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#58116 Dynastorm refurb...

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Howdy folks, new build thread and a few of firsts (for me):

The first first is that this is a refurb project and not a NIB box - PERCYMON this is your fault!!! I've been really impressed with your refurbs and wanted to have a go at it :)

The second first is that I have never had a Dynastorm before, nor a Madcap, or Astute. The closest I had was a Striker when I was a kid (my first Tamiya). No disrespect to the Striker owners on here but I think the Dyna is in a whole different league... I tend to gravitate more towards 4wd, however I fell in love with the look of the Dynastorm last year and I figured that this season I would give one a go.

The third first is that this is my first build project of the Winter season. During the summer it's model jets for me and Winters are reserved for Tamiya. So here is the stake in the ground and I hope that over this season I can bring you some interesting projects to look at (both refurb and NIB).

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Ooh, looking forward to this! I love the Dyna Storm too and long to own one someday. You going box art or something else?

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Make sure you take it out for a bash first - the DS is such a nice drive - and you might not want to once it's been polished up!

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Looks pretty good as it is. I think it's going to look even better when you're done with the work. Oh, and some action pictures of that buggy won't hurt! ;)

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Looking forward to following this thread, I love the dyna-storm but have yet to own one!

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Ooh, looking forward to this! I love the Dyna Storm too and long to own one someday. You going box art or something else?

Thanks Steve, I intend on having two shells. One in box art, and one for running. That plan is still evolving though.

I well know this model.

Max

Very interesting Max! please share the details :)

Make sure you take it out for a bash first - the DS is such a nice drive - and you might not want to once it's been polished up!

thanks! I was pretty tempted alright to throw in a motor and rip up and down the street, however I wanted to take everything apart first and do a thorough check over. When I have everything checked and OK I will give it a few light runs.

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I have a few updates to post but only short time right now, but let me give you a taste for what's been happening with project Dyna Refurb:

Removing the shell and wing I can see that more or less everything is there and the car is in tact. You can see a small box of parts that I got with the model. I was surprised to open it up and find many interesting parts, what seems to be almost enough to make a second car!.... but more on that later.

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I want to get my Dyna running just right, so I decided that I would give it a bit of a strip down and make a list of anything that might need changing. The objective here is to come up with something that is 50% shelfer, 50% runner - lets call it a 'lite runner' :)

Taking the wheels off I can see that there's a lot of dust/dirt/grime all over the model - that's ok because it can be cleaned but what is it hiding?

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The wheels and tires have seen better days. There's a lot of kerb rash on a couple of the rims and the tires are quite worn down. They'll do for running, but not shelf duties. The bearings look dirty but feel free running. I will give them a closer look over/clean before assembly, however I do have a few new sets of bearings to hand if needs be.

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Just a quick note on how I am running my refurb. I have a copy of the Dynastorm manual that I downloaded from the Tamiya site so I went right to the back of the manual and worked my way to the front, dissasembling the parts and assemblies as shown. I grabbed 3 Hitec servo boxes to hold the screws, nuts, and bolts as I went - I have labelled these A, B, C and I am putting each screw in to each box as per the manual so when I go to reassemble I know I am looking in the right place for the right screw.

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The other thing I have done is made a list with two columns. On the left is every part/screw that is OK and does not need replacing. On the right are things that I know I need to replace or things that might be optional to replace. As you see my photos come online you may notice the list growing! :) I don't want to buy a whole car of new parts (and a lot of parts are hard to get now), so in this case I am trying to clean/refurb everything I can, but if anything is just too far gone and a spare is available then it's going to be replaced.

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Removing the front reinforcing plate, I found that the plate itself is in good shape, however has the 'frayed' type of texture on the edges. My hope is that I can clean the plate, lightly sand the exposed edges then seal them with CA. If the part is still looking a bit tired then I will wetsand with a 1000 paper and spray them with lacquer. If that doesn't work or I wreck it in the process, there are several shops selling this part but for now it's on my 'refurb' column and not buy. The split pin mount is roughly OK and may only need a bit of a polish with autosol and a dremel, I have to checkout other alloy parts yet though to see if I might need to get that little accessory kit.

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The Dyna came with an Acoms servo, I have yet to test it, but I think it looks like a nice period piece so I hope to reuse it.

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Photo of the front end looking down. It's dirty/dusty in there, but despite that the steering works very smoothly. Super smooth in fact. I think this is testament to the Tamiya build quality at the time this kit was designed.

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Moving again to the back of the kit, I found that the gearbox cover (thumb piece) was quite loose. It was held on previously with a rubber band?? however on close inspection all of the tabs are still there and the main cover itself is in good nick so it looks like just an oring required. There's some non-standard springs in place there, however overall the shocks do seem to be holding oil and working correctly, they will get fully inspected none the less. The rear damper stay has seen better days as it's had a few flips and scrapes, I will try the sand and CA technique to see if I can save it though.

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Pulling off the main slipper cover and I can see that everything inside is clean and tidy. The MDC spring is not fully straight though so some investigation may be required there.

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The removable gear box cover should have an O-ring which seals it and keeps in nice and tight...

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The removable gear box cover should have an O-ring which seals it and keeps in nice and tight...

Cheers mate, yes I found that hidden away in the manual on page 14 part BF4 I believe :)

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Moving right along and I dropped off the rear arms. The underplate is scratched at the front but not terribly bad, at the rear its noticeably worn down. I think a previous owner has had a penchant for hard acceleration on tarmac with the dampers too soft... :/ Other than that though the rear arms are not too bad. A couple of dings and just quite dirty.

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After taking off the damper stay then we can see the gearbox and engine plate becoming quite visible.

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Removing the MDC and splitting the box, I found that the gears inside were in pretty good nick, and also using some red diff grease that I came across some years back. The smell of this stuff is unmistakeable and I've used it many times before to reasonable effect. Anyway I'm not racing, I own my Tamiya's mainly to build with some occasional running/hooning about :)

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I checked the ball diff and it was pretty much setup exactly like the manual suggested so just a reapplication of grease in the critical parts and I bolted it back together. Apart from a nasty scrape on the bottom of the box this part is in good shape and with a wipe down is ready to re-install. Although the MDC spring looks roughly OK, I will replace it as a matter of caution - they are after all only a couple of euro on ebay.

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The front end assembly is all there, however it's quite dirty and to be honest I was a bit dissapointed with the state of the under arms (and front bumper). OK nothing is cracked per say, however there are some quite severe gouges out of the arms where this little guy has been banging up and down concrete stairs or jumping off kerbs :/ On top of that the engine guard has had quite a severe beating - again it's in one piece but it's looking really worn. I am tempted to try Max's trick of solder/welding plastic in to the pieces, although I've not done it before so I'm thinking it would be a good idea to pracitce on some worn plastic first. We'll get to that, for now I am tearing down and inspecting to make up my parts list.

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I left a lot of the front end together as I was able to check it over easilly while it was off the car. My idea is that any parts that get replaced can be dealt with as a sub assembly to save me having just a huge scatter of parts to root through.

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So my list is complete. Don't be too scared by the right hand side, there's a few things to buy alright but a lot of those lines refer to screws that I felt were too badly marked etc, so just buy buying two screw bags it knocks out a large chunk of the list.

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So my parts orders are in and I am now just waiting for them to arrive. In the meantime I could get stuck in to cleaning parts with baby wipes to remove the (seamingly) years of grime this little mean machine has accrued. But don't worry, like the little car that could, this Dyna will reallys shine once again! :D

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No, this happen after the jumps. The Dyna Storm is a real jumper but, like every buggy, it hits the ground with the bottom.

Will you run this Dyna Storm?

If yes I could give you some tips.

Concerning the welding technics I should know that the black parts are not ABS so the friction welding maybe doesn't work. The solder iron maybe yes but it's very easy to make a mess and at the end you need many plastic material to add at the parts. Substantially it's a minefield.

Max

Moving right along and I dropped off the rear arms. The underplate is scratched at the front but not terribly bad, at the rear its noticeably worn down. I think a previous owner has had a penchant for hard acceleration on tarmac with the dampers too soft... :/ Other than that though the rear arms are not too bad. A couple of dings and just quite dirty.

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No, this happen after the jumps. The Dyna Storm is a real jumper but, like every buggy, it hits the ground with the bottom.

Will you run this Dyna Storm?

If yes I could give you some tips.

Concerning the welding technics I should know that the black parts are not ABS so the friction welding maybe doesn't work. The solder iron maybe yes but it's very easy to make a mess and at the end you need many plastic material to add at the parts. Substantially it's a minefield.

Max

Thanks Max, I will be happy to receive your tips! :)

I think this buggy will be a 'lite runner'. I will have to remind myself to take it really easy when driving as the Dyna's are getting quite rare now.

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The first tip I suggest you is to cut away the top corners of the rear tower for a simple reason.

Cut them like this:

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The last damper holes are useless. It's a nonsense use the dampers in that position.
But, if you roll or crash the car, these corners will dig into the earth and you will break the FRP tower or the tower plastic support.

Another tip is to replace the press nuts, where possible, with 3mm lock nuts.

Use the TR-05T grey parts, they are stronger.

Replace the D parts (rear arms blocks) with the grey parts, or alloy parts, or 3D printed parts.

Use a M3 thread cutter before screw the ball connectors to the front upgights and the rear hubs. This obviously if you replace these parts.

Max

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I forgot another tip: replace the plastic bushing with alloy on on the rear damper mounts. With the plastic bushing the rear dampers will never stay firms. If you look closely in my picture you can see what Im speaking about.

Max

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Max thanks for all of those tips, I will look in to all of them, maybe not on the first pass, however I hope to gradually evolve this Dyna in to something quite good.

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Mid week update on project Dynafurb. I took a closer look at the wheels/tires that she came with and these are indeed good 'ten footer' wheels, i.e. they look good from ten feet away. When you get up close and see the curbing then it's a different story :/

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They are however going to be ok for 'runner' purposes so I gave them a scrub up and also inveted some time with sandpaper to tame down the gouges a bit.

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With the added elbow grease I managed to get them to five footer wheels and decided I may as well try a spray job too

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Some coats of silver, and after a follow up of clear lacquer and it's been a useful experiment. We won't know how well they look until they have rubber mounted but for runner wheels the results are encouraging

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Next I pulled a few other parts out of my jumble box

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The rear damper support is quite shabby and I figured a light sand/relacquer might be in order. In order to practice I figured I would give the same treatment to the upper deck first. I also noticed that the FRP edges are quite frayed and grey and I presume have been exposed to the elements for many many years. Luckilly a light sand with some 240grit paper brings them back to life, and then also sealing the edge with CA should protect it going forward. In this picture I am showing the cleaned up edge on the top deck, and the bottom piece is the rear mount that I've CA'd the edge of:

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The 'Mechanism deck' (as Tamiya calls it) is pressed metal and has been stuck with some super sticky gunk, still it's no match for white spirits and some elbow grease...

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the plate is straight, however tarnished and scratched, so out with the Autosol polish to see just how good this metal is. For anyone old enough to remember polishing their parents/grandparents silver ware, you know what comes next.

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First it gets worse looking

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