Yellow Pearl

This is another of my most loved car designs, the DeTomaso Pantera, a strange but beautiful hybrid, V8 Ford power in an Armani suit.

It started out as a bone stock TT01 chassis kit acquired from TC member Adam1973 (cheers Adam). Slowly the parts came together, a few shiny bits added & it is fully ballraced. I had a spare TZ motor kicking around & fitted that because a silver can just isn't exciting & complemented that with an Mtroniks Eco20, cheap & cheerful & perfectly capable. All my stuff now has Anderson connectors since I had a meltdown with a brand new Tamiya one. The kit air shocks were swapped for mini CVA's

The TT01 chassis is far too narrow for most musclecars / supercars so I junked the silly plastic dogbones & drive cups, switching them for a mixture of TNS & TG10 parts including the longer axles. HPI vintage wheels & tyres were chosen with 26mm front & 31mm rears with +6 offset. Still this isn't enough to fill the arches properly on the HPI shell because it's 200mm front & about 210 rear track. Currently I've fitted 12mm hex's all round, although the longer axles can probably accommodate 14mm ones which should just about fill the arches.

The body is finished in 7 coats of PS6 backed with black, the yellow seems to be extremely transparent & even now looks a little blotchy in places. HPI only supply basic window masks, nothing else. Their decal sheet however is very well stocked, I took the chrome effect decals representing the front & rear bumpers & with a little trimming & persuading I was able to use them as internal masks.

The shell also comes with a lexan rear wing & a good assortment of mounts & spacers to allow it to sit level, but I think this is a standard wing kit supplied with many HPI shells. It's not strictly accurate as the wing screws to the deck lid, rather than mounting on the rear haunches of the real thing but it's a reasonable representation.

There's still a long list of jobs to finish this & bring it to full runner status:

Assemble the body parts with the double sided tape supplied.

Body mounts.

Longer wheel spacers.

Aerial hole.

Decals.

Larger urethane bumper to protect the nose internally.

I'll give it a week for the paint to harden fully, then work through that list.

Comments welcome as always.