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Saito2

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About Saito2

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  1. I've been slowing down of late at the work bench and my progress on Tamiya projects has suffered as a result. I think I've been consciously/subconsciously avoid working on things because of the pain that I now associate with it. I have chronic debilitating lower back pain. I have to wear a brace during work hours to essentially remain upright. I have to keep my back straight at all times. Getting this checked or "looked at" isn't a financial option. I can't afford the test/scans let alone any operation/therapy. I have found that I was increasingly needing my brace to even sit for more than 10 minutes at the work bench. My back would simply "go out" just puttering away on my models. It takes about 2 weeks on average for my back to return to "normal" after it goes out, so avoiding this is obviously important. It dawned on me (after knocking my back out last night, despite using my brace) that my failing eyesight may be partially to blame. I wear bifocals. I have never gotten along with them very well. They never seem to provide the magnification I need at the distance I work from my eyes. I frequently look over the top of my glasses to really see what I'm doing. I think I'm inadvertently leaning forward, closer and closer to my work to see what I am doing, thus putting strain on my lower back. Any suggestions on a remedy for this situation. The best I can come up with is making a very high work bench I can stand at, that brings the work piece up to my field of vision without leaning over. Any other suggestions are welcome.
  2. Amain is selling these for $242. If someone buys this now and waits until Tamiya discontinues it again, it could resold for probably $300+ mere months after production ceases, lol.
  3. Yes, I care a great deal about decals. Too much. As a kid, they were the part that really brought the build alive, each decal bringing the buggy or truck closer to the image in the catalog I had lusted after. Now they are a source of incredible stress. Any decal that is slightly crooked or off center drives me nuts, my eye being immediately drawn to the imperfection that a layman/woman would never pick up on. The bigger the decal, the bigger the sigh of relief when it is properly positioned. Some decal's position on the body is so vague in the manual that I find myself going back through old Tamiya photos to look for a consensus on where exactly it should be placed. I take my time, doing a few decals a night to try to reduce the stress but, boy is it a relief when the last one is down. So, in the end, I hate decals (and paintwork) now but they are a necessary evil in my mind.
  4. Someone here posted a pic of the 2013 tower overlaid with the original '89 FRP tower and the mount holes practically lined up so I guess the shape (and material) redesign was more for strength. As you stated, the ride height difference must come from the lack of the original lower BF8/9 shock mounts. The lowered ride height does allow the chassis to bottom on full compression I believe.
  5. I remember V. It was quite the big deal when broadcast TV was the norm. I wanted to see it, but it came on after my bedtime IIRC.
  6. Going way back. I was at the Maryland MARC RC show as a kid and saw one of the local hobby shop's booths had a Wild Willy M38 on sale for $90. They were getting scarcer and typically went for $120. I was still in the midst of saving my pocket money for a long time to buy my first Tamiya and probably only had $50 saved up to that point. My dad had taken me since my grandfather was hospitalized at the time and decidedly did not like the exaggerated proportions of the Wild Willy, mumbling something about it looking cheap and childish. No hope of a loan there, lol. By the time I had all the money saved up, the Wild Willy was gone from the shelves and I settled on a Lunch Box, which in hindsight, was a great first vehicle. Tamiya USA was selling that GF01 Monster Beetle TR thing for $165 a couple years back. I should have snagged one for my daughter to build. I should have bought one of those Associated Worlds cars when they were being sold off cheap too. A lot of misses had to do with timing. I saw the original Avante and Egress both being sold for $99 in the mid 90's but I was a broke college student. On the backside of that, as a struggling new home-owner, I didn't have money to be blowing on things like a Juggernaut 2 either. Nowadays, I'm pretty happy with what I have and don't really need anything else (until Tamiya rereleases the original Wild Willy that is, lol)
  7. Very sad to hear. He will be greatly missed here. RIP WillyChang.
  8. You swapped them side to side (which, in turn, flips them) so the shock mounting hole is on the top of the arm like @toyolien's example? When they are swapped/flipped like this, there is a clearance spot (visible in toylien's pic) where the arm dips down to allow clearance for the roll cage flange nut that is contacting the arm in your video.
  9. I think @RichieRich is correct. The arms need swapped side to side. That shock mount hole should be on the top of the arm.
  10. Its always been my theory that Tamiya, who had ridden the wave of the Clod Buster being the "biggest" for many years (until the original Kyosho USA-1 electric came along to match its size, but then Tamiya responded with the taller Bullhead), fell into that mindset with the Terra Crusher. "Think the T-Maxx is tough, boys and girls? Well check out how big our Terra Crusher is!"
  11. If I don't find it, I will try this route. @Twinfan is correct about its purpose. It fills the hole under the top cover and provides maybe 25% of the surface for the outer bearing race to ride in. The L2 is another example of the strange design issues with the car. There was no reason L2 shouldn't have been molded into the top or bottom cover (or both). There are numerous examples where is seems parts were "forgotten" or missed in the design process. Weird tiny parts like L2 were created to fill the gaps at best or at worst, Tamiya just tells you to stuff foam tape in a crevice left between two parts. Its a wonderful new design let down by a strange half-baked feeling at times. I know, lol. The logic part of my brain keeps telling me that. Thank you. That helmet was actually my grandfather's when he flew in WW2. I will recheck for the part tonight. Perhaps time away will yield more fruitful results. Thanks for tolerating my little rant. Edit: I found it! I found it! Thank you all for "giving me a shoulder to cry on", so to speak.
  12. I succumbed and bought a TD4 at a cheap price. Its been an interesting build up to this point where things took a sharp dive. The kit in question was about $100 cheaper than anywhere else. In exchange for that cheapness, I got a kit that wasn't packed well (basically at all). With no packing material and our lovely postal system, the kit came mangled, but at least un-punctured. I dealt with it and was prepared for it because of the inexpensive price. What I did not realize was all those nice reinforced plastic parts snap off much more freely from their sprues than the usual ABS stuff. As such, the roughly treated box had many parts loose, floating around in their bags. Well, I got to the front gear box L sprue and I can't find the very small "L2" part. Where it went and how I lost it, I'll never know. Buying a whole new L sprue for that one tiny part is like $30. I don't know if I can bring myself to do that. And so, as part of my own stupidity and cheapness, I will box up this half finished kit, put it far back in a closet and try to forget about my folly. One tiny tiny piece of plastic smaller than my thumbnail and I'm out $30. Like I said, one of those days.
  13. The TXT-1 story is an odd one. Its development starts with the failed Juggernaut trucks. Even if the Juggernaut name wasn't tainted by the defective drivetrain fiasco, the concept of a leaf sprung truck introduced in 1999, emulating 1:1 monsters from the mid/late 80's was actually mis-reading the market. It wasn't until Tamiya saw Kevin Hetmanski's truck based around the Jugg2 drivetrain that they went that direction. Hetmanski's truck he came up with is very close to the production TXT-1. Tamiya actually took it to Japan to model the production version after. There's a cool Youtube video on its history. The CR01 seemed very much like Tamiya was "getting in" on the crawler action in the market. Of course, only Tamiya could come up with something as interesting as the CR01, a crawler attempt for sure, but filtered through their own unique design-lens.
  14. The Vajra. Lets take the Avante series, yes, the Avante series, and make a racing(?) truck out of it. I can never remember exactly how to spell its name either, which looks/seems strangely like a naughty word.
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