Tamiya Wild One Restore

Seeing that I’ve been negligent in posting to this blog, I decided that I would post on a little project that I’ve been putting off for a few years. Yes, just a few years. I purchased a Tamiya 1/10 scale electric R/C Wild One back in 1986. It was used a couple days a week after work where a few of us co-worker got together and run them around a dirt track and have a few beers. After the factory that we worked in was closed and a few of use were transferred to other facilities, it use had been reduced to the occasional weekend run around the yard. I am not even sure of the last time that was used.

So I final pulled it back off the shelf and with my 5 year old son, started to tear it down and plan to restore it. He is so happy that he gets to help and can’t wait until it is up and running again. As you can see by the picture, my work area is a mess. As this and other project progress, things are getting cleaned up. Just last week, there was not enough room on any flat surface to park this car.

A month or two ago, I started to take the body off the car only to realize that I never removed the batteries from it. The picture below shows what a 20 year old battery does to a batter pack.

Mud is caked on the body and the dust cover for the electric motor has seen its last day.
With the body off we started to remove the roll cage. We then found out that we needed to remove the motor and the gear box. I used to do this all the time. One of the problems with the Wild One’s gear box is that the gears tend to slip. I had rebuilt that gear box more times than I cared to count. Actually I got pretty proficient at it.

Once the gear box and motor were out, we pulled out all the electronics. All of these are original and will get used again when the restore is done..

One thing that I am trying to teach my son while we are doing this is to take things apart slowly, and mark things as you go. We are bagging all the small parts and labeling the bags.

One of the things that we have to over come is the condition of the bath tub frame. This is actually the second frame that the car has had. The first one cracked to a point that it needed to be replaced. This one is almost in the same condition.

I don’t think that super glue will hold. There may need to be some backing pieces added to give it some additional strength in the end. For now I just want to get the cracks sealed up and the plastic bonded back together. The crack on the right side is worse the will not flatten out. The secondary crack is protruding and I have not been able to force it back into position. To get it back into place, a small hole may need to be drilled to relieve the pressure, but then what can be used to fill the hole?

For only working on it only long enough to keep my son’s attention, we did pretty good in getting it torn down to the frame. The sub assemblies will be the next things that we are going to tear down.