Modernizing a 4-Tec

At first it went well with a slightly upgraded vintage ESC and brushed motor and the addition of a Yeah Racing Hackslider gyro, which needed a good mounting position, so I designed, and 3D printed one to fit the car. I added some sway bars front and rear, got a nice set of Kyosho Drift Tires. Got a modern 2S lipo that fit in the holder and pretty soon I was sliding sideways all over the driveway.

Decided to give it a bit more style and picked up a Ford Focus body for it, but the back body mounts didn't really fit well, so I made 3D printed replacement ones that stick out a little higher and clear the back windshield fully.

This was working great until the old motor melted down and fell apart during a particularly vigorous driveway sliding session.

Looking at the smoking motor parts I figured that if it needed a new powerplant, it was time to upgrade the whole thing.

That led me to get a new Hobbywing motor and ESC combo, add in a new MKS servo with Pro-Tek servo horn, pick up some Yeah Racing fans to keep it all cool, and upgrade the shocks to a set of Yeah Racing dampers.

Then starting to dig into parts on ebay I saw graphite chassis plates for the car but no one seemed to have the necessary aluminum pillars to put it together and assemble the steering.

I took a chance and got some Traxxas Bellcrank pillars for another car that would fit up front with a bit of modification and then after copious amounts of measuring and some trial and error, 3D printed some collars to help make the original steering work and we were in business.

After that I printed up the missing support pillars to put the two parts of the chassis together, made some new servo supports to better brace it into the car and created a custom bracket to hold one of the fans in place to help cool the brushless motor.

I also made a custom plate to make it easier to mount the ESC and receiver and adjusted the original gyro mount to accommodate the new chassis' lack of a tunnel around the upper belt.
Along with all those 3D printed upgrades, I added Integy wheel hubs and their 84T spur gear.

Finally, I made new front body mounts for no other reason than to have them all match, since all the other 3D parts were orange.