Back from the dead

Well this is where it all started for me, sort of! Sorry this may take a while to read.

I purchased this Midnight pumpkin from a school freinds freind back in 1990. I loved the look of the car as I was really into watching Monster Truck racing on satelite TV at the time. It was my 3rd Tamiya after my Terra Scorcher and Grasshopper. The previous owner had really looked after it and painted the body in yellow with blue Parma flames. He had also covered parts of the body with genuine gold leaf and it looked great. It also had working headlights. This turned out to be with out a doubt the most fun car I have ever owned.

On my first day of ownership I broke all the body mounts and from then on its condition deteriorated. I always enjoyed running it in the snow and one year (probably about 1995) it got so dirty that I just left it in the garden where it remained (with battery connected) until about 2 years later. My Dad told me he was going to take it to the dump so I put it at the back of the garage and forgot about it until about 2002 (when I was moving out). I was going to just throw it out but something made me put it on charge and try it out. To my disbeleif it worked perfectly despite every metal bit being thick with rust and muck. It brought back all those memories of the good old days being a kid. When I finished 'playing' I completely rebuilt it using some of the spares I had. The shell however had long since departed.

Once I had settled in my new home I bought a brand new body set fom ebay (before re-release so expensive). I also replaced the wheels and tyres and bought a 'spares/repairs' lunchbox chassis to replace the rusty/broken bits. I kept to the original colour scheme with working headlights. I have not yet been able to get hold of any blue Parma flames though. I was really happy with the result and this led to the puchase of countless other old RC cars.

Although the Midnight Pumpkin is a very common and ordinary model car it will always be my favourite. Its lots of fun too! I fully recommend any Tamiya fan to get one. Just watch those body mounts!

UPDATE 02/08/2009: Took my beloved Midnight Pumpkin for a test run for the first time since it's resto. (Couldm't resist it). Fitted with a Lipo it pulls wheelies at will and went really well. However I broke 3 of the 4 shock bottoms, and a wheel 'hex'. The thin steering links were bent badly so I got a steering upgrade from the Re-Release model. This proved much better and with the new shock bottoms I had lots of fun with it on the field today (please see pictures). Thanks to my mate Gary Sims for taking the pictures.