Dynavante

Here's one I picked up off the local auction site recently. I got it for a rasonable price together with a Clod. Both looked well-used and abused in the auction pics, so I thought 'that would make a good runner'. I already have two other Avantes, but both are in good enough condition that I don't really want to run them.

When this one arrived it looked pretty bad. Everything was loose and dirty. The front diff wasn't meshing properly, some bits were missing, the tyres were badly cracked. It came with a Futaba MC112B ESC, but that was shot (full-speed ahead only!).

I decided to strip it completely and started from the front in a progressive strip-clean-and-reassemble. I found that one front upright was badly bent and the steering knuckle was broken, fortunately I had replacements in my spares box. As I progressed I discovered that this chassis was actually in very good condition! By the time I got to the rear bumper it was looking pretty good. I was short of a few pieces - mainly the rear stabiliser bits and a rear suspension arm mount spacer. I placed a wanted ad on TC and found that local member Type49rs had the bits that I needed including a pair of rear shock towers (the current ones are very wobbly due to having been run without the brace). Many thanks to John for these bits.

Well I was in a bit of a hurry to get this running so I bodged a brace for the rear shock towers and made a temporary spacer to hold the rear suspension arm. The photos were taken on the weekend before the parts from John arrived.

The chassis came without a body, but I found an old one in the basement and also a wing off something else (RC-10?). I also had a set of spike - replica tyres, but I want to run this on a hard surface, so I fitted a set of Wild Ceptor wheels (fronts with the narrow off-set) for the test run. I also fitted a working MC112B ESC that I had lying around.

Well the Technigold still runs fine, and it's a fast and accurate runner. However it's not a patch on my Blazing Star with an RZ fitted. Maybe I should put the RZ in the Avante....

As you can see from the photos it doesn't look half bad now. I have several sets of wheels and tyres, and I'm not sure which ones to go for. What do you think?

I still need to get one double-ball shaft for the rear shock, and the battery retainer (on its way from Crash-Cramer) and she's complete. I have the driver figure, but he won't fit with the separate receiver/ESC setup.