BORMAC's OPTIMA

[Bormac]

Yep its finaly been assembled and raced-my new OPTIMA. Ive sought parts for this car from all over and spent quite a bit of $$$ getting this car peiced together but all the hard work and patience has paid off. With a belt drive conversion being the order of the day along with a full set of Option House universal driveshafts,gold shocks,turn buckles,hardened final pinion, .6 module spur gear,fill bearings,all new alloy parts and a few other odds and ends I had to get this thing on to the track.
Even though the vintage meeting has been postponed for a few weeks I wanted to relive my youth and drive the car I started out with at regular club meet. Not enough vintage cars were on hand for the club to run a vintage class so I was put into modern 2WD stock along with Thomas (BUGLE from this forum) with his champion RC10 6 gear gold pan buggy buggy. Needless to say driving this car cetainly was a heap of fun and even though it had a little more oversteer than what I am used to I had a great time getting it around the track. The car didnt skip a beat all day and went like a trojan.
To all those who lent me a hand with the spares to get this old beauty together- I thank you. Cheers-Jason.

[bearrickster]

Sweet car nice to see it run. do you have two or did you just switch the body to run it?

[Mr. ED]

cool!
Be sure to use plenty silicon sealing for the belt covers
You don't want this beauty to eat pebbles.
(talking out of experience, unfortunately)

[RichieRich]

Very nice! I really like the front tires on that baby!

[Inspector Gadget]

DAMN!!!!!!!!!! that brings back some memories

[Bormac]

To everyone's suprise I actually do have a second Optima which is new built (and never run) and is absolutely stock except for bearings and a hardened final pinion. I have 2 bodies,one of which I did my best to paint in box art and another which was hand painted and looks very rough. I tried running innitialy with the box art deco but there is a killer jump on the track where i race and after coming down twice on its roof and cracking the back section I thought it would be silly to keep running the nicer of the 2 bodies.

[bdrmbully]

nice looking car man.love the box art theme,must a took you a while to do?
looks very clean.job well done there.

[Asso_man!]

As usual bormac, awesome build, very nice paint scheme, though not very personal on this one, I can't tell how many Optima's I've seen with a box-art theme. So, what kind of result did you do compared to the RC10 6-gear?

[Bugle]

Yeah the optima is great, goes hard with just a sport tuned motor. 6-gear got owned it was going really slowly, I think my vintage electronics let it down!

Wonder if that guy with the camera got any action shots of either car?

[Bormac]

You're right Asso,Ive seen plenty of box art them paint schemes and even though they look hot they do get a little tiring after a while. Having raced this car back when they were fresh on the scene and being very limited in painting ability back then I started out with an all black paintjob. Then my second body was a poor attempt also so until now i have never had the opportunity to drive a box art painted Optima. Even though it was cool driving it around the track I was also happy to let the other body cop a few more bumps.
The optima didn't miss a beat all day and aside from being underpowered for the bigger jumps and having to nurse the car around in places the car definately held its own and i was turning out a very nice consistency of around 1.0 to 1.5 most the day. There would be no point in even trying to race it against the modern stuff because the drive train isnt very efficient in my opinion and with the wheel base being much shorter than the modern cars it was just fun to have the car running around etting looks.
More to the point BUGLE's RC10 was doing fine but his old electrics had a touch of the 'GREMLINS' which really held him back. With some modern more reliable electrics I think the RC10 would have fared much better.

[RC Chick]

Nice car Bormac, I really like the paint scheme. Its neat that you and Bugle still race the oldies and they are still winning races. Even though it tok you a long time ot get it built I bet it was sure worth the wait!!! Have fun with it