A number of weeks ago I took the Impuls Sport down to a local beach for a bit of a spin.  Had great fun on the day and the car got completely messed and full of sand (hey that's all part of the fun).

After I got the car home I stripped it down, cleaned it up and rebuilt it.

During the rebuild I decided to fire up the engine (just to make sure that everything was fine). The only thing was that I decided to do this before I'd put the wheels on.  The car was on a stand on the bench, what could possibly go wrong! What I didn't realise was that the wheels produced a flywheel / governor effect :-(  Anyway, I started then engine, let it tick over for a few seconds to warm up and then gave it a bit of a rev.  The revs went up and up and then DOWN! oops, seized engine.

I took the engine off and started to strip it, as soon as I took the exhaust off some shards of metal fell on the bench which was not a good sign.  After I got all the bits of metal out the engine would turn over again but I will need to fix it properly before I try to start it.  I'm not sure what the bits of metal are from, the apparent curve radius seems too small for them to be the cylinder liner, I'm guessing it's probably part of a bottom end bearing.

I tried to remove the cylinder head but the screws are completely seized.  I'll need to eventually drill them out I think.

I ordered up a cheap engine from China through ebay to get me running until I could get time to properly sort out the original one.

As you can see in some of the pictures the paint on the Impuls Sport was beginning to come off in places leaving the clear body shell (look just below the "Graupner" decal) so I decided it was time for a repaint.

I had read in one of the forums that "De-Solv-It Graffiti clean up" was good for taking paint off a polycarbonate body so I purchased a tin from Amazon.co.uk.   In the article in the forum suggested to spray on the cleaner and leave it for 10 - 15 minutes.  I found that this wasn't really long enough.  On the second go I sprayed the entire body shell and left the cleaner on for about an hour.  The old paint then just washed off with warm soapy water. A few of the corners took a bit of scraping with a fingernail to get the last stubborn bits off.

A final washdown and dry with kitchen roll and the body was ready to go.  I masked off the windows with ordinary masking tape and then started spraying the inside of the body with Tamiya Color PS46 (Purple & Green iridescent. It took many coats and the whole tin to paint the body (in the pictures below, the body has had about 3 coats).

Finally 3 coats of Tamiya Color PS 5 (Black) were applied.

I have ordered new decals to stick on but they haven't arrived yet.

Update - 9th November 2016 - The decals have arrived!

I purchased the Impuls Sport on ebay. The eBay photos showed that it was in need of a bit of a clean up but it looked intact and the price was reasonable.

The car has arrived and I have opened the package up. As I anticipated it needed a bit of a clean. It wasn't too bad but I like things to be nice.

Anyway, I charged up the radio batteries, filled up the fuel tank and fired up the engine.  Everything ran fine and the car controlled well. Next thing was to strip it down and clean it up but that's for the next article.

My Impuls Sport setup consists of:

• Impuls Sport 4WD chassis;
• Futaba 2ER 2channel radio gear;
• OS Max RG engine.