January COTM - '74 Vega Drag Car

Well the body arrived today. And its not going to be a easy or fun build

The body is just all the wrong sizes. My plan was to use and evo chassis. but there is just no way i can get a evo chassis to fit under the body at the right hight. the bottoms of the body roll in a long ways. If i pry them out and stuff the chassis high up in the body fits perfect, but then the wheels would be sticking out the hood.

So i tried a gen 1 chassis. Same senario. So my only option is to run a gen 1 chassis with flat lithium ions. So there we go...

next its just the absolute wrong lenght... It sits on a long chassis nearly perfect. It just hardly rubs the tires. The spot to get it to sit right is lengthen it about the width of a screw! So theres not even enough space to be drilling a new whole in the deck. Its seriouly that close. but just in a horrible spot. So i lengthened the chassis where it needs to be, and temporarily hot glued it into place. I will JB weld it together later, and sand it and make it smooth so you'll never be able to tell

But either way.... Ill make it work!

Just incase you missed the other thread, the only way i could find this body for less than 200 bucks, was to buy a store demo which was pre built. So the build starts with tearing it apart from being built.
and i chose this body, because my neighbor and i built this car in real life.. and i ended up racing it for him since he is getting to old to crawl in and out of the roll cage. So i will be building it to replicate this...

YouTube Video

Lets get started with the before pictures!













had to take the dremel took and CUT the chassis off the body. was a pain in the ***. But got it off, had to cut the interior out as well. But got it out, and then had to cut the windows out as well! but they came out too. Nothing on this car is glued! its all molded!











Now the next pain in the ***. The entire interior was one solid mold. Nothing glued!! so i couldnt dissassemble it easily. So i pretty much said EFF IT! and am going to build the interior from scratch. All i really wanted was the dash and transmission tunnel. So i cut those out.






Cut the steering wheel off. Again... molded, Not glued.



sanded the tunnel down some.



New Racing Bucket that will be going in. and New steering wheel that will be going in.




Overal im kinda upset with the quality of this model. If i bought it to build, i would be extremely ****ed. Because there is nothing to build! its seriously 3 pieces. Body/windows/bumpers. Interior. Chassis/Wheels. Those three snap together and its done. its rediculous. But oh well, doesnt matter to much for this project, atleast its highly detailed

More coming in the next few days when the rest of my parts come.

[wadethejuggalo]

nice car was that you driving in the video?

yup. Im the only one that runs it now days. The owner cant hardly get int and out of the cage and settled in to strap up. he is just getting to old. So he basically funds it, Tinkers on it, and enjoys it being raced by his favorite younger buddy

[Big Micke]

Cool, bro love the name of the car. Will look up for updates spr.

[KITT222]

yeah, nothing on these dealer promo models is glued. i pried the parts of my Monza apart, and im not going to do the interior on mine... just black out the windows...

anyways, great job! hopefully ill get my thread up. some things arent 100%, but ill improvise!

i would black out the windows. but there is no glass on the side windows. and i really wanna focus on the rollcage and drag racing style interior. thats all part of this project. So its all going to be custom built as close as i can get it!

[KITT222]

alright, well good luck! man, a Monza and a Vega both in a COTM, and were both promo models... this is going to come down to the people!

haha yup! i cant wait! i gotta source a couple more parts though!

Well bad bad bad news....

My lap top just crapped out. Completely crashed. Which means i can no longer upload pictures. Because my desk top doesnt have a memorie card slot like my lap top does, and i dont have the cable for my camera.

So these are probably the last pictures your going to get for the rest of the competition unless i can manage to afford a new lap top and have it here before the comp is over.... We will see.


anyways for teh car update.
Called in a favor to a buddy who use to be really into 1st gen xmods. I needed some kick *** parts, and well i knew he had them.


First i snagged some mustang wheels with the fat rear tires. But with this really narrow body the stuck outside the wheel wells and looked way ***. So i jimmy rigged a little took to fix that. (note to self. Dont jimmy rig dremmel tools. My head still hurts)



sorry for the blurry picture, basically i sanded that nub off so the wheels could fit down closer to the chassis. I think had to do some shaving of the control arms a tad bit, But no worries, it looks like it suppose to be there. So it worked out slick

This will be the final ride height.







So i snagged some carbon fiber decks, did some custom rear springs to get some really STIFF suspension. Stole a EP with a 2x2 FET stack, and then last but not least, robbed his torque motor



Then started work on the interior. Started out with the new Rear Tubs and first part of the floor.

Before:



After:




anyways TON of work to do. But sadly you guys probably wont get to see it for a looong time Looks like im missin this competition...

[nw~hummer]

sniff sniff lol its still gunna be swet..

[kendallcschm]

this is gunna look cool when it is done

[NETC_redd]

define crash? what happened with the laptop?

[NETC_redd]

answers like that is the reason why IT people are still in business

it won't start up, it crashed and won't start up, the screen is frozen, etcetc. Tell me what happened!

[TheB1GDude]

Originally Posted by NETC_redd

answers like that is the reason why IT people are still in business

it won't start up, it crashed and won't start up, the screen is frozen, etcetc. Tell me what happened!

Exactly!

SPR I highly doubt you need to buy a new one.... unless its over 10 years old you can make do and we can help you fix it... What exactly happened?

Oh and nice car choice by the way......

[KITT222]

yeah, you may have just fried the motherboard. the same thing happened to me last fall.

[BulletsRain]

Nice project! Looking forward to more updates!

Sorry guys i didnt mean to post that last post!!
I started to go into detail and then had to run out the door. I didnt realise i posted that short *** remark. This is what happened.
Plus its not really a fact i "HAVE" to get a new one. its the point that it would be stupid not to get a new one..

I know this is super illegal but i always search around and download all my software pirated for free. Never had a problem before. But i just found a program i reaaaallly wanted. Adobe Lightroom 2. So i was trying to find it, and found a questionable site and i was like i know i shouldnt download this... its probably a virus, but i had been searching for hours and was getting frustrated i couldnt find it. So i tried it. Bad move. Virus.

So now... this is what my computer does:

I can no longer opened up internet explorer.
When i start my computer up These stupid little sex ads pop up on my desk top. ( I NEVER go to porn sites. not my style)
If i close the lid, and then open it again. It gets stuck on the Windows is preparing to standby screen. and it will not move off it. So i either have to leave my lid open all the time. Or Push and hold the button untill it powers off.
I can no longer burn CD's to back up the last of my stuff.
The only way i was able to back up some of it is burn one CD, then i had to power down my computer by holding the botton untill it shut off. It wouldnt just log off by its self by clicking shut down, or just poking the button once like you should be able to do. But anyways every time i restart my computer i was able to burn one cd, and hten the next one would get an error. but now they all just get errors.

I cant open any of the main programs i use: microsoft office, photoshop, outlook express. They all pop up with error messages.

My AVG will work, and it will scan for a virus, and it will find one. but it wont clean it up.

And this is the worst part. I cant make a reboot disk and i dont have one. So i cant even whipe my hard drive and start over and reinstall windows.

So basically my computer is unuseable..

But hold on. There is more thats wrong with it from the 3 years of abuse ive put it threw.

My screen is sorta broke. Where it swivles it on longer fits tight and rocks very badly. Have to be carefull with it or the screen will short out sometimes and go black.

My T key i broke a while ago. So i have to be really carefull typing on it, or it will pop off, and its a pain in the add to fix.

My scroll pad in my mouse area quit working. So now i have to click the bar and drag it, or click the arrow to scrow pages.

My Left mouse button the spring must have broke, because its just stuck down.

The top of it is scratched to ****. Because i had it sitting in the floor board of my sti with my front license plate on top of it when i firrst got my car. Took a buddy for a ride around some corners and he was stepping on it because he was scared and that license plate scratched the crap out of the top of my brand new lap top. So that has always ****ed me off.

My battery is flat out SHOT. If i unplug my laptop i have about 6 minutes to plug it back in or it will die.

and im sure there is more that im spacing out right now.

So as you can see the list of my problems is endless. So this is my thinking on my situation.

It will cost me $175 dollars to take it to the computer shop and get it fixed. But then im still stuck with all those other problems. A new battery alone is 150 dollars. So that would be 325 bucks. Brand new lap tops now start at like 499. and they have like three times the hardrive and ram, and better everything than mine. So its pretty much flat out STUPID not to just buy a brand new one.

I went threw dell last night and built the one i wanted.

im going from:
80g HD to 250g
512 Ram to 2G ram
Better internet card
New 2 year warranty against failure, PLUS a 2 year warranty against accidental damage
15 months free Virus software
Better Screen with "truelife"
basically a brand new computer thats either the exact same, or 3 times as much of what i have right now... and its only 648 bucks.

So whats the smart thing here?

325 bucks for a old used, beat to hell lap top that needs replaced anyways and still needs lots of things fixed.
or
648 for a brand new one thats twice as nice.

See my reasoning for just buying a brand new one?
and i figured i can probably sell mine for 100 bucks or something and say has PROBLEMS! some computer person will be all over it. bringing the cost of my new laptop down anther 100 bucks.

[imnotmikal]

Well, you said you have desktop?
You can get a Reboot Disk .iso image online, and burn it with your desktop and then reboot the laptop, and that will hold you over til you get a new laptop.
I'll PM you with more info.

[nw~hummer]

dang that sucks man!!

ill give you $100 shipped for the laptop LOL

Originally Posted by imnotmikal

Well, you said you have desktop?
You can get a Reboot Disk .iso image online, and burn it with your desktop and then reboot the laptop, and that will hold you over til you get a new laptop.
I'll PM you with more info.

My desk top is like 5 years old, the Burner in it quit working 3 years ago. Gateway ****ed me off because they wouldnt cover it. So i said EFF YOU! and i went and bought a dell lap top.