As a Volvo owner, I couldn't resist. A racing Volvo! I worked on 140 and 240 series cars back in my previous life as a mechanic, and they were fairly truck-like compared to the Saab 99s and BMW 2002s which we also serviced. Who'd'a thunk they'd make a good racer.
I have never heard of the Volvo Tubro ... gotta love these Japanese tranlation jobs.
A very detailed chassis, especially with the detail-up bits for the Tubro (which seem to fit the Turbo just fine). Sadly there is no engine, and no one that I know of makes an engine kit for a 240 Turbo.
Well located rear axle: trailing arms, torque rods, Panhard rod, coils and telescopic shocks. I am guessing one of the silver gubbinses either side of the diff is a fuel filter and pump, while the other is a pump circulating differential fluid to the rear-mounted oil cooler. If I were a real keener, I might run some piping.
Rack and pinion steering along with cross-drilled discs up front, with big flexible cooling hoses.
Spartan interior.
Lots of time spent on the seatbelts! The yellow paint specified for the seat is meant, I assume, to mimic an unpainted fibreglass shell. A very business-like cockpit.
Now to the problem: conical tires! No matter which way they go on the rims, they are conical. I have never seen this before; the other Beemax kit in my stash (a Toyota Corolla rallye car) shows no such problem. I see no easy fix.
Fortunately there was a set of Bridgestone Potenzas, of the appropriate size, in the parts bin. They are not slicks, but could be considered a decent set of rain tires.
Final assembly looms large. Stay tuned!
I was involved in the Beemax 240 Turbo Group-A, and the reason for the conical tires is to mimic a negative camber angle. This as the Volvo had 1,5 negative degree camber in the rear and about 3-5 negative degree camber in the front.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! Thanks for the comment. I guess I assumed the tires came, accidentally, from a kit of a drift car of some type.
DeleteYou're not the only one I'd say, and I guess it's easy to assume as much as there's nothing mentioned of the tires in the model kit that I've seen to explain this. But I talked to Beemax about this and got the reply that it was to create a more aggressive camber angle.
DeleteAlso, if you'd like to know more about the cars you can visit my dedicated Volvo site www.240Grupp-A.se. There you can read up on details and whatever you'd like to know.
Björn