First time a car was available and no one's at home, so I snuck out to the flea market on my own for the first time. Only grabbed this Motormax 1:24 RX-7 for $10:
It's going to see a few modifications. Metalflake green is a pretty colour, but doesn't suit an FD that well.
Whewwwwww it took over 1.5 years to get going, but I've finally started working on this. Coming from a background of modifying Hot Wheels toy cars with their standardized wheels construction, I've never had to face the challenge of mixing parts of different brands and finding ways ot make them compatible with each other.
Here's what I can show off for now:
That's the current offset of the stock wheels in the back. Can't say I like it very much, so I'll be doing something about that.
The rear axle is composed of two pieces that click onto the base. Each end of the axle nibs is a rotating piece held in by that pin that looks like a nail (the "hub" as I've been calling it now). The stock wheels fit snug on that. Because of the different construction of the new wheels, simply attaching that onto the hub would result in serious offset issues. I needed some kind of spacer to fix that.
Had one idea in the making, but later found out it'd be a lot of work to make it happen.. plus it would require making irreversible changes to the axle. Instead, I did something else that would eliminate the issue of wheels not being aligned on its central axis when gluing them on.
Cutting the stock wheels to take their caps is an irreversible decision in of itself, but I think it is definitely worth the risk. Measuring the inner dimension of the cap, it matches the outer dimension of the new wheel's hub. This takes a crap ton of work off my hands. The only thing I need to do is to be sure I don't shave down one cap too short.
Putting all the pieces together, it looks like this. I did not know about the tires being smaller than the wheels. The eBay store I bought these Fujimi kit car wheels from supplied rubber tires of the same diameter. I guess they didn't take note of each particular style of wheel's width. So if I assemble the wheel back onto the body, the offset looks like this:
Sticks out a little. A lot less than what I had with the plastic spacers, but still sticks out. I can't say I'm a fan of wheels that stick out, and I'd alike to avoid fabricating fender flares for this particular model. This car is not going to have an overstated wing, so creating a fat stance will kill the car's proportions. I
may consider crafting other types of fender flares, but I'd also have to look into scribing the fuel cap (located on the left side) since that will likely get covered up. I could also reduce the offset of the wheel until it's flush with the most outer point on the current fender.
Other than the stock wing I removed, that is it for now. I'm likely going to be fabricating bumpers and a skirt before painting.
#rx7street
