Moving right along, the next step was the front C-Hubs.
Although I wanted to have Lazer front wishbones on my Mid I didn't want the upper link to be past the kingpin like the ZX but rather I wanted it to stay inboard like the mid, for no other reason than I thought that looked cool.
When I saw these hubs on eBay they were just the thing, being the right configuration, vintage, and gold. I always liked gold parts back when I was into RC unlike now where my fixation is with blue anodised parts. Plus they were ballraced and back then I knew of ball raced hubs but never got to see one. They are marked as being for a Lazer ZX but I am not so sure as they have zero caster (left and right are identical) and they can't accommodate the Lazer upper arm configuration.
They needed some flanged bearings to work. I also got flanged bearings for the Andys knuckles I planned to use, these again fit the build brief of being vintage parts and parts I knew of back when I had my SE.
However I very soon ran into issues with the Andy's knuckles fouling on the Lazer wishbones, it turns out that they have a larger external diameter than the standard metal OT-16 knuckles.
This was not such a catastrophe as I had always wanted to polish the stock knuckles back in the day but had no idea about metal polishing. So I had an old pair of knuckles which I had polished up for an experiment. I have removed the front cast mark to make them look a little cleaner. Its hard to capture the shine in the photos
So now armed with these I had no more fouling issues and I could bring these bits along for the ride. The platinums are brand new and were being minded by my Lazer ZX so at the moment its sitting very low, but never mind I have grander plans for it now. The front universal joints are new but I also put this nice secondhand pair on the rear because 20 years ago I thought it would be over the top to have them on the rear as well. I went with turnbuckles because I always thought it made no sense for the SE not to have them.
Here you can see the front suspension assembled, along with a polished hex drive
I had also saved a motor for this build, although its not the same motor I had in my SE I always liked the Reedy motors and this Reedy looked like the best aesthetic match for this Mid. I also polished the motor spacer and the plates for the spur gear clutch.
So with the upper deck and a few other pieces installed including genuine tinted belt and gear covers, its starting to look like a complete Mid now
