The "I only changed the wheels" thread
This thread needs a bump! I did this one yesterday. This Panoz could BARELY roll down the track (even though it was a Target "Speed Machine") so I put on some Phaeton wheels. It looks great now! Trouble is, its still not very fast. haha. It rolls nice now, but its a below average racer. A shame really, was hoping it might be a Featherweight challenge car, but alas! It will just decorate the shelf and look pretty.
i only do this when i replace the axles and have them in my hand;
1. pre-spin a few times to time your wheel spins...
2. rub some lathered up LAVA soap onto the axle...
3. slide in n' out while rotating the wheel - 50 times...
4. spin the wheel as fast as your finger can - 3 minutes, both directions...
5. rinse..
6. repeat with the oldest toothpaste you can find...rinse...
7. repeat with ivory soap [ breaks down the T.P].... rinse, rinse, rinse...
8. wipe dry, set on top of you cable box till totally dry [rust]...
9. pack the graffite into the wheel opening and against the axle end...
10. spin, spin, spin and then time the spin...
11. spin, spin, spin... wipe clean...
12. spin, spin, spin... wipe clean...
13. repeat till you can no longer see any black on the paper towel...
14. now time your finger spin compared to the two before spins...
.............. watch out for worpex ! ............
One thing I like to do with the "donor" cars that I use is put the wheels from the original car onto it. Unless those wheels are super beat up, the Donor car usually still runs pretty well. So here are more contributions to this thread!
Put the DW-1 wheels on this which are Real Riders. Technically, there is a new base on it as well. Surprisingly, it runs fairly well... and by that I mean, it makes it to the end of the track before I get bored of watching it.
My old speed shark from when I was a kid. It's been sitting around for awhile because the wheels were busted, BUT! I put on some Retro-active wheels on it and it looks and runs great!
The wheels from the speed shark didn't go onto the donor Retro-active.. instead, they went onto this Stockar FTE. This cars wheels went onto the Retro-Active instead! A big triangle of wheel swaps. Big thanks to JDC for sending this car over to me, it actually looks more realistic with these black walls on it! Doesn't run too bad either after I did a bit of straightening out of the axels.
Whew, hadn't been out to the HalfFastGarage in quite a while!
Today we took the body of of a Renault Megane, replaced its axles and wheels, then reassembled it.
As you can see there was no need to paint it!
Seems to be a fast one too, even a little faster without the rear wing.
I switched the wheels on this old beaten Lincoln Police Matchbox, with FTE2 wheels. I think it looks really sweet.
* Can't figure out why its cutting the pic.
From my experience certainly FTE doesn't necessarily mean faster, what I have found interesting is that the original FTE wheels consistently are faster then FTE2 or any other type of wheel. Im quite disapointed with the FTE2 wheels actually. I have bought many of them and they get beat by tons of non-FTE cars.
In the case of the Fire Chief Matchbox mod, the FTE2 wheels are much faster than some old and beaten matchbox wheels that they used to have
I M O once the weight gets up toward a couple of ounces i think that the FTE advantage disapates with increased weight...
in the 113 gram H.D.S I & 2 the 5 spokes won often,
in the 35 gram featherweight challenges the FTEs rocked,
in the chevelle half of the 45 gram cup series the FTEs ruled,
so far in the 56.669 gram top sportsman II - #1 = FTEs, #2 = 5 spokes,
middle weights ... T.B.D.
29.4g . . .