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dinorider

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  1. I know lots of folks here jettison the standard clod buster steering for on-axle servos, so there's a chance there sre plenty of original B2 and B6 steering crank/servo saver parts lying around. The parts on my car have broken from use so can I shoutout to anyone with said parts to spare, shipped to Singapore? Of course will pay reasonable price and shipping costs.
  2. Yes the thickness was an issue. However these re-re decals seem to have some quality variables. Mine felt like the ink was not yet cured before being bagged up for sale. The light blue portions of the side stripes were getting scratched off as I applied the big decals! Thankfully I have the exact shade of light blue to touch it up so it's invisible. My decal sheet had extremely strong glue, and nothing has lifted up. Might be based on my technique of simply never stretching the decals with application as well, which is why I went straight over the shut lines. Trying to bend the decals along the body contours and the shut lines together would be asking for trouble. The stripe decals actually fold behind the seam of the cab and bed, and I left a lot of clear sticker at those parts to be trapped securely between the 2 body sections when screwed together.
  3. Very true, you can't rush these, nor let it turn into a 'job'. This one, while fun overall, was very involving and I can't see myself wanting to fully restore another one of these again.
  4. I went full scale model paint techniques for this. The parts were glued, puttied, and sanded so that the joints disappeared. This is the face after 2 colors, the base skin tone is Mr Hobby flesh + brown. On top of it is flesh, straight up. The figure was 90% airbrushed. The third color is added to the skin. A highlight that used Mr Hobby flesh + yellow. All that graduation you're seeing on the face isn't the light. The shadows and highlights are painted on. The hair is Mr Hobby red brown, straight up. After a spray for matte clearcoat, the detail work is done. The eyes make or break any figure. The big mistake many RC painters make is to assume the pupil is a big round circle. It isn't, and painting them as such gives the driver a wide-eyed, shocked-to-death stare. The whites are also not pure white. That's unnatural. It's white with a hint of red that I used. You also need to paint the edges of the eye lids. Miss that and the figure looks strange again. Here they are all in the midst of being tweaked. The eye sculpt isn't symmetrical, and I had to tweak with the paint job to level it out. It's a little hard to do on this figure because the sculpt is pure 1970s and the edges of the facial features are vaguely defined at best. Boom. Final result into the cabin. All the color on the face and hands are painted. The hands used 3 skin tones and the face used 4. All the dark shadowed recesses under the cheeks and around the nose, mouth, are part of the shading process with paint. Many people forget the sideburns too and I nearly did. Towards the end of the project, I noticed that the hair looked weird, and that's when I realised that there were no sideburns, and I painted them in. All that detail in the ears and grooves between the fingers, and fingernails, had to be painted. Note the not wide open eye shocked stare. The top and bottom of the pupils in the eye go 'under' the eyelids, and I went no further though there is the option of painting even more detail inside the pupils. This figure has its 1970s charm. The hands are so vaguely sculpted that you could paint them as gloved or ungloved hands too. The hair was further highlighted at the top of the head with a light airbrushing of red brown + a pinch of yellow. The jacket and trousers were also painted with multiple shades for shadow and highlights, all airbrushed. The seams on the arms and head were quite bad and took a lot of sanding + putty to eliminate. I avoided painting the cabin floor area black, as that makes it look like the figure is sitting in a tub of oil. This will do I think. This is about 6 months of work, all condensed here.
  5. In the spirit of more pics, less words, It's game time. Only reliable way to lay down the stickers is with the soapy water technique. The big stripey sheets were heart-stopping. Took 3 sessions to do it all. People have noted that it's 'impossible' to get the stickers laying flat over the ridges and curves along the flanks, but it can be done. A hair dryer and a lot of patience will do it. But don't overcook it. I have completely ruined polycarbonate bodies with too much heat. Trick is to put your hand on the part and heat your hand together with the sticker. Once it starts getting too hot to handle, back off the heat. Original front bumper, with hundreds of crashes probably... You can sort of see the crack on the windscreen. A lot of polishing smoothed it out, but the line will always be there. See the pointy blue stripe tips on the tailgate? Recipe for a peeling disaster in the tropics. I left a lot of clear vinyl around it, thankfully it blends well into the body. It's unlikely that I will ever find an affordable wing mirror part, so that will stay that way for now. Those sponsor stickers on the flanks are not Tamiya vintage nor rere fake logos. They came from a Traxxas sticker sheet because I was badword bent on putting real, non-fake logos on the truck. The sticker sheet didn't have the exact same logos as the vintage box art Bruiser, so I aimed for at least an approximate color match, with period-correct brands. The truck bed I actually cut and placed a sheet of thin black foam onto it. It's just lying there with no glue. Does give the bed a nice finished look without having to paint anything extra. Also hides the big trench that the body posts exit from. Are we done? Not yet. It needs Calvin Brookman at the wheel.
  6. @Grumpy pants thanks, the blue color is kind of odd in a good way, as you can see it shifts hues by quite alot depending on the ambient lighting. This truck feels a way too fragile to drive offroad, or even properly, anymore. The steering pins especially, feel very brittle and a break will be irreparable and immediately cripple the car. As it was, the vintage bruiser, when new, already had very floppy steering because of the loose tolerances in the steering components. It will just be trotted about indoors, in clean places. Meanwhile, the epic stickering work begins. Lots have been written about stickers on the bruiser being hard to apply because of the curves. Experience has taught me that in the tropics, stickers will curl and peel off with humidity and heat over time. This always starts at thin, pointy parts of the stickers so i cut them now with a compromise. No thin pointy ends on the stickers, the vinyl needs as much area to stick on as possible.
  7. We're now in the zone. Chassis is kind of complete as it is. A fitting with the painted, 100% PS, not ABS, body attached. The tyres shined up real nice. The bumpers are cleaned but original, so as you can see from the scratches all along the front this was a heavily used truck. The Toyota windscreen visor is the only vintage sticker that is still on the truck. The taillights are a small but important detail. I took 3 days to paint them, letting each color properly dry for a day before applying the next. Tamiya's instructions consistently get the black border area wrong, even on the rere. The reverse light is a small oval shape, not the rectangle depicted in the instructions. All the space around it must be blacked out, as seen here. The small ESC switch is still dangling under the car here. And the rear cab louvers were a pain to glue into place without smearing or smudging the white paint. The rear license plate was not on the body. i.e. lost ages ago. Sheet styrene to the rescue once again. I cut this from 1mm thick sheet. sprayed it gloss white, and put the sticker on. Under the truck, the big change is the use of new, non-Tamiya telescopic propshafts. The originals will be stored safely aside but they really are very worn down.
  8. @AshRC yes i do agree with you. This Bruiser was well used, and should retain some of its patina. The chassis will be clean, but not chromed to look like a showcar. It's a hard balance. I cannot polish the zinc coating off completely because here in the tropics, the frame will rust. As it is, it's now clean and smooth, but some tarnishing and blenishes remain. The body will be painted and stickered, but some character like the wonky headlights and cracked windscreen will remain. And on with the show... Glitch free radio gear and ESC into the radio box. Just for better non wobbly movement, ball adjusters are getting replaced too. And.... Here's the body. 100% polystyrene, absolutely definity not ABS! I took around 5 weeks to get from no paint to this point. 2 cans of Mr Hobby bright blue was the body color of choice. I didn't want any metallic color because that wouldn't look properly vintage on a 1979 Hilux, and tamiya blue felt too dark. This has a brighter vibe. There's a thin layer of white primer under the paint, and the deep gouges in the plastic were puttied over and sanded smooth beneath the primer. Painting gloss in a climate with 70% humidity all the time has its challenges. Gloss paint will often cure slightly cloudy. You do need to polish it, and also to knock back the orange peel anyway. All the details like the window rubber edges and door handles were also masked and spray painted. Some detail. I didn't polish this area too hard because the stickers will go right over the minor orange peel surface left on the paint here. I only attacked with a mild abrasive polish (Meguiars Swirl X, long out of production now) only after letting the paint cure for a week after the final coat. Sucker for punishment. The rere sticker sheet has this part as a sticker, but I went full vintage style and painted it. Freehand brushing straight lines is always a disaster for me so masking and spraying was the only way to go. Just cutting and sticking the tape took around 30 minutes. That moment of truth where you are going to remove the tape and hope nothing bled under. The other patience-testing moment. Here I am masking to paint the silver frames, a detail often missed on painted Bruisers. There was a lot of risk because the 'windows' were already painted gloss black, then masked over. I hoped that the paint wouldn't lift when I removed the tape.
  9. Amazingly this is the single most expensive component I had to buy. But the fake sponsor stickers annoy me. I will need to dig up a Traxxas sticker sheet for real sponsor logos. I've seen a lot of repro sponsor stickers but they are either too costly when you factor in shipping, or the print quality is poor. The PS, definitely not ABS, interior painted.
  10. All right, on with the show. Planning out wire lengths, everything still a little messy at this stage. The rubber switch cover will not be replaced. The old one has crumbled to dust and the new ESC switch can't be fitted there anyway. Gearbox is shined up. The prop shafts are quite knackered with age and the rear especially has a lot of wear. I will keep these genuine items and replace them with telescopic propshafts from a present-day 1:10 crawler. The leaf springs still do their job but are not what they used to be after supporting the car's weight for 30+ years. This car had A LOT of missing screws and wonky, wrong length ones. I am guessing that they fell out with use, and those in important structural areas were replaced with whatever was on hand and those not structurally required were simply left out and never repaired/replaced. The single vintage very rusty rear suspension trailing arm, replaced with genuine rere Tamiya parts. Bodywork with the front intake grille, seen here stripped of paint and sandpapered and wash clean. To my disappointment, I realised that the turn signals in the bumper are missing. They appear to have never been fitted ever, because there weren't even glue marks in the recesses. A week later...headlight lenses are crooked because that's they way they were glued to the chrome sockets, and seemed impossible to pry apart. I polished the headlight lenses to a good shine but the glue stains inside, I could do nothing about it. Turn signal amber parts are just styrene sheet airbrushed orange and lightly glued from the back. The possibility of me scoring genuine vintage turn signals for this car is practically nil at this point, so I do the best I can manage. The 'pimple' visible on the left side in the grille here is the result of original owner using a too-long screw to connect the alum bracket behind it.
  11. Into the brake fluid bath it goes. The taillights as they were. Taillight lenses stripped of paint. After 3 days of soaking, followed by a wash and sandpapering, we're now getting somewhere. It appears that under the paint, the black windows on the cab were originally 'painted' with permanent marker pens! Repairing the busted A-pillar. I cemented styrene strips to the back for proper bracing, or else it won't hold. This was followed up with 2-part epoxy putty to fill the cracks, and more sandpapering.
  12. https://offroadaction.ca/2014/05/07/restored-1980-toyota-4x4/ Came across this while researching, so I thought to leave it here. A beautifully restored 1980 Hilux.
  13. Body work time. As it is, a full strip and repaint is in order. Windscreen has a massive crack from a rollover that also broke the A-pillar. The pillar will be glued with plastic strips and puttied. But the windscreen crack is as it is. I want to retain the vintage toyota visor sticker, so a replacement window isn't on the cards. A side note, the body is PS. Polystyrene. Not ABS. Absolutely not. I hate how 1000s of articles on the internet talk about 'how to paint an ABS hard body shell'. Nice perpetuated piece of misinformation. ABS and PS really isn't the same. PS is the same material that model kits are made in. ABS is the tough stuff that often makes up Tamiya's plastic chassis tubs. A well-meaning friend strongly suggested that I strip the paint with acetone/nail polish remover. No Way Jose. Acetone dissolves PS plastics on the spot. And those in the know, will know that the vintage Bruiser body is not the same as the mountaineer/mountain rider/ rere Bruiser body shell. Paint stripper of choice for this? Brake fluid.
  14. Yikes. This is the condition of the brass bushing of the rear propshaft's bevel gear.It's gouged to bits and very knackered. I think it caused extra, unnecessary wear and tear on the rear driveshaft gears, as the shaft was just wobbling around with a lot of play.
  15. @SupraChrgd82 Very cool to know. Now you got me thinking about bearing replacements. It'll only work for the rears though, since the vintage Bruiser uses one-way bearings at the front hubs to reduce strain on the front spool.
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