On Friday, I was excited to go grab a big bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide to see for myself if the whitening trick really worked for the yellowed and UV-damaged parts. The parts from this car would be a great test, as they were new and unused, but old and aged. If this worked, the car would look as it was when I bought it new in 1984.
So I filled an old pickle jar with the H2O2 and set the jar on the front porch. The next few days were spotted with sunshine and rain, so I was constantly doing a dance of bringing the jar back in the house for safe keeping. Three days of this nonsense and I finally had something that I thought looked successful. After a good chunk in the sun yesterday, I finally had results.
See if you can tell which one is new out of the package, which is off of the original car, and which one was heavily used and aged (it was almost tan to start with). Yup, it works.
So I set out to start building the car up slowly, but taking the time to polish and hand-fit everything perfectly, as I would do with a new kit today. The rear end is first. Eventually, I will build a killer 6-gear, but for now, the MIP SP1 fits the bill, as I ran one of the trend-setting gearboxes about this time. I also ran the car with the gear diff from MIP later on, so this was an accurate item for my car at the time.
I ran dogbones in the car for years, and didn't end up with the orange CSC driveshafts until much later in the 80s, so I decided to keep with the theme and stick to the early parts. In 1985, I had no idea that making a car free and smooth was a key to speed and consistency, so we built the car, raced it as it came out of the box, and when it didn't handle, we jacked the spring collars up and down to see if it worked better—it usually didn't.
I set out to build the drivetrain as smooth and free as possible, which started with the arm mounts, arms and hub carriers getting a full deburring, mating surfaces sanded and smoothed, and a full .1255" reaming of the pin holes. I forgot how soft this old Associated nylon was, and how difficult it was to ream. The rear arms needed some hand sculpting to clear the edge of the chassis on both sides, and now they have full movement without binding. After a few hours of hand-work, I took to polishing the pins up and knocking the sharp edges off of the e-clip slots on the bench grinder's deburring/polishing wheel. Using some .125" motor armature shims of various stack heights, I shimmed the suspension tight, but with perfect free movement. No binds is the key, and it's harder to do than I remembered on this old car.
The outdrive axles were next, getting a lot of hand file work, some more time on the deburring wheel and a little Dremmel handwork to clean up the edges. The dogbones are new and a perfect fit in the axles, so there is no slop and everything is buttery smooth. On the whole, the rear suspension components are all perfect. Fresh bearings, cleaned and degreased, then lightly lubed with trumpet slide valve lube for light resistance and yet some oil in the balls. The drivetrain spins freely and easy, like it should have in 1987.
Rear bulkhead and a new stamped rear shocktower were installed, and while not perfectly accurate to history (the early ones were milled with one top hole), that's not my main goal with this build. The MIP SP1 tranny was installed as was the very lightly anodized early motor plate. Currently a 32p spur is mounted, but that will be swapped out for a 48p Kimbrough piece shortly. Original 4-40 threaded rod tie rods were installed with white ball cups, but those will also be replaced with steel t'buckles on white cups or Parma Heavy Duty rod ends as I raced back then.
Rear tires are original Team Losi Racing Yokomo spikes, and they are mated to a set of NOS jellybean wheels. They don't have the inner liner installed, as I didn't feel that wrestling with a wheel that will really only be on display was a smart thing to do. If it ever hits the track in haste at a vintage gathering, they will be properly installed and built.
Next up, the front end build.
