Ok, I've had a little time to do a brief 'autopsy' on my Meteor, and have learned the following:
Upon careful examination, it seem that one of the rear wheels is missing
There is no pinion gear, but Dan gave me the info I need to find the correct one, and they are cheap.
The spur(?) gear is not the type with the spaces for bearings.
In theory this is no problem, because I have a lathe.
In practice it may be a problem, because I only have one gear, and getting a replacement is more difficult than usual because I live in the States.
I may make a piloted reamer on the lathe and cut the pockets by hand. That way I can practice on scrap plastic until I know it will work ok.
I could just leave it, as I won't be running this car much and it will have a tame motor.
The front wheels do not have bearings, they have bronze bushings. They wobble a bit too.
Does anyone know what size bearings I would need? Hoping they aren't some weird non-standard size.
I'll have to pop them out and get the calipers on them I guess.
Other than the above, the car is in remarkably good shape.
All the plastic parts appear to be intact, and the chassis has very few scrapes on it.
The bumper has some battle scars, but I think I can eliminate most of them.
The steel parts have surface rust, but this appears to be cosmetic only, no deep pitting.
I may look into replacing all the steel screws and pins with stainless ones, but part of me wants to keep it as original as possible.
One thing preventing that is the fact that many of the steel pins etc were originally bright zinc or nickel plated, so that will be difficult to replicate. If they had been blackened it would be easy.
I may tumble the steel parts to clean them up and keep them safe, and use stainless replacements on the car.
I have yet to fully strip the gearbox, so I'm hoping there are no nasty surprises in there.
The diff feels a bit weird, but I don't know if that is normal for these cars.
When I turn one of the rear wheels (or rather 'wheel'), the axle on the opposite side turns in the same direction. If I hold the axle still and turn the opposite wheel, the diff clicks and slips.
Does this sound right, or is there something wrong with the diff?
This is my first car with a ball diff, so I'm not sure what to look for.
I'm kind of nervous about dismantling the diff because I'm worried I won't get it back together again.
There's not much info out there, so any tips or instructions would be most welcome!
The shocks are really funky and filled with old black oil, so they will have to be stripped and rebuilt.
In fact, the whole car is covered in a thick layer of grime, so I'm going to strip it down completely and clean every part.
The main problem right now is the missing rear wheel. If I manage to get a wheel, the car will at least be complete.
Does anyone have a wheel for sale, or know where I could get one, or do I just have to keep searching eBay until one shows up?