Wild One Restore #2

Day 2 of the restoration. My son go up bright and early saying "Dad I am ready to work on the car". If it were up to him, then it would have been completely done already. None of this waiting around stuff. Today we pulled out a copy of the original instructions and tore down the front end. The goal was to see how much wear the parts had suffered and to clean everything up real well. By the time we got started, we didn't have too much time to do more.

The spindles for the front wheels are showing some wear. It looks like the bearings were sliding on the spindle and left a couple grooves. Can we go as is or should we replace them?

Before we begin reconstructing everything, I need to get to the hobby shop and get some thread lock, grease and oil for the shocks. Originally, there was no plans on tearing down the shock, but with the car being 26 years old now, we may have to tear into the shocks and fill them with oil.

Doing a search on the web for a chassis so we wouldn't need to repair the one we have I found one for a Tamiya Fast Attack Vehicle. The Fast Attack was reintroduced last year and has the same chassis as the Wild One. We will just need to paint it black vs. the sand color that is comes in. Not a problem because that is how the current chassis was made. This will also save some time which is very important to my son.

There is another question that is out there. Should we restore it to as original as possible or should we modify it, or paint it for a different look. The original is a black body with a red roll cage. My son says we should paint the roll cage for a chrome look. I am all for that, or we could paint it black to match the rest of the body. Either way, we are having a good time working on it together.

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.

Mount Rushmore

Well, lets get this thing documented. Yesterday I went to physical therapy. I spoke to my therapist about the tightness and weakness in my left hamstring. After putting me through a few new moves and checking a couple more things out he tells me it is the stiffness in my back that is the root cause. The pulled hamstring that I suffered should not be causing any issues the long after the original injury. So we've switched our focus from the legs to the back.
After running me through a routine, he sent me to a table for some stretching. There was nothing new with any of the stretches, just having someone push and manipulate you in the proper fashion made a big difference. As of today, I am still sore from some of the stretches. It is now my assignment to continue with the stretching routine on a daily basis. I'll try to fit it in every evening when the family permits me too.

As I write this, I am listening to Mike on the Dirt Dawg's Running Diatribe podcast episode #101. He referenced the Books on the Nightstand podcast episode #156 and about creating a "Literary Mount Rushmore" of books that have influenced you. He has taken the exercise and done it a couple of different ways. The first time he referred to the people who he would put up on Mount Rushmore for influencing him in his life and a second time with the Running books that have influenced him.

I have asked a question for years that some people thought odd and others thought interesting. Who, living, dead or fictional would you like to have dinner with and why. The answers that people have given me have varied. Some have surprised me and others where right along the lines that you figured they would and matched their personalities.

I ask this. Who would you put on Mount Rushmore, why and if you could have dinner with them, what would you want to talk about?

Recovery Continues

Trying to get back at it is not easy. After pulling my hamstring during a pickup Hockey game 8 weeks ago, I've been making weekly trips to the Physical Therapist. For the first time, I got on the treadmill during lunch today to start running again. I've wanted to for the last couple weeks, but have not gotten the motivation to actually do it. Well, I did it and I feel good now.


My workout was for 15 minutes. The first 2 were walking to warm up, the next 3 were at a jog. While jogging, my hamstring tightened and felt really weak. I'll have to talk to my therapist in the morning about that. With the 2:3 intervals, I was able to get a mile in over those 15 minutes. Yep, slow, but I am just getting back at it. I'll try again in a couple days.