Vintage SG Coyote 2WD Buggy!

Won this on ebay last week and the postman delivered a nice big box today!

It's a buggy made by an Italian company - probably sometime in the 1980s - called a Coyote. The Coyote was actually a 4WD buggy but it wasn't unusual for companies back in the day to "convert" a 4WD buggy into 2WD simply by omitting the front transmission parts from the kit. This was the case with the 2WD Coyote.

The Coyote wasn't exactly a very well known buggy, but like many buggies in its time it boasted some very interesting and unique features. I hope I can cover some of these as I build this New-In-Box kit, hopefully in time for our vintage run in December. :)

Here's a picture of the NIB kit. It's awesome enough to receive vintage buggies in the mail, but the feeling of receiving a NIB ready to be built can't be beat!


The buggy pictured on the box is actually the 4WD version as the front drive shafts are clearly visible. It was obvious that - other than the giant number "2" on the box - this car was simply a repacked and rebadged 4WD kit. Even the list of features printed on the box says "TWO FOUR WHEEL DRIVE" as if to highlight the split personality of the car. :)


Here's a picture of the side of the box with the "Technical Data" of the car. Again, the car pictured is a 4WD version.


Upon opening the box I'm greeted with SG's version of blister packaging. While it is a far cry from the awesome Tamiya blister pack presentation (which often highlighted many of the performance parts in a kit), the Coyote's packaging is neat and functional.

Check out the manual too - boldly declaring "4WD"!



Lift up the blister and all the various parts of the car are neatly packaged. Also visible is the lexan shell which on first impression looks very well made and feels quite substantial.


Here's one quick pic of the manual - as stated before it is a manual for the 4WD version of the car with no obvious notes for how the 2WD car should be built. I'll figure that out during the build itself. :)




I look forward to building this kit soon but I will have to first measure and count the many self-tapping screws included and order up some more "modern" hex head screws.

Tune in for the build to start!

Finally a top deck for my YZ-870C

One more car to finish up for the vintage event and that's my Yokomo YZ-870C. Some of the great folk over at RC10talk informed me that the front bulkhead was prone to breakage especially where the front shock tower was attached. Their advise? Fashion a top deck to support the back of the tower to take some of the load off the bulkhead in the case of impact.

Took quite some time to measure up everything carefully but I'm very pleased with how it turned out!




Front of top deck with shock tower support. :)

Mudblaster and Yokomo 834B shells...

So it appears white is the new black. lol!

Short post with quick pics.

Mudblaster with painted shell... she's ready for the vintage event!



And here's the stickered up 834B. It's a basher shell so just trying to get it to look a tad cooler...

Yokomo YZ834B RPS SE Track Test

Here's how the car looked at the last vintage event held in October...



Although it started life as an RPS SE I had returned it to stock 834B specs for the event with the twin-monoshock suspension setup too.

I had a blast with the car but it was far from competitive. The stock wheels/tires combined with the monoshock suspension just couldn't handle the rutted track very well. For the upcoming event in December I wanted to go back to a dual-shock rear setup. So here's the car back in RPS trim.



Basher shell



With the rear independent suspension and the larger, more "modern" 2-inch wheels and tires the car was certainly transformed! It's still no TRF511, but it did much much better. Rough track handling was improved and the car was a lot more settled. There were some wierd steering characteristics but I attribute that to the limited steering throw (leading to a lack of steering) and the front one-way-bearing design (leading to the occasional breaking of rear traction resulting in too much "steering").

I did have problems with the king-pins though. The design of the car uses grub screws in the knuckles to hold the kingpins but because the kingpins are totally cylindrical there really isn't much for the grub screws to hold onto. Coupled with the soft plastic the knuckles are made of, this resulted in the kingpins coming undone easily.

Solution? I machined new kingpins with notches on the surface for a firmer hold. This way, the grub screw doesn't need to tighten all the way down to secure the kingpin, the notch will hold it in... that's the idea anyway.

Here's a pic of the new kingpins (I know... not much to see till I take pics of the pins removed) but they should work well and will be tested soon.

Mudblaster V2.0 bash and hop ups

Here's the Tamiya Mudblaster that I bought in a great second hand deal sometime ago. When bought it the shell was still unsprayed but it was in bad shape especially where the front bodymount had pierced right through the front hood.

After lots of puttying and a tedious paint job, she returned to her former glory ready for more bashing fun!





The above pics were taken just a week ago when I brought the truck out for a run. It was a blast and the car handled far better than I expected it to. Maybe it was the slow speed of the silver can, but the car actually negotiated the track pretty well (see video in earlier blog post).

Unfortunately the joy was short-lived... note to self: take hard-shelled vintage car off track when high-powered modern 4wd buggy comes on the track. The carnage is as follows...


The bodyshell is shot.




After combing the track I find the remnance of the windscreen...




Oh well... you know what they say... crap happens. :)


Although a tad broken hearted, I went home with good feelings of how well the car ran. I decided that I wanted to see what the car could do with a little work - especially in the upcoming local vintage race, the NOOB CLASSICS event.

So off went the cracked up hardbody (to be glued together another day...) and on went a lighter lexan shell. I found the HPI Wheely King shell a perfect fit for the Mudblaster wheelbase. A custom bodymount had to be machined to fit the shell but that's all sorted now.

Also off went the standard chevron threads and in their place a set of JConcept Goosebump tires on HPI star rims. I found a set of these rims at the local hobby store but the fronts were in black chrome and rear were in gold. After a few hours of chrome removal followed with dying, I got all 4 rims a nice black.

Here's how Mudblaster V2.0 looked at the track test yesterday!



The shell's yet to be painted of course, but I think you get the idea of how the truck looks.

A pic with my other buggy I was track-testing, the Yokomo YZ834B RPS SE!




In this body-off pic you can see the custom body mount. I don't like hacking up stock parts unless I have to - moreso when they are vintage parts... so the mount was designed to fit without any modification to stock parts.




How did the truck do?

It ran great, tracked well, felt really good!!! For the whole lap and a half that it ran before I hit a pipe and well...




I thought it was strange that the knuckle would break so easily since it had taken worse knocks than this. I'm guessing either (1) it was one of those murphy law incidences where the angle of the crash managed to break this part or (2) the previous collision that totaled the shell might have damaged this part before this crash did it in.

Disappointed I loaded up ebay to look for the part only to find that it was going for a *mere* SGD80+... not to mention the 2-3 weeks of shipping time it would take to get the part. I was understandably simply "ecstatic"...

So out come the calipers, the autocad gets fired up and the ol' mill gets dusted off. Thanks in part to the very basic design of Tamiya parts of yesteryear I was able to do this...



A new steering knuckle machined out of delrin that has a lot more material for reinforcement than the standard part. I'm hoping that the slightly more forgiving nature of delrin plus the extra material will make this knuckle bullet-proof. I found the stock knuckle to be a tad on the aneroxic side and brittle too.



More testing to follow to see how this baby holds up to the rigours of offroad bashing...

stay tuned. :)

There's a local Vintage RC event - called the NOOB CLASSICS - planned on 12 Dec 2010. It's the first event of it's kind and here's a couple of vintage cars that are doing some laps on the local track! :)

Another Rally Vid!

Here's another vid taken recently by a friend while I was running the Mini rally!

As you can see the car is pretty speedy on a black can motor and it is capable of managing the jumps on the track - although I clearly need more practice!

The nose down attitude in jumps is still something I'm working on - but it would appear the jump timing becomes so much more important so the nose drops at the right time to land on the downslope of a jump. :)

Enjoy the vid.