The Wild One

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The above pictures are credited to the previous owner, Juan C. Gonzalez. I was also able to procure the original rims for the car so that I could have it at about 98% complete. (Thanks lumu for the wheel trade).

The only thing about this car is the wheel size. Unfortunately when the Wild One came out, Tamiya was caught between scale looks and real life RC racing competition. Associated and Yokomo were starting to completely take over the racing market making Tamiya a "Toy" RC car manufacturer. However wheels aside this has to be the most realistic looking Off-Road RC Car of that era (from #58041 and on).

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Once I got my hands on the Wild One I switched out parts and upgraded the car to current radio equipment, sealed bearings and a Tekin Rebel ESC. With up-to-date equipment, boy does this little car scoot, even on a stock motor. Not to mention that this car looks great, and so realistic when it catches some air. It is almost irresistible not to run it over jumps at full speed. The tires on the car are from a Grasshopper. This gives the car a more scale appearance much like its cousin the Fast Attack Vehicle. The one thing that the Wild One has that the FAV lacks is realistic looking front shocks. I did put a set of headlights / running lights on the forward mounts rather than on the body. I just think it looks better this way.

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The car was gutted and cleaned. The bathtub style chassis looks a lot roomier than it is. The body fits low and snug on it, making for creative fitting of the radio gear and ESC.

The rear end of this car is very realistic. You could almost see a small block V6 or a Volkswagen engine sitting in-between the tublar-frame.

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Once the entire rear end had been disassembled, the gearbox was taken apart and cleaned. This car was in pretty good shape. All of the parts were in really good condition, surprising for a used car of this age. The nice thing about this kit is that most all of the transmission / drive parts are shared with the Frog and Blackfoot. This makes parts more available than some of the more obscure vintage cars.

Minor problem. The drive axle pin was missing, so a wheel axle pin and a little superglue to the rescue. Once the glue had set, the problem with lateral drift in the tranny was taken care of.

Once the gearbox had been reassembled, the rear end was put back together and the car was almost ready to go.

As you can see from these shots, I used a set of wheels and tires from a Frog. These were later exchanged for a set of rear paddle tires from the Grasshopper. Sans the original wheels, this car is so realistic. I was looking at some pictures of sand rails on a dune buggy website and saw many real sand rails that looked like the Wild One. They even had paddle tires in the rear. If you can find one, the Wild One has to be one of the coolest vintage Tamiya kits out there.

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