TAG/SG Coyote

[dinglem]

Well I am very happy to report that 'aircooled' very kindly agreed to let his set of three-hole alloys go, and they are now in the post on the way to me as I type. To say I am chuffed about finding these is a bit of an understatement.

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It also directed me into contacting Umberto Pernice (TAG Coyote team driver) and asking for more information on these wheels and why he used them. He gave a very simple answer, and also confirmed that they were in fact Gisom wheels, and not Polaris as I had originally thought. Gisom were an Italian brand based out of Milan, and Mr.Gisom was in fact a close friend of Umberto and also his team mate Marco de Marchi. These two had access to as many Gisom wheels as they required, so selected the 3 hole versions as their alloys of choice. When looking at the team Coyote cars, you can safely say if they have 3 hole alloys then they were the cars of either Marco or Umberto.

Getting hold of these wheels means I can now try out fitting the team one-way hubs that I was sent a while back. These are basically like the plastic Tamiya variants, but have built-in one-way bearings. The TAG team developed these for their team drivers very early on, and I was fortunate enough to get sent a pair by a friend of Umberto a few months ago. They require a thinner stub axle over the standard Coyote version - i have managed to track down a set of four TAG Jet stub axles, which are also in the post, so i am keeping everything crossed that they are direct swap and the one-ways will be an easy fit. We shall see....

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tamiya one ways.jpg (14.01 KiB) Viewed 2301 times

[dinglem]

Lipo trays in, and what a perfect fit they have turned out to be..... custom bumper up next.

[Dadio]

That's looking Uber Cool !

[dinglem]

Had some 'DENIM After Shave' stickers made to add some retro-80's-ness to it. They were omitted from the original decal sheet but were on the Box Art car, plus my dad always used to use the stuff back then so it reminds me of him taking me racing

Bit of a laugh, but actually looks kinda cool. I'd forgotten Denim were major F1 sponsors in the late 70's and early 80's

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s-l400.jpg (35.3 KiB) Viewed 2241 times

[Dadio]

Ha ha Denim aftershave , good spot but it was Old Spice or High Karate for the win !

[matt1ptkn]

That's a great looking buggy.

It's all about the memories.

[dinglem]

Quick mock-up with the Gisom alloys installed. I always loved the low-profile look of the vintage Schumacher Minispikes, the original versions, so they have gone on.

It's certainly given it some attitude; with the weight of some electrics this thing is going to be decked! It looks an absolute beast from the back!!!

This is in full drive mode, we haven't got the front one-ways working yet, but that is the next job.

[dinglem]

The next plan was to sort the one-ways, but this has turned into a bit of an epic marathon of fun.... We realized that the plastic one-ways were not going to cut the mustard as the alloys we were to be using would have to be attached via the 3-point nipple parts of the adapter and the plastic just wouldn't hold them. I had another hunt through the vintage Coyote pics I have and found a shot with some metal versions....

I sent this pic off to Umberto and he and his friend had another look through their old stash and finally came up with another pair of one-ways... this time of the metal variety. BINGO!

Or so I thought....

Whilst waiting for the one-ways to arrive from Italy we set about trying to lower the bodyshell down a bit onto the car to provide a bit of a sleeker look. The standard body mounts do tend to hold the shell much higher than is actually needed to miss everything. This wasn't as easy as it seemed initially. All we did was splice a section out of the rear towers, around 8mm, which with the two cuts resulted in a 1cm lowering. However, the body posts are angled slightly which meant the holes in the body shell no longer lined up with the top of the front and rear posts when we put the post parts back together (using all-thread through the posts themselves). This was eventually overcome by switching the rear post mounts 180degrees, effectively moving the rear posts inboard by around 1cm which fixed the problem. The front sides of the shell have had to be trimmed to miss the front suspension pivot points, but it already looks much sleeker and should be pretty slammed when fully loaded with electronics.

So... back to the one-ways. The packet arrived from Italy and all looked great. These were the very metal items as used by the TAG team drivers. However, when we opened the packet we were quite shocked to discover they were both the same side! This meant they both free-wheeled in the same direction and if placed on the opposite side of the car they would only spin backwards. Arseflakes.

We set about overcoming this by smashing up one of the plastic one-way hubs pictured earlier in this thread, and releasing the one-way bearing from that adapter. Then we had to carefully and painstakingly tempt the 'backward' one way bearing out of one of the metal adapters to enable us to press in the one we had retrieved from the plastic item, taking care to put it in the correct way.

Some 3.5hours later the good bearing was liberated and the backward one was cut/drilled and beaten out. Not fun, and not at all easy to do without damaging the adapter. Few scuffs, but nothing to bother us.

Quick press in with the vice and we have a functioning pair

So, that took a lot longer than anticipated... next job is getting them to fit onto the front stub axles....

[Dadio]

How unusual , something simple in principal ate half a day ...
Its all looking really nice , that body looks really snug , almost like a different car !

[dinglem]

How unusual , something simple in principal ate half a day ...
Its all looking really nice , that body looks really snug , almost like a different car !

Just trying to be extra careful cutting out the 'wrong way' bearing from the metal housing without damaging the actual housing. It was like drilling glass. Crazy hard. Slow and steady progress to take the bearing apart piece by piece in-situ. Patience paid off though. It worked in the end.

That profile shot of the body is with the wheels down at full suspension drop. When the car is on the ground the tops of the wheels sit comfortably above the main deck of the shell. Really sleek.

The bumper is now grabbing my attention when i look at the car, the lack of bumper that is. I have a guy making one for me and that will really finish things off.

These cars performed really well in the right hands over in Europe back in the late 80's. Kind of forgotten about now though. I'm hoping this one will go alright.

[dinglem]

They only bloody well work!!!

Amazing. They took a bit of a talking to in order to get them on... the stub axles are very thick and actually have a step about 5mm into the extending sleeve on the back of the one-way hubs, so we had to open that sleeve out a little for the requisite 5mm to get the offsets right and also to expose sufficient thread on the outside for securing the middle wheel nut.

Quick tighten up with the rims in place and the fronts spin away merrily as they should. Well pleased.

Now i need ot order 6 suitable allen bolts to hold the wheels to the adapters and we're done. PHEW!

[dinglem]

Total change of direction for the thread for a minute, but useful for reference for other Coyote owners.

I have found some paperwork which states that the final drive ratio for the Coyote is 2.9 (relatively high by comparison to other 4wd cars of the day).

This means you can calculate your drive ratio by spur divided by pinion, and then multiplying the result by 2.9

This explains the gear sizes indicated in the tech table below somewhat:-

Umberto used a 17tooth pinion on a 50tooth spur gear, and from what I gather his motor was around a 15 or 16 triple. Quite a large pinion and small spur for such a wind, explained by the low gearing of the car.

I have gone up from a 48tooth standard kit spur gear to a 52, so to achieve a decent spread of ratio's for normal hot to mild modified motors i am going to need pinions in the 16 - 22tooth range!

[dinglem]

For my 52T spur gear, this is what I am looking at (low profile tyres notwithstanding):-

22T 6.85
21T 7.18
20T 7.54
19T 7.93
18T 8.37
17T 8.87
16T 9.43
15T 10.05
14T 10.77
13T 11.60

[dinglem]

After much digging around we have finally managed to find some allen head bolts to fit the one-way adapters.

Aaaaaand... they're massive. We've trimmed the back down to make them flush at the rear (2 of 3 done in the pic to illustrate).

I can now see why the team drivers had such a chunky set-up on the cars they used at the Romsey Worlds when using this one-way set-up. The thread size in the adapters themselves means you pretty much have to.

Our next plan is to machine down the diameter of each bolt head to the minimum, and also halve the depth so the allen key still locates but they don't look so mahooosive!

Might also trim the sides of the adapters away from the trio holes too.... just to tidy the look up a little more.

[dinglem]

Well the wheels are all on and fitted, and the bolts and central nut have been streamlined a little as planned. Still fairly chunky set-up, but a lot better than they were.

The next thing we have looked at is the wheel hub bearings at the rear, which were often modified bitd as they only have one bearing supporting each of the stub-axles.... an arrangement which wore quickly and soon showed signs of play. This was changed to a two bearing set-up on the subsequent Pro-10 model.

After a quick think a solution was found and with a bit of chopping and subsequent machining around with a spare pair of hubs to double the bearing housing capacity we now have a two bearing set-up for each stub axle and a bronze bush on the outside to eliminate any end float once the adapters and wheels are fitted. Nice little details which should eventually pay off on the track

The old sacrificed hub....