So happy New Year to all of you! I had two weeks off and managed to work a bit on the Stealth car project. I had a ton of fun reaming the Shapeways parts, modifying nylon parts and test fitting everything. I must have assembled and disassembled the car 4 or 5 times already
I also found more parts as I went digging up the part boxes. It just seemed every time I went looking for a specific part I went back with another one. There are so many small details to make this thing as close as possible to the original.
First thing that was assembled were the front c-hubs and knuckles using 2 alloy washers under each steering ball stud along with the gold 4-40 nuts. The only thing that puzzled me here was that the c-hubs have a too thick ear where the linkage ball stud attaches,
Then I further reamed the suspension arms and blocks using a 1.248 reamer:
Trimmed the rear bulkhead but still need to remove some flashing and finish it a bit better:
Made some progress on the front end and have a question: where can I find the white nylon nuts for the front axles?:
Rear shocks were assembled with vintage parts only as I didn't want to use the re-release shock bodies as they differ too much in colour (the OE ones are kaki where the new ones are gun metal) and have an extra recess at the bottom of the body.
I also started working on the modded battery cups but got a bit tired and stopped here:
The infamous Stealth transmission was essentially built with vintage parts, most of them being NIP:
I even went for a used and yellowed spur gear, just need to replace the bronze bushing with a thrust washer assembly as used by Masami. Motor screws are now correct, but would need to make some further investigation about the spur gear/pinion gear ratio:
For the rear hubs I didn't want to use the re-re ones as they are so badly moulded, on top, you can clearly see the "L" on the left hub on Masami's car, so I cleaned up some slightly used ones I had laying around:
I also received these during the holidays, they are just perfect and just need to get anodised gold! HUGE thanks to Mark aka Limestang who machined these according to Pedro's (metric) measurements. I even found the correct Yokomo screws to attach the wing:
And here is how it sits right now (still plenty of details to fix). Note that I used vintage Yokomo wing mounts as I found they were a tad more correct looking than the ones kindly included in Jake's kit:
I now need to order Lunsford turnbuckles, find someone who could nicely paint the body, wing and undertray, machine the rear Yokie wheel hubs, mod the rear wheels and find these DAMN correct tires
etc., etc., etc. Stay tuned!
Questions were asked by one British team member. 
