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This car is very special to me as it is my first proper radio control car, so please forgive me if I ramble on a bit before the pictures.

I had had a number of department store RC cars before this one but this was the first hobby grade model. We weren't very well off and despite my badgering of my parents and many many trips to the local hobby shop they remained resolute in their opinion that a hobby model was to expensive, they always broke and they never worked properly.

This car wasn't bought new, rather one day my older brother just turned up with it, he'd probably traded something for it with a mate, goodness knows where it came from. We shared it and spent many hours thrashing the remaining life out of this already well beaten car (it already had a cracked chassis and bald tires) together until a few years later he produced a Tamiya Mad Cap in similar fashion to the Hornet. The Hornet has since been mine.

I used to try so hard to get this car looking good (polishing a turd) and spent many hours staring at the last page of the manual with the gleaming new built version which mine could never be. Many times I was frog marched back into the LHS by my mother to embarrasingly return hop-ups e.g. tires, which we couldn't afford and which I generally tried to spend my lunch money on. Eventually though I got older and this car was played with less and less, we moved countries and so it ended up in the loft, forgotten.

Many years later I found the car and decided to restore it now that I have a job, I looked into ebay and then tamiyaclub and then started spending money. A few parts here, a Tamiya Lunchbox there (well it was just round the corner ) and I was hooked again. This car is responsible for my whole collection.

All the stock parts I had from my youth are the same as they were in the 80's-90's and I have replaced parts which went missing with time or were missing/broken when I had the car back then with the new hop-ups I can now afford. I only built it up again the other day but have had the parts in a shoe box for two years. I needed to build it now to find what is still missing.







Some of the hop-ups are;

APS rear alloy bumper
Trinity 10 inch wide front bumper/a-arm support
Trinity Monster Horsepower 1988 motor
Trinity nerf bars
You-G coil over shocks all round
You-G rear sway bar
The Hot Trick Stuff front shock towers
CRP heavy duty steering arms
CRP heavy duty tierod kit
CRP heavy duty steering pivot pins
Acoms receiver and servo

I still need a Tamiya TEU101 esc, tires and a servo saver. Then I will paint the body and add my original driver which I won't repaint. I still have the original body at my parents home attached to a plaster mold I made when I was 10ish. I tried to re-pro the body and the plaster didn't release!

Cheers

Ed

Nothing beats a car you have dreamed about for many years because you couldn't afford it, been there done that Keep us posted Ed

^To right though the RC game is putting me back into the same financial position I was back then

I can't wait to get this finished. Unfortunately I can't find the before pics though I am guessing they are on my home pc. If I can't find them just imagine the car with no wheels and missing all the alloy parts

Looks great. I like those wheels. I have seen those rear bumpers in packages and wondered how they could possibly work, well now I know.

Dr. Robotnik wrote:^To right though the RC game is putting me back into the same financial position I was back then

I can't wait to get this finished. Unfortunately I can't find the before pics though I am guessing they are on my home pc. If I can't find them just imagine the car with no wheels and missing all the alloy parts

Perhaps you need me to frog march you back to ebay! Man, that's a great story! My first proper r/c was a Hornet and when they rereleased it a few years ago I used one to restore my orig car that i had kept from childhood too. Nice work man.

i wounder how many of us still have our first RC car. i still have my Frog and my brothers Fast Attack and Wild Willy i also have a Scorpion,yz834b and a Cat xls from my early teens all in need of a restoration

jasen wrote:i wounder how many of us still have our first RC car. i still have my Frog and my brothers Fast Attack and Wild Willy i also have a Scorpion,yz834b and a Cat xls from my early teens all in need of a restoration

It's wicked you have all your cars still. I'd restore them for sure.

Once I get this done (I need some cheddar first) then I think I might make my brothers Mad-Cap box art as I really liked looking at that pic too!

Thanks all.

Ya getting my Hornet restored def brought a tear to my eye 20 years later... a lot of great memories with that car.

Ed, Did you get those wheels from me? If so, they are custom made (at least by what a LHS owner told me). There are only a couple sets (I kept one myself).

mrlexan wrote:Ed, Did you get those wheels from me? If so, they are custom made (at least by what a LHS owner told me). There are only a couple sets (I kept one myself).

I am not sure mate, it is entirely possible, they came (I believe) through ebay or tamiyaclub about 1.5-2 years ago if that rings a bell. Oh, I think they were in two seperate auctions as they are both fronts. I am going to have to make some rear wheel adaptors for the rears but that shouldn't be much bother. They were NIB and came from a place called Robbe's Hobbies (I think that spelling is correct) I'll shoot a pic of the header card when I get time.

Yep, those came from me. They are nice wheels.