EXTREME MAKEOVER: The MAXIMA: ReLoaded
**PLEASE READ THIS** for anyone looking at this model displayed in my showroom and wondering if I will sell it? PLEASE DON’T ASK!!! I get numerous requests from TC members wanting to buy cars displayed in my Tamiyaclub showroom, and to be honest I get very annoyed when people ask to buy something that is clearly NOT FOR SALE!! This car is part of MY COLLECTION and as such I want to KEEP IT!! So please don’t Email on the off chance that I might sell it to you, if I want to sell any of my cars I will put them up for sale in my TRADE ROOM, so look there to see what cars I am prepared to sell otherwise don’t bother asking cos the only answer you will get is NO!!! thanks for reading this disclaimer. Regards wldnas.
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UPDATED SHOWROOM ENTRY: I have totally redone this showroom entry to take into account the vast amount of work that I have done to it in the last few days, but this has been a very quick turn around on the cars original Showroom entry which showed it’s very poor condition, but I’ve decided to leave the original description in place and simply tag the updated information on the back, also a lot of the photos have been doubled up to show both BEFORE & AFTER shots of the car to show its miraculous transformation, so here is the ORIGINAL description that was posted on 21st May 2003…
Now here is a nice and rare retro racer from an old school British RC maker, I am referring to PB Racing products of course : ) they produced a number of semi competitive cars in the 1980’s they did a small number of 1:10 electric cars but where better known for their 1:8 gas cars which were a lot more popular in their day, unfortunately the company petered out and disappeared in the 90’s and a part of British RC heritage was lost, and as their cars were never very popular to start with, precious few of them survive today : (
However a few of their cars made a name for themselves, most notably the Mustang series, which came in both 1:8 Gas and 1:10 Electric versions, the 2 speed Mini-Mustangs were very trick and for this reason are quite collectable for ppl like myself, I am still searching for a 2 Speed Mini-Mustang but for now I have al long last managed to find another of their old competition buggies, in the shape of this rather battered old MAXIMA.
The Maxima was one of their later efforts, in that it came after the Mustangs, some ppl believe it to be evolution of the Mustang design but I’m not so certain, although I have not seen a close up of a Mustang and are not familiar with its design and drive train set up, I can’t possibly compare the two but going by it’s apparent age (mid-late 80’s) I can see that it is quite an advanced design for the time, Mid-mounted Motor driving a 1 piece belt drive inside a narrow “spine” type monocoque chassis, Universal “Swing Shafts” are used on all 4 wheels, large long stroke oil dampers are used and mounted to oversized shock towers, adjustable top wishbone links, double front hub carriers, wide lexan under tray and designed for use with Electronic speed control.
However the car that I have is in pretty poor condition, it’s all “furred up” in that it’s thick with layers of dust that have been deposited in the many years it was stuck up in the attic of the guy I bought it from, it’s very worn, the tires are bald, its covered with scratches and the teeth on the belt look pretty chewed up, it’s been damaged and then repaired (BADLY!) the original rear suspension bulkhead has obviously broken at some point and has been replaced with a home made FRP plate which has the holes all off centre which means the lower rear wishbone pivot pins don’t alight properly and the rear suspension has fell apart as a result.
The rest of the car is pretty tired and dirty, the body is in pretty typical condition for its age, but for the most part the car is reasonably complete and doesn’t appear to be missing anything vital, even though there are a few parts absent like the rear wing anti-roll bars and battery mount, however the car did come supplied with an original manual but even that needed attention cos apparently some coffee had been spilt all over it and the pages were all stuck together : S so I had to get out the steam iron and try to carefully peel them all back, I sort succeeded but some of the pictures stuck to the other side a tore a bit off the other page, but I got most of it unstuck.
The story behind my acquisition of the machine is quite interesting, I decided to try and see if I could join a club and race some of my cars, I did some research into the local clubs and found two of interest so I went to one of them to try it out, I modified my AYK Pro Radiant for action, but as it was indoor carpet racing it was totally out classed and the tires I had didn’t grip at all, so I made complete fool of myself, but one of the guys there was interested in the car I was racing and said he had loads of old rare cars at his home so I got his number and arranged to go over to his place a few days later, anyway he sorted out a number of cars (more on this lot elsewhere) and the PB Maxima was one of them, I didn’t have any money on my at first, so saved some up and met him again at the club a fortnight later and did a deal for 4 of the cars for £80.
Anyway I have the car now and after looking it over carefully, I can really appreciate that this car is going to need a lot of work just to return it to anything like the sorta condition I deem acceptable when I do my restorations, getting parts for the car will be practically impossible I imagine, so I will have to use a bit of the olde’ Bodgology to restore this baby, the most obvious job will be to completely strip and clean the whole thing, then rebuilt from the ground up, I can get new tires and perhaps fashion a new rear suspension bulkhead that fits properly, and getting a replacement wing and mount shouldn’t prove to be too difficult, but that drive belt will have to be changed and god only knows where I can get one of those from : (
But I feel that this car is well within the realms of possibility as a worthy restoration project, but I dunno when I will be tempted to start it, but as I’m sure you are all aware when I have something to show, you will see it here : )
UPDATE 6TH June 2003
Well as you will see from the picture below this defiantly was a worthy restoration : ) obviously the first thing to do was completely strip the car down to it’s component parts, this was a an especial unpleasant chore thanks to the filthy condition the car was in, ikky greasy dusty gunk covered most parts of the car and cleaning it all off wasn’t going to be easy, some of the smaller metal parts were cleaned with a rag, where as the plastic parts were all washed in a bowl of warm soapy water, I did find a few interesting things while stripping, one of the front wishbone hinge pins had broken up and I had to fashion a replacement out of a small nail, also I discovered that the original one way front drive shafts had been replaced with Tamiya Swing shafts, that worked but weren’t exactly a perfect fit.
After washing and drying the plastic parts came up quite nice, most of the rusty metal parts were polished with a mini wire wheel fitted to a Dremel drill, that cleaned the metal bits up quite nicely, and to get around the bald tire problem all I had to do was fit a spare set of Tamiya Hotshot Oval Block tires that I just so happened to have lying around (It’s amazing the difference a set of tires with tread makes ; ) re assemble was pretty straight forward, I did notice that a lug inside the chassis seemed to be rubbing on the drive belt (and probably contributed to the teeth getting shredded) so they were quickly nipped off lest they do any more damage, I decided to repaint the lexan under tray Black after I had removed all the residual traces of adhesive tape from there and the chassis halves.
The next big challenge was to fashion a replacement rear bulkhead, now I still had some of the nice green impact plastic hanging about and after making some careful measurements and then drawing up a plan of the part from pictures of the original in the manual, I cut and drilled the part and after a bit of fine tuning it fitted perfectly and should suffice until I manage to acquire an original replacement, the rest of the assembly was no bother and after a little degreasing and trimming up of the body it looked to be complete, but I happened to have a spare radio set in the loft and the car was just begging to get run so I had to go and fit it, actually the radio installation was a bit tricky as I had no servo tape, the battery clamp was missing and as I had no aerial either in order to test drive it I had to wrap the antenna wire around the chassis.
It was dark by the time I came to test drive it and as the battery was unsecured it kept trying to fall out so I decided this was not a worthy test drive and call it a day, next day I managed to correct a few of the faults from before, added an aerial, I also fashioned so replacement wing mounts and cut and painted one of DAZMEISTER spare Hornet wings to fit, and after the body was fitted it looked a lot better and I could test drive it again (Properly this time) as is the norm the battery wasn’t fully charged, so the test was brief also one of the front wheel nuts worked loose, so I had to stop and tighten it, but the cars speed wasn’t too bad, but I expected more, I was using my new 27t Trinity MONSTER stock motor which is pretty quick but I was using a smallish pinion so that may explain that, the car actually runs very smoothly and handling is pretty tight though could be better as the suspension is bit stiff after the rebuild, the belt seemed to be holding up well considering its hardly got any teeth, but it was jumping a bit in reverse.
All in all a pretty satisfactory restoration, but this is only interim rebuild, I hope to be able to tidy it up some more and replace some of the parts like the rear bulkhead, rear wing, tires, battery clamp and drive belt with all new original replacement parts, but that may prove to be an impossible task as with most of my rarer cars, but the results of the restoration are startling when you consider all I did was clean it up, the majority of the car was in pretty good shape as has been found out, but then I knew it had potential all along right from the moment I first saw it ; )
FURTHER UPDATE: I managed to source a load of spare parts that can fit the Mini-Mustang/Maxima cars and I have now replaced a number of the damaged parts with new ones and found replacement for others that were missing namely the anti roll bars, anyway I swapped over the tires that were fitted to the Mustang as they look more original and applied a load more decals, I've also got a fitted a rear wing that is a better match for the original, the completed car is now quite a sight to behold :)
Comments
You wont believe how much i hate you for having one of these!!!!! heheh... Nice one
vintagejack
Wing makes all the difference mate, looks great! am now thinking of stripping mine down to repaint.. !! think yopu may have oversticker it though!? just personal taste..I have some Pb stickers if you need them..
wldnas
Odd Ball Buggies Qualification: This car is very RARE as the manufacturer did not produce many different models, although a capable competition car it was NOT POPULAR with racers.
wldnas
EXTREME MAKEOVER: this is one of the many cars which over the years I've bought as a piece of junk and with patience, skill, spares (some original, some not) I've returned it to a thing of beauty, please look through my showroom for other such EXTREME MAKEOVER cars
sturms
I hope mine looks as good as this when it is finished. You have done a great job there.
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