Well, it didn’t stay in the 60s – it’s only 35 today. Oh well, “bring the mountain to Muhammad,” I guess. Set everything up on the computer desk and got busy.

The first set of wheels don’t fit. Well… sorta. The rears are fine (hex drive and all) but the fronts don’t have bearings and they don’t really have provisions for bearings. I might just have to save those for rears only, or punch a 10mm hole for a couple of 5x10mm sealed bearings I have floating in my tool kit. I’ll mess with that later.

The pull start is a bust – no way it’ll fit this engine.

For now, the Rustler wheels fit fine, although I had to rob the 5x11mm bearings from the purple NitroHawk ‘Lite’ wheels. Even then, it’s not quite the same as they don’t lock down 100% and spin for days – I had to back off the nylock nut a-turn-and-a-half each to let them spin freely. I hope the nylock nuts will stay in-place once I start driving this thing around. But for now – NEW SHOES!!

Now, let’s get that engine out so I can pull the carb, get that battery pack outta there, and start in on some much needed cleaning. I know I was planning on firing it up to see if it was worth a complete detail job, but I needed to soak the carb in Nitro to bust things loose, so out it comes.

Shortly after this next pic, I dropped the carb into a Solo cup with some old Nitro for a good soak. Worked like a champ, as now the carb is a carb again – everything’s butter smoove, but I still need to pull the needle valve to get the rest of the gunk out.

Gonna let the carb soak overnight, just because, and take the engine outside for a blast of brake cleaner tomorrow afternoon, followed up with some picking and Q-tipping to get it all clean again. I also rubbed down the muffler with some rubbing alcohol and it looks almost brand-new again.

I’m thinking about relocating the battery pack to the void next to the fuel tank for better weight distribution, then just servo tape the Flysky receiver to the top of the steering servo. With the pack in the back like that, it’s a bit tail-happy when I drop it from a foot and almost wants to bounce the rear end (even with these fatter ‘proper’ tires). I’m still going to make a new rear shock tower extension so I can let the legs stretch out even just a little more so I don’t have to run super thick shock oil and 3/4″ shock collars. I’m hoping for mid-range shock oil and no shock collars with longer legs to help soak up the bumps better – I’ve seen too many Baja races and pre-runners with upward of 40″ of wheel travel. Controlled wheel travel is King for maintaining speed through the rough patches, after all.

After spending an hour or so just getting my shed/shop area cleaned up to the point I could actually do something, I found the NitroHawk and pulled it out of the old ‘Tupperware’ gig bag my pal Jeff Pitman swiped from his wife for his R/C toys. I’ve also got a box with a few sets of mounted rims/tires and the original hammered body and an F-150 Nitro Rustler body I picked up after acquiring the ‘Hawk from another friend. Jeff had run the ‘Hawk in street mode for most of the year we’d been running almost every weekend and switched over to a Traxxas 4-Tec, which he loved, but never quite figured out how to keep it from swapping ends when he hit the brakes. Another pal Rob Hutson wanted to play, so Jeff sold him the ‘Hawk, and Rob joined us for a couple weekend before deciding it just wasn’t for him. About a year later, Rob asked me if I wanted the ‘Hawk just before he moved to Colorado – “Just come and get it.” Well, of course I will. He said there was something wrong with the drivetrain, and one of the rear axles just spun freely (probably just a set-screw came loose). I never really did anything with the ‘Hawk – just kept it in the bag and let it sit with the other cars as I ignored them for the next 24-ish years.

After I got a spot on the bench cleared off, woke up the stereo to get some tunes going, I jumped into triage to figure out just how bad it’s gonna be. Not all THAT bad, turns out. The engine felt ‘seized,’ but that doesn’t mean anything to me at this point. I pulled the igniter and dribbled some After Run oil into the cylinder and just let it sit. Also dumped a bit into the carb’s throat, since it too is locked-up. The pull starter is toast – the plastic mounts are cracked [again] – Jeff had Hell with those things, which doesn’t bother me since I have a starter box and a hand-held I used on the SuperTen when its pull-starter went STB. Here we are – not horrible… needs some TLC, though.

I really need to pull this chassis completely apart and soak everything in Purple Power, but I want to see if it’s all gonna be worth it first. After a half hour of soaking and me examining everything I could, I noticed the 12mm hex on the flywheel and figured WTH – gave it a gentle turn. It started rotating slowly, but started getting a little looser. I added more After-Run and shot the carb with some carb cleaner, then dribbled a little down the throat. It’s still hangin’ tough, but I’ll work on it more tomorrow. The transmission is butter smooth, and there’s nothing wrong with either of the rear hubs – I don’t know what Rob was experiencing (maybe he’d locked up the engine, I don’t know), but so far, so good.

Since Jeff (and Rob) ran the ‘Hawk in ‘street mode,’ (slammed with very little suspension travel), and I’m planning on hitting an outdoor off-road course, I need to let the ‘Hawk stretch his legs again and stiffen up the suspension to keep from bottoming out on landings. I poked around my stash of Kyosho spare parts and found a set of shock collars, so I installed those (the black spacers between the shock tops and spring retainers), and while that certainly stiffened things up a bit, there’s not much in the way of obvious to let the legs out a bit.

Well, the front upper shock brace at least had some adjustment holes, but none that corresponded in the body bracket, so I remedied that and added a few new holes (Hey, it’s mine now, right?!) Even though the angle is different than the pic above, suffice it to say that the front arms were pretty much straight across before I modified the shock bracket. This is MUCH better, and should help keep the ‘Hawk from submarining on the landings (provided I can figure out how to drive the off-road track).

The rear is another story. I’m going to need to fabricate a better rear upper shock bracket, and since this is less than straight across.

First things first, I need to extract the nasty old receiver battery pack and possibly relocate it to some midships (if possible) for better weigh distribution (why they put it there, I’ll never know). The upper shock bracket shouldn’t be too bad – I just need to get the upper shock heads pushed inboard a tiny bit and down – more down than in, though. That’ll stretch his legs a bit and hopefully keep from bottoming out on landings. I also need to come up with some kind of a body mount system, since that center peg hole is right in the middle of an air vent hole in the body I’m planning on using.

After my SuperTen’s McLaren body got trashed, I struggled to find a new body (since the SuperTen was technically a 1/9th car, needing a 280mm wide body. I decided to have some fun and found a Mobil 1 Porsche GT1 HPI body at the LHS for $20, so I grabbed it and made the SuperTen into a Baja Porsche.

I was sitting here contemplating what to do for a body, and decided to just toss the Baja Porsche body on – WINNER!! I just need to trim the fenders a bit and get it mounted up now.

This actually kinda looks mean… well, as ‘mean’ as a Porsche could ever look, really.

So there we go – first steps.