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My very first RC grade car was a first gen Utlima my Dad offered me in 1987'ish and I had a blast with it for several years until it was replaced with a TopCat and I started racing at club level.
Since then, I have badly wanted to build one with all the nice hop-ups that I couldn't afford back then (the only one I bought BITD was a motor guard) or that were not even available here in Europe (no internet back then and very few hop-up brands available). That dream came true not so long ago when I finally gathered almost all the parts needed to start building one!

This is the pile of stuff with which I started:



As you can see there is:

- a never run on-road chassis that will be the donor
- a NIP Turbo Ultima chassis
- Trinity shock towers (I will have to adapt the front one)
- Trinity turnbuckles
- Composite Craft top deck
- Yokomo wheel adapters
- 48dp Robinson racing ball diff
- optional sway-bars

The tranny:



Trinity stuff:



This is how far I got for the moment:



Since then, I was able to also source the following:

- Trinity 64dp spur gear and counter gear
- Trinity gold front king pins
- JC Racing wheels
- Thorp CVD's
- Roll cage
- New bodyshell with decals

The search goes on while the build is stopped because of a lack of time to be dedicated in the basement...

I am hardly looking for a NIP or like new rear motor guard!

Very cool! I'm a big fan of the old hop ups. Those trinity turnbuckles may have been soft but they are sure sexy!
You probably don't want to hack a hole in that minty chassis but this build is crying for a Robinson Tracker kit

gomachv wrote:Very cool! I'm a big fan of the old hop ups. Those trinity turnbuckles may have been soft but they are sure sexy!
You probably don't want to hack a hole in that minty chassis but this build is crying for a Robinson Tracker kit

They are soft indeed and quite hard to source, but this will never be run as long as it's mine anyway, even though I will build it as if I would run it.
The tracker kit is the one that allows you to change rear toe-in with a wrench right? I don't think I would be able to drill the chassis I'm afraid

Not a bad start
Is it going sit on Option House gold shocks? It´ll look neat next to the turnbuckles.

DennisM wrote:Not a bad start
Is it going sit on Option House gold shocks? It´ll look neat next to the turnbuckles.

Most definitely!

The Ultima was also my first car when I joined a club. So this bring back lot of memories

I love your build so far. I used to race a Turbo Ultima back in the day and would love to own another some day. Not quite the standard car but a version built with some other extras.
I watch yours with interest.

I like the ball diff. - great mix of hop-ups.

Very nice. You have some fantastic hop-ups there.

Looks like the makings of a sweet car. Looking forward to the construction!

Cool parts. This should look great!

Excellent start.

I'll be watching this project with great interest as I'm going to be starting an Ultima build myself in the near future

Great! I have these graphite shock tower set,that were released for JJ version ultima

crusaderlyf wrote:Great! I have these graphite shock tower set,that were released for JJ version ultima

What is a JJ version please? Anyway, this is not intended to be a period correct build, I'm mainly after a nice race look and feel. I am currently looking for a nice JPS decal sheet to do a gold/black body So this might end up being a gen1 UM-JPS

The only problem with these graphite towers is that the front one which has a raised portion in between the two posts. I'll have either to mill/trim it down until the radio plate can be flush with the front bulkhead or simply dremel a slot so that the radio plate can pass through, but then I'll have another issue with teh body as well. We'll see... I really need to start again this project as I keep on gathering more hop-ups. New pics coming soon hopefully!