My Optima Mid(s) ID issue

[Coelacanth]

You planning to make more? I dig your design, simple but pretty.

[dinglem]

I doubt it. My father was probably dreading finding the jig for that very reason - HA!

I was really banking on these four rims showing up.... we would have only really made some rears if they hadn't.

They are lovely when fitted.... found another pic from bitd of this very car too.

[Coelacanth]

How did they mount on the inside? Were they machined to fit tapered axles and the weird hexes with tapered holes, or did they use straight axles with crosspins?

[dinglem]

How did they mount on the inside? Were they machined to fit tapered axles and the weird hexes with tapered holes, or did they use straight axles with crosspins?

Now that I can answer.

I am very VERY chuffed to have also found the original drawings my father made before starting these very wheels. What he actually discovered were very very slight differences on each corner of the car so he actually fitted each rim to a specific corner of the car believe it or not. Once loosely made he added very slight alterations to each rim to make it a perfect fit and to eliminate any play whatsoever. They were just tightened down hard onto the taper and we never had any drive issues whatsoever.

[Coelacanth]

Wow, now that's thorough! Thanks for sharing the design drawing...you gotta love that hand-drawn pre-AutoCAD stuff!

[dinglem]

My father is very much like that with everything he does. Old school engineering and tool-making.

I am very proud to still have all of this stuff he did for me in the late 80's, although saying that my recently turned Meteor wheels also have the same style of design drawings accompanying them!

The slotmags he made for my 870c were also done this way.

I was very fortunate to have such a capable pit man, and he always re-engineered everything in the hope of gaining a slight advantage. He literally hated any play so that was his big thing to remove from all of my race cars. He is still doing the same today.

[dinglem]

Pretty simple.

69518552_662877244223635_8329641822762565632_n.jpg (71.3 KiB) Viewed 2080 times

69518552_662877244223635_8329641822762565632_n.jpg (71.3 KiB) Viewed 2080 times

[keithrc]

Just read through your thread Dinglem, very interesting and inspiring. Like you I also raced a Turbo Mid back in the day, I ended up selling it and my Optima and Lazer ZX to a friend who wouldn't sell them back to me which resulted in me turning to ebay and finding and Optima, then another one, various parts, then....well lets just say I now have a pretty decent collection of Optima's, Mids and a couple Lazers. I'm planning on doing one of my Turbo Optima Mid's up as close as I can get it to my old racer from back then.

Looking forward to seeing more updates and pics of your progress. Feel free to check out the links to my post in my sig.


Keith

[dinglem]

Thanks for the comments. I have been really lucky to retain almost all of my original cars, and the one I did sell (my CAT XL) has now very fortunately returned to me from the same friend I sold it to in the early 90's.

This build is just missing a few vital pieces of hardware, although it had faltered for quite a while as I knew I was going to have to have the original alloys that my father made, and they were AWOL somewhere in the depths of the garage. Now thankfully liberated.

I am steadily gathering the necessary parts for this - one of which was a Composite Craft rear wing for it. I still have the original which I raced with, but sadly it is cracked. I am still waiting on our original race shell to appear as well... unusually we went for a Yokomo YZ-10 shell on this car, as you can probably make out in the grid picture posted above in the thread. We tended to switch out the shells quite regularly on this car, with the LWB conversion not suiting the original shell and me not liking the later LWB Mid shells too much. I ran an 870c and even a Pb Maxima shell on this at one point!

I will post more pictures as it all goes together, and will check out your threads now also

[SteveMax]

You have so much interesting stuff, it's incredible. I especially like your vintage motor collection. And also very lucky to have your actual cars from back in the day.

[dinglem]

Thanks mate. I seem to have threads going on everywhere but we are still finding stuff out of storage from all those years ago. I am lucky that as a kid my father carefully stashed everything away when I quit racing and moved away, and although it seems to have migrated around his loft and garage a bit over the years, it is all still there somewhere and has been really well preserved. Still a few key items outstanding however, so the search continues....

The main problem I am having is which project to fully focus on first; I am flitting from one build to another at the minute!

[dinglem]

Just another quick update as i realised i had forgotten to add pics of the rest of the alloy wheels that revealed themselves when dad was moving a trailer out of the back of his garage! Nice to find another pair of narrow fronts complete with foams.

[Mja75]

Very cool retro stuff here.
As great as the modern cars are I really miss the garden shed engineering we used back in the late 80's/early 90's.

[dinglem]

Well a couple of cool things as a bit of an update. First of all, during their imposed isolation my parents have been going through some old photographs. One is kind of cool, as it is this Mid in carpet racing mode, complete with dad's alloys running indoors at Stafford Indoor club (Thursday evenings), in around 1989. Stafford was one of the most competitive clubs at that time, and regularly had 11 or 12 heats running. Lots of great memories from that place.

[dinglem]

Next up, having been unable to lay my hands on the same make of Mid bumper I ran on the car back then (and my own example seems to be nowhere to be found) I have been advertising everywhere for around 3 years now....

Then BOOM! one popped up on Fb yesterday, and the guy has agreed to sell it to me. Something so simple, and yet I am literally thrilled.

Of course, what this actually means is my dad will no doubt stumble across our original example at some point next week...