My Porsche 959

[Pablo68 1093]

Not sure where to start this. But here goes.

I bought a 959 fixer upper a couple years back now I think. Can't remember. But I waited for one to come up that was cheap, took a while but from memory I spent about 300-ish Australian Pesos for it.

It was missing one drive axle, had a really beat up body, a broken front bottom susp arm, the top half of the chassis was broken on one side where it fastens to the rear half of the car. It has an interior but it's also beat up and fragile, lots of cracks etc.
So what did I do to it over the years.

• Ditched the electrics, servos, am rx and msc (still have the msc somewhere).
• replaced electrics with 2.4mhz Rx, new servo and HW 1060 esc.
• The chassis was completely stripped down and cleaned.
• I drew up replacement front susp arms in CAD and 3D printed them.
• Bought a broken mid level bumper/resistor mount plate, measured it up and drew it in CAD, 3D printed it.
• I couldn't find the FRP front body mount plate anywhere, even a broken one to measure up to reproduce. I got talking to a very kind man on one of the FB groups who drew up excellent repros of the entire 959/Celica chassis. He was kind enough to give me a file to print out and test. I owe him a photo at least btw.
• When I finally felt brave enough I reassembled it, re-lubed and bearings everywhere they could go.
• There was a fair bit of tweaking and going back over things to make sure they were right/worked as they should.
• Tires are pretty dry but ****** trying to by new ones, too spendy.

I also made some supports out of spare lexan, basically disks with a hole in the middle to put between the body and body posts for a bit more support to save the body any more cracks.

I got it all together and ran it for the first time last night. I have to say the whole experience has been quite profound.

I feel like this car is both trash and brilliant at the same time. As I was rebuilding it and looking at the design in depth, I found myself expecting it to not be very good. But it was anything but. My take is that Tamiya historically at least had a habit of making chassis that had a similar layout and drove like the real 1:1 counterparts. When rebuilding the shocks I thought that they really wouldn't be doing anything cause I couldn't feel and damping going on. But for all that they must be doing something as the car felt a tad floaty like say a stadium truck but also fairly composed. It displayed both understeer and oversteer at different times.
Overall I really enjoyed it. These things are fun.

The design....it's a real unicorn and at the same time as wanting Tamiya to re-issue these I can see why they won't and probably shouldn't. These things are complex and fragile. A great design at the same time as being an awful one. Having said all that, it would be nice if they at least did a rub of spare parts for these things. Prices for anything on one of these are ridiculous.

I probably have more to say, but can't remember much else just now.

Finally. Is this what Zen feels like?

 

 

 

[tamiya_1971 648]

Have you seen these? You probably have, but here you go any way!  

 

https://mciracing.ca/collections/tam-959-parts?sort_by=manual

[Pablo68 1093]

15 hours ago, tamiya_1971 said:

Have you seen these? You probably have, but here you go any way!  

 

https://mciracing.ca/collections/tam-959-parts?sort_by=manual

Actually no I hadn't. Just checked that kink. Awesome stuff. Priced well too. Thx!

[Pablo68 1093]

Ooooh, something I meant to include in the OP. If any of you in here are into 3D modelling and 3D printing parts for your cars, I highly recommend the Bambu studios X1-Carbon.
Really clean prints with a minimum fuss.

Autodesk Fusion is free to d/l and use as long as you say you're a hobbyist as well.

[urban warrior 407]

Hi,

I remember having one Tamiya 959 back in the late 80's ... and admittedly was totally overstrained with the idea of that chassis. These were the early years of my RC career and we did a lot of stupid things. Things I regret today.

And by the way:

[Pablo68 1093]

1 hour ago, urban warrior said:

Hi,

I remember having one Tamiya 959 back in the late 80's ... and admittedly was totally overstrained with the idea of that chassis. These were the early years of my RC career and we did a lot of stupid things. Things I regret today.

And by the way:

Yeah, it's pretty awful looking. Body is pretty beat up. Mechanically it is good though.