Mardave Meteor LWB Prototype
 

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This is my nearly complete Mardave Meteor project. This car is fitted with a Mardave prototype chassis, Kyosho gold shocks and a copy of Greg Halliday's rear shock mount as featured in Radio Race Car June 1990. Tyres are original Schumacher Mini Pins just as I used to race at Hereford Shire Hall back in the late 80's. It's taken me a long time to build this car, utilising as many parts from my original Meteor as I possibly could. The wheels front suspension, gearbox and rear suspension are all original from the car I used to race, the original chassis was destroyed as part of my final year school project in 1991. The prototype chassis was a very lucky find, there can't be many of these out there? This chassis is notable because it has mounting holes for both the Meteor and the Cobra gearboxes. I think I remember Scott Raynor using a prototype Cobra gearbox at some nationals in 1989/1990? Anyway I love Meteors, they were such a great, reliable and inexpensive car that you could modify to your hearts content. So here it is my ultimate Meteor.

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No pics pal

I had one back in the day. Those things were virtually indestructible apart from the gearbox. Why don't mardave make buggies now?

Wish id kept in touch with Kristian Wiles as he drove and tested the Cobra and leant me his car to test at an event and liked it, understered a bit much for my liking but made the A with ease. Great car for a budget price

Lindsay still has that car James, and it was by far not a stock Cobra....

wasn't the meteor available in short and long wheelbase versions back in the day anyway? I seem to recall it was, but I'll have to check old Radio Race Car issues to verify.

Mardave now is under different ownership to the original company, and so focussed on their GT12 circuit and banger racing.

The original was a SWB they then released a LWB.

Yes my first RC car was a SWB Meteor. Later upgraded with ball races and a long wheel base chassis, with a lexan shell instead of the solid white plastic shell. The LWB chassis could bend easily just like the original centro. Remember adding brass square sections to brace it. Great car wishbones were about 50p to replace.

Mardave Meteor
 

I don't know why my pics won't upload? Any ideas

What are you using to upload them ?

Trying to attach them directly from an email by the looks of the link.

Surprisingly enough, we don't have access.........

You first need to upload the pics onto a file hosting site like Photobucket; http://smg.photobucket.com/ Then link the photo form there into here using the 'insert image' function

Sounds like we have both been inspired by those Greg Halliday RRC articles... I've been building up a Meteor to the spec as outlined in his last 'Modified Meteor' article dubbed the 'MK3'.... this is as far as I've got so far... can't wait to be able to see the photos of your build!
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The Meteor was only ever offered with a SWB chassis in the kit - but the long wheel base chassis was sold separately as an upgrade part - with which you needed the optional matching LWB lexan shell (which is now available as a repro part from Penguin Custom Shells). There are early and later versions of the LWB chassis - the early one had the standard width front which used the original car's front arms where as the later one had a narrowed front which required the use of longer arms (as per my car)

We need those pictures, I've recently got hold of a lwb chassis myself for a modified Meteor winter project of which Dan has already been a great help :cool:

Pictures
 

Using my iPhone, but that just says upload failed. Tried to take pics from my phone and upload via my laptop but that's just created a link...... Shame cuz the chassis is nothing like the standard LWB. It's saddle pack config with a top deck. I'll try again......

I havent been in contact with him for ages, do you still have his contact details.

Install the photo bucket app on your iphone and use that pal sooo easy

Photos
 

Does this work?

http://s40.photobucket.com/user/Alex...0Uploads/story

There you go :D

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Only through Facebook.

WOW that looks awesome!! I absolutely love it! I remember seeing Mardave team driver Lee Romang (now racing again at RRCMCC) with highly modified Meteors at my local club, but I don't ever remember seeing him running a saddle pack chassis like this one - very trick!

P.S; Any ideas on what paint scheme you would like on the bodyshell?

That's ultra cool! I was still racing a Tamiya SRB when these first appeared (young with no money of my own to upgrade). Wish I'd kept hold of that car. Love the addition of the MG Brown spot, very period.

Photos
 

Thanks Bomber, I am rubbish with computers!!! Anyway that's my Meteor finally.

Paint scheme
 

Not sure about the paint job yet, gotta be something of the correct period though, maybe some flames, Maybe like a Masami Cat, that would be kinda cool ha ha ha!!!

Looks good pal got there in the end :thumbsup: now you just need to fit some electrics and get it on the track.

There was a Modified Meteor article in RRC, followed by a Mk.II and Mk.III plus a Meteor Maintenace.
I have been going through my old magazines and if you need something then give me a shout.

I've got a scanned copy of the 'MK3' article (its what I'm basing my Meteor build on) which I've posted up here on a thread some while ago. But I've never seen either the MK1 or MK2 articles?

Does anyone remember the later article on how to make your Meteor into an on-road racer with locked-up front suspension??

Jeez,that is one helluva trick Meteor,very,very nice indeed.

Tempted to get one of those Penguin LWB Mete shells and bang it onto
my own modded Cobra,it'd look priddy good I reckon.

Dug around in my spare bits today and found a complete Meteor g/box and a few steering parts,Cobra front/rear bulkheads,front mounts and suspension arms that I'm going to list on E-Bay.

Dunno what they're worth,but the Mete g/box is good with ballraced outdrives and a mint red spur gear.
I only ever ran it on a 27t superstock when it was fitted to a Cobra chassis.

4WD
 

Has anyone thought of a 4x4 Meteor , think it would make a great competitor
Mike

Amazing Meteor!!!

I've been searching high and low on the internet to find a gold chassis, with no luck at all... :( Come to the conclusion I will have to get one made. Can anyone who has one tell me what the dimensions are please?

Thanks

That's a lovely looking Meteor.. I used to run one mainly indoors on carpet mid to late 80s... The cost of replacement parts was pennies and it was very robust, and the noise of the 32DP gearing was unmistakable.

As well as the Option House shocks, I had the Saddle pack part of the Schumacher SPC 1/12 scale chassis attached to the original SWB car, also ball raced the steering arms along with replacing the e-clips on the wheels for normal threaded ones.

I used it to good effect indoors racing at Stafford Mini Nats and actually embarrassing a few people with much more expensive 4wd cars running motors while I was actually running an MG brown dot..

Loving the MG brown dot motor in your car... not seen one of those for a very long time :thumbsup:

There was a one off meeting I went to at York Racecourse where I was forever snapping Drive cups that finally saw the demise of me running that car any longer.
It then had a custom LWB aluminium chassis milled to accept the Corally battery trays before it got passed onto a different member of our local club to use.

I ended up buying a complete donor car just for the gold chassis and longer front wishbones, and that was only a couple of weeks ago, so they do come up for sale occasionally. If you are making your own chassis do you already have the long front wishbones as they are seemingly the toughest part to actually source? Or are you making the slightly earlier LWB chassis to take the original shorter wishbones? We made our own LWB chassis back in the day for ours - assuming you are keeping the car virtually the same you can pretty much replicate the old dimensions but just add around 3cm in overall length. That is the difference between the SWB and LWB from memory.