It's a Greek tragedy...

[breetie]

Okay, so, I screwed up, and some of you are no doubt going to find this funny...

I know I would, if it wasn't me.

At any rate, my beloved Sportline 04 came in, today. Actually, I had to go pick it up from UPS because I'm never home when they deliver. Ahem...anyway, it's here.

Finally.

Now, keep in mind here that I have already bought the body (FG #9160, Porsche 911 GT1) and I already bought my first upgrade, (FG #9471, ball drives-wide), and have had them sitting here waiting for a few days, now.

So, naturally, the d00d told me it was a wide chassis, yes, you guessed it, it is not. It's just long (535mm), so now I have a brand new Porsche 911 GT1 body and a brand new set of ball drives I can't use.

But that isn't the worst part. Well, okay, that's pretty bad but I have icing for this damned cake. The "shocks" on the backend of my Sportline are not "shocks" at all...they're just springs and shaft in a hollow assembly! WTF!!?

Christ, and to top it all off the thing is in horrible disrepair. I mean it, guys, someone did not know how to maintain an R/C, because it hasn't been apart in years, it has jury-rigged connections, brake adjusters and servo mounts all over it...it's a goddamned Greek tragedy! So...what I'm doing, here, is asking for your help.

I know I'm new, here, and most of you don't know me from Adam...or Jim. Anyway, I want to make a trade. If anyone has a McLaren GTR body, and a complete set of ball drives they'd like to trade me for this new stuff, I'd be willing...

Actually, I have not determined if the ball drives will not fit. FG's parts catalog seems to suggest they fit a range of widths, but I can't be certain. If you happen to know the answer to that question for me, it would help. However...the body will definitely not fit. I don't know if it would be cheaper to sell the body and buy another one or modify the car to make it fit the shell...either way, I feel like I'm hosed on that deal. I'll be posting something in the marketplace topic for this also, so maybe there will be some bites there. At any rate, it's funny but also disastrous...welcome to 1/5 scale!

Edit: Looks like the ball drives will fit fine. Weird. Anyway...

 

[Timmahh]

sorry to hear the new one isnt what it was said to be. thats the down side to buying used from an unknown. your never sure what you get until its there.

im thinking the ball drives will work. as far as the body, it too should work, BUT may need to have the Wide Tires all around to Look correct.

my Bergonzoni Brave has the porshe 911T body and with the thinner tires all around it doesn't look right. but with the F1 rims tires on all four conrers, its great. ie the rear tires are wider than the fronts and keeps the scale appearance, especially considering the 1:1 911Ts have wider rear tires too.

 

[breetie]

sorry to hear the new one isnt what it was said to be. thats the down side to buying used from an unknown. your never sure what you get until its there.

im thinking the ball drives will work. as far as the body, it too should work, BUT may need to have the Wide Tires all around to Look correct.

my Bergonzoni Brave has the porshe 911T body and with the thinner tires all around it doesn't look right. but with the F1 rims tires on all four conrers, its great. ie the rear tires are wider than the fronts and keeps the scale appearance, especially considering the 1:1 911Ts have wider rear tires too.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I've confirmed the ball drives are actually a perfect fit, so I guess we're good on that end. It's hard to tell what parts will fit, since FG never seems to be direct about any of their parts...

The body is another issue, though honestly I was initially more upset about the possibility of the ball drives not fitting than something as comparatively trivial as a body size malfunction. The fact that the car needs a complete overhaul, however, further negates the impact this has on mounting a shell anytime soon.

I guess, for me, it was especially traumatic, seeing the car in the state it is in. I'm a purist through-and-through; I like my cars to have hop ups and parts from the manufacturer, I despise hacked and improvised setups of any kind. I'm such a stickler for perfection I'd rather wait and get the parts from the manufacturer than buy aftermarket immediately. And to see this car in such a state...

How it breaks the heart.

There's near-stripped screws everywhere, the corrosion and rust is so bad on the outdrives and axles that I had to tap them out of the bearing races with a hammer. Someone put bicycle cable adjusters for the front and rear brakes, the front tires are done, from the looks of them someone didn't know how to adjust the suspension for understeer, so there is a whole lot of tread ground off from the car pushing too much. Makes it look like the car suffers from a severe alignment problem, LOL.

It's nuts. I take solace in the knowledge I have rescued this machine from certain and unavoidable doom. Unfortunately, this means I have at least another $1k to pour into it before it will be even close to ready to see the road again...a travesty, I say.

If anyone has tires and wheels in good-to-fair condition, and an assortment of screws, bolts and nuts please consider me first before eBay!

 

[Bigger the Better]

Pictures??

 

[breetie]

Pictures??

LOL...I could, and I realised too late that I should have (though there are pictures of the car in my gallery), but it's in ~200 pieces now. I've since disassembled it, I'll be sticking the plastic in the dishwasher and a can of diesel for the metal parts tonight, so I'll take pictures of it then...

I guess some pictures of the disassembled components might be interesting for some. I'll see what I can do.

 

[Vette09]

You can easily convert your 400mm sportline to the wide version to fit the GT1 body for very little money. The only difference between the two are the length of the suspension arms (and the drive axles, which you have). If you replace the ones you have with the wide version, your body will fit perfectly. The rear of the car uses the same upper and lower arms as the off-road versions, and the front are specific to the on-road-wide version. VS Modelsport should be able to help you with part #'s.

 

[breetie]

Pictures??

Okay...so I went AWOL a while ago, I had a project on my hands, and since I have the full onset of OCD, I stayed intensely focused on this mess until I had it sorted. It's not finished yet, but here's the low-down; it took me almost two weeks to sort out most of the disaster that was, at some point, an FG Sportline 04.

The initial teardown (sorry, didn't snap pictures of the car completely disassembled:

Some close-ups of parts I was cleaning and getting ready to reassemble:

The state of the drive-gears after I scrubbed and cleaned them:

A shot of the back half, where most of the damaged parts were removed and replaced:

Obviously, the original car did not come with alloy control arms, but since the plastic ones were 1). wrong and 2). chewed up I opted for the alloy replacements:

Now, the car is nearly complete. I have to finalize some jury-rigged cable brakes, but that's it:

It's not perfect yet, but it will be. Next challenge, after I clean up the cable-brake situation, is to find a solution to the flex in the chassis between the engine and the radio plate. Also, I found out today that the engine has a Zenoah magneto cover on it, but it is in fact a CY (Chung Yang). This was greatly distressing to me, but I guess I already knew this car was a mess. I honestly don't anticipate problems out of the CY, it just should have been a Zenoah.

The car came with some rather spendy racing tires for the rear, but for some reason had rain tires on the front (which were clearly glued to their rims by an inept hobbyist). I replaced all four with brand-new FG replacements, hard compound parking-lot basher tires, just to get its legs stretched once the remaining travesties are addressed.

 

[Vette09]

FG part # 4480. Carbon fiber chassis stiffeners. Thay'll take care of any flex you have in the chassis between the engine and radio plate.

 

[breetie]

FG part # 4480. Carbon fiber chassis stiffeners. Thay'll take care of any flex you have in the chassis between the engine and radio plate.

Would you recommend upgrading to the Competition chassis, first? I wasn't originally going to do that, since it seemed like the standard chassis was decent. However I just learned that the Competition chassis is 8mm vs. the 6mm of the standard?

 

[Vette09]

If you're planning on competing, then get the competition chassis. But even that still flexes a little, so you're still going to want to throw the stiffeners on. I would say get the stiffeners and put them on your stock chassis for now and see if it works for you.

 

[breetie]

If you're planning on competing, then get the competition chassis. But even that still flexes a little, so you're still going to want to throw the stiffeners on. I would say get the stiffeners and put them on your stock chassis for now and see if it works for you.

Well, I had a source for a new Competition chassis for a good price (>$200), so I went ahead and bought it. It was especially a good deal since it came with the body mount plates for the front and rear, which also saved me some clams. However...in looking at it, I've found it doesn't look like other Competition chassis I've seen before:

There doesn't appear to be a place for carbon fiber stiffener bars on the leading edges of this chassis. Also, the current model EVO's chassis also looks nothing like this. Anyone have an idea which Competition chassis this is? The pictures I have of the 04 Competition chassis don't match with this one, so I've no idea what generation or what type of carbon fibre stiffeners I'll need for this.

 

[Vette09]

That chassis is the last model before the EVO4. I have that same chassis on my competition car and feel it's stiffer than the new EVO4 chassis, that's why FG added the stiffeners to it. If you take a straight egde and check the alignment of the holes on the side of the chassis, you'll see they line up. That's where the stiffeners go. Part #4480. You'll still have to drill a few holes in the chassis and the holes in the stiffeners will need to be enlarged, but they come with good instructions.

 

[breetie]

That chassis is the last model before the EVO4. I have that same chassis on my competition car and feel it's stiffer than the new EVO4 chassis, that's why FG added the stiffeners to it. If you take a straight egde and check the alignment of the holes on the side of the chassis, you'll see they line up. That's where the stiffeners go. Part #4480. You'll still have to drill a few holes in the chassis and the holes in the stiffeners will need to be enlarged, but they come with good instructions.

I see. But no stiffeners were ever designed for this chassis, I take it? After all these additions, there isn't much that's Sportline anymore...what do I call it? My bastardized Sportition 04? An EVO 3.5? LOL...or once a Sportline 04, always a Sportline 04?

It's all apart again, as you might have guessed. I'm waiting on an alloy RC plate and some brake components to arrive to finish the build. Also...I don't know if anyone can see, but the car came with Hitec servos for the brake system. Any opinions on these servos? Should they be changed for a JR or Airtronics set? I'll use them for a little while, at least, but some suggestions on servo choices would be great. Don't know what brand the 1/4 scale servo is, though...