the end of the 80's, and desperately wanted to make a replica of it. Good thing for me is that a facebook friend of mine was given that very car by the original owner. I asked for some pics and did my very best to make it look the same.

[MattiasL]

And then it was time for the test. Everyone should have a car like this. Surprisingly fast (13.5 motor), very quiet, easy to drive. Of course I managed to crash it bad enough to rip the top off a rear shock, as the 25 yera old threads were a bit tired. I stole the shocks from my vintage Lazer to replace the one that broke, only to crash the car some more. At full speed on the straight. Did you know that the crashback system allows the front wheels to dent your body shell? And that when the crashback has crashed back as far as it'll go, all your ball studs get ripped out of the hub and your wheel axle breaks? And that bits of car kind of spray out all over the track?

Upon inspection the car was worse off than I first thought. The steering rack assembly got ripped out of the top deck among other things that happened to it. I had an old unused PK/Corally top deck so I put that on. I also bought some cheap 'n' nasty plastic small bore shocks meant to go on a ready set Lazer ZX-5. At least they're new and hasn't started leaking or break in any other way yet, so I'm pleased with them. I had to space the batteries further apart than I originally wanted, due to me only mocking the battery stays up with one make of lipos. The thinnest make I had. The other ones wouldn't fit under the top deck with the "bridge wire" attached.

[MattiasL]

So there it is. My Batcat. I'll keep you posted about the trials and tribulations of it. At the moment I'm about to put new rear arms on it. I found out that rear arms from the Schumacher Big6 fit, as long as you drill the suspension holders out to 1/8" and source hinge pins to suit. Some googleing showed that the universally ridiculed Traxxas Slash has the right size hinge pins. They should match the Slash drive shafts I use on the car very nicely. all you have to do to the drive shafts is cut 10 mm from each half. The metal joints from the Slash fit into the wheel axles and output shafts as if they were meant for them.

[Coelacanth]

Creative paint scheme! It's great to see something original and not the usual tribals, flames, checkered-flags, neon barf...

[CAT3K]

That's a cool CAT

I've never been a fan of the Parma Fatcat body, but that's the best paint job I've seen on one, it really suits it

[MattiasL]

Thanks! The credit for the paint design should go to Mr. Erhard "Dallas" Mathiesen, IFMAR president. I merely copied it. He suggested I should call my car Copycat instead of Batcat.