'Rusty' the Pro Radiant

[dinglem]

Well following on from my recent monstrous Pro Radiant spares haul a couple of weeks ago (see my other post), I immediately had another stroke of luck. I posted up the pics of the haul on to various Fb pages and a day or so later received a message request from a guy over in Texas, telling me he had a Pro Radiant rolling chassis that he was willing to part with and was I interested. He told me he had got hold of it quite a while back from a friend, although was more of a Tamiya guy himself.

He then sent me some pictures of the car, which was in a very rough state. He told me he had been given it by a friend who had endured a house fire and the car had been soaked by the fire brigade whilst putting the fire out. As such all of the metal components now boast a significant amount of surface rust. He knew they were pretty rare and exclusive and he had been attempting to source the spares required to restore it for quite some time but realised he couldn't find them and also couldn't afford them either. As such he was willing to let it go, and having seen my stash he knew I would have everything to get it back up and running.

Looking at the pictures I got pretty excited. As well as being totally complete with black Boost rims and front one-ways, diffs, drive shafts etc..., it already has the optional graphite saddle pack chassis upgrade, the iconic orange wishbones were all intact, it had the optional and very rare slipper clutch fitted and there was also evidence of the optional Race Prep rear sway bar also being there. Certainly the fittings anyway. It also has the optional front chain tension roller as used by the Dunn brothers. I was hoping it is the ball-raced version of said tensioner but it certainly looked that way. To complete the set-up it also has a full set of Associated shocks.

I got him to check the diffs and he reported back that they worked fine. The only real issue I can see apart from all of the surface rust is the right hand chassis plate has been cut and repaired again. This isn't an problem as I have spare originals in my box of goodies, so they can easily be replaced. My plan is to retain and salvage as much as I possibly can and continue to use it.

He didn't know what it was worth so asked me to make an offer, so i threw him a low ball number expecting to have to barter. He took it, and I have to admit I got it for an absolute steal. The cheapest RC car I have ever purchased.

It arrived on my doorstep today.

I have already ordered a Boost body shell and wing for it, and hope to enter this very car into a vintage race meeting in early January, so I will add some updated pictures as it gets cleaned up. Here it is for now, looking very sorry for itself... I believe this is what is known as a project.... but these 'before' shots should make the 'after' shots that bit more satisfying.

[NomadRacer]

Nice story... pics don't show for me.

[dinglem]

Nice story... pics don't show for me.

For me either.... very odd. Will try again a few at a time....

Nope.... I give up

[NomadRacer]

Hey brother, I think it's my ISP. I just made a post, using the attachment feature and the pics don't show either.

[dinglem]

I've tried from 3 different machines and numerous times (and in PM's) and nothing posts. Strange things are afoot..... I couldn't even see my own avatar for a while, but that has returned now.

[dinglem]

Here we go....

[dinglem]

I generally try the full-fat Coke trick on rusty parts first. That generally seems to eat rust off anything within a couple of hours (which is why I don't drink it!), so that will be my initial plan. I am hoping most of the metal parts can be salvaged but I do have new front and rear stub axles, hinge pins, spindles, drive shafts, chains, tie rods and a screw set if required. Just seems a bit pointless swapping out everything though, so I hope to retain as much of the original car as I can. I want to add the rear anti-roll bar also, which shouldn't be too hard.

I have already ordered a Boost shell and wing for this, so I hope to get it turned around pretty quickly.

Not sure how that slipper clutch is going to clean up though. Looks like it has been pretty much locked down!

[NomadRacer]

Looks like you have some fun work ahead of you!

[dinglem]

I think it is part rusty and part the fact that it has been raced on an orange clay/dust track. The dust on the rear wishbones for example is more like a fine orange clay. Same goes for on the rear tyres. I will keep adding piccies as I go with it.

[Dadio]

That really does look more dirty than rusty but as we say in the mechanic trade to punters "it's dirty and needs to be replaced , you could clean it but it will just get dirty again" so you can just post it to me for environmentally safe disposal

[dinglem]

With the spares I have for these now I can pretty much rebuild the entire thing with replacement parts, but that is what I am going to try to avoid doing. Otherwise there would be pretty much no point in buying it in the first place. I'll give it a swill land a once over and post some more pictures before stripping it and starting the proper clean-up process. The steel 7T main drive sprocket certainly looks a little fuzzy though!!

[dinglem]

So a quick Rusty update.... after much scrubbing and soaking pretty much everything was salvageable off the car. I changed out little things like the suspension hinge pins simply because I have a load of spares of those items and it made sense to do it whilst the car was fully stripped.

The wishbones literally just took a bit of water and washing up liquid to come up like new

I had several sets of unbuilt original shockers, so I put a new set of those together to replace the very tired looking Associated items that came with the car.

Diffs were fine - just needed a re-grease.

The car had some nice optional extra Hop-Up parts on it, front and rear chain tensioners for starters (only ever seen a sketch of the latter in the Race Prep Hop-Up suggestions sheets), and I even managed to free off and clean up the super-rare slipper clutch!

I have the car entered in a vintage race meeting in July, and we are now making huge strides into bringing her back from the dead and back on to the track. Looking at the pictures of when I received it, it is quite hard to imagine that it is even the same car!

[Dadio]

Just send it over to me , I can make you believe its the same car in no time seriously though that's looking like a very nice car now , well done !

[Bakauata]

Nice work. It cleaned up really well. Very cool looking car.

[dinglem]

Rims next. I wanted to retain the front one-ways at all cost, but avoid using the standard flat dish placcy rims.

Not easy, but with a little lathe action these Polaris alloys have worked a treat. Perfect fit, and the offset looks spot on.

Just the fronts on for a trial fit so far. Rears coming shortly. Should totally transform the look of the car, and certainly something a little different on one of these.