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I got a new to me car recently and it's all clean and polished and right off would look good on the shelf , however on close inspection two of the three diffs are screwed and the whole steering system would drop apart the moment it started moving . This is not a rant ,it was the right price but clearly built for display , it just got me thinking do people build differently for shelf or to run ?

My feeling in my mind is a Shelf Queen should be immaculate throughout , ready to run if fitted with electrics where as a Runner needs to be mechanically serviceable but with maybe more non original parts or scruffy original parts .
So how do you feel about a Shelf Queen that's in an un-runable condition , it would just feel like a job unfinished to me.

Personally, I don't build shelf queens. Even my cars that I don't intend to run are fully functional. All my cars have functional electronics and all the shocks have oil in them.

I've never liked assembling anything that's not functional. That feels like I just gave up on it.

I concur with the other members, the majority of my cars are shelfers but they are all functional & set up to run with painted bodies. If there are faults with them that would affect running, I would consider them unfinished.

I have been leaning more towards what I like to call Shelf Runners. I like the look of how they looked when the original owners had them, and used them, and took care of them. Not gems, but certainly not ragged out. Just sitting on the shelf waiting until its next outing. I don't run them much, but that is the look I like the best.

I have a couple of Shelf Queens that have never been run, and TBH, I am not going to be the one to do it. Clear bodies so you can appreciate the mechanics. Yes, they look unfinished, but I am just fine with that.

Then there are the runners. They all get a place on a shelf, but these are the ones that I don't really care about the looks of. They are for fun.

My feeling is the same. Even if it's intended purpose is to be a self queen, it should still be fully functional and built correct, otherwise it's not complete.

I'm happy to hear that everybody so far agrees, even if you never want to run it then it should still built as if it were, it would make my brain itch otherwise.

I'd lose sleep at night if I had a shelver on display which was purposely built with missing parts/hardware where it was unable to function properly if needed.

So far I haven’t built a shelf queen, but I absolutely would put the lowest quality parts in one.

Think of all of the high quality parts that can keep runners going that are sitting on a shelf waiting to be thrown into the garbage in perfect condition once the owner dies.

For a shelf queen I would take knicked old shock shafts and polish them pretty, place them in the shock without seals or oil. Why oil up shocks for the seals to eventually swell and rot due to disuse?

I would clean up transmission internals but all my worst parts would go inside. Why put the pristine out drives on a car that won’t use them?

That’s just personal. I get why people want to build it right but for me the cars are meant to be kinetic sculpture. The parts are there for it to perform in a specific way. If you remove the performance aspect there isn’t a purpose for the parts.

Maybe I would make a car entirely out of dhawk parts for the shelf. That would make sense to me. Since they look really pretty.

I am without doubt the minority on this thread.

Suppose it could depend on what you're building. I really like morrisey's term calling them shelf runners, as if it were me, anything that was mainly a "shelf queen" would slightly be used and maintained to avoid mentioned issues of disuse. For instance, the Factory Team T4 I'm building. If it were to be built using the cheapest lowest quality parts available, it really couldn't be considered a Factory Team version of the truck.
I can't speak for others, but I don't plan on having any rc's just laying around waiting to be thrown in the trash upon my death. Ideally, they'll all be handed down or sold well before I kick the bucket.

Cars that I don't really intend to run much do tend to get electronics that I also wouldn't use in a runner. I'd never subject a 30+ year old esc to runner duty, but leaving it laying around in a box doesn't seem right either.

I build chassis's and they are either to run, or not. The difference is on ones I'm not running, I will leave out shock oil other than a few drops, and usual electronics unless I have a nice system to put in for a replica or similar.

So in order to run any car I would outfit electronics and add shock oil.

Now, some cars are put together with pieces I would rather not run, but they are assembled to be ready.

Also some chassis's are so sweet, I would rather not put a body on them to admire the assembly.

Strangely I understand using unserviceable electronics to complete the aesthetics and I have no trouble with a clear body so the chassis is exposed to view but I feel we are restoring these cars, even the runner's, I guess if you look at them as art or sculpture then that's different, and I guess if it has the just off the track warts and all racer look, maybe your old car or a famous one, again it's a different thing as the scars are memories.
The thing is everybody has a different dream about these things.

I built my shelf dweller to be ready and/or have the appearance of being ready to drop a battery pack into and be driveable. For example, the shocks are all full and it has electronics in it but also for example, the speedo is untested and I don't keep a transmitter all ready to go either. I understand the appeal of a clear body and have done that myself in the past but I prefer painted bodies and displaying it either on or off. I definately like scarfing an eyleoad with the body off most of the time though.

But really we are just a bunch of weidos that like old toy cars

TRX-1-3 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:10 am

But really we are just a bunch of weidos that like old toy cars

Ha ha yup, we are a splinter of a minority group of weirdos! So whether every bit of alloy has to be mirror polished, you need your carbon fibre weave to be diagonal, or you like em grubby, we are all old men playing with toy cars.