markbt73

I've done it that way before. It's a little harder to see what you're doing when you trim it, but it's certainly doable. Just be careful when you're trimming not to scratch the paint. One thing you should do, though, is mark the body post and antenna locations (if there aren't holes or dimples already) before you paint, because it's almost impossible to find the correct spots once it's painted.

If I remember right, the QD buggies had a fairly normal-looking servo for the steering; it was just hardwired to the circuit board and mounted in an odd way. But it was a self-contained box with an output shaft. I'd assume the QD Clod would be the same?

You have the TEU101BK speed controller that came with the car, right? It won't give you reverse on the first push of the trigger. If you push and hold, you'll get brakes and the car will stop. If you push and let go and push again, you'll get reverse. It's a way to get 3 functions (forward, brake, reverse) out of a 2-direction control.

I vote:

No, no primer. I know I should have, but it's so hard to paint anything at all when you have no good place to do it. I just wanted it to be something other than plain white. So it's not exactly show-quality, but it's going to get all banged up anyway. And as it stands, it has kind of a cool mass-produced "Hot Wheels" vibe to it that I think suits it. Anyway, here's how it looks with the details painted and the stripes on: http://picasaweb.google.com/markbt73/RcStu...122587050833618 It still needs a rear spoiler, even though I know it will last about two minutes of running time. And some badges.

I've just recently ruined a perfectly good Parma Hemi engine kit by trying to customize it too much.

The disparity of the heights of the two bodies makes it tough to do a universal vertical mount, and the disparity of widths makes it tough to do a universal horizontal mount. I'm guessing that you'll have to change something to switch between bodies no matter what. As for placement of body posts, you could either drill out the holes where the stock ones go and attach them there, or you've got all that room on the back deck of the chassis. It would be easy to put posts there. In the front, you could do a single one, or two spaced close together, on the flat area just in front of the steering servo. I'm working on a spoiler for my R/T Lunchbox. I'm not sure it will be the right style, but I'll post a drawing of it here, as soon as I have it done. Maybe you can make it work.

Well, it's purple... The paint didn't turn out great, hard to do quality paint on an apartment balcony with cereal boxes as a "paint booth," but it's decent for a runner. Wheels have been painted silver on the outside and black on the inside, so no yellow shows at all. Now I just have to let it harden for a couple days so I can do the details. http://picasaweb.google.com/markbt73/RcStu...020545687320258

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=38294 We're taking 'em on a camping trip in two weeks.

If you're talking about the heatsinks on the back under the wing, they're part of the mechanical speed controller. MSCs work by supplying full power to the system at all times and bleeding off some power with resistors to slow the motor down. It's simple, but very inefficient, and the excess energy has to go somewhere, so it becomes heat, hence the heatsinks. ESCs actually control the flow of current instead of just bleeding away the excess. If an ESC gets hot, it's because of its own internal resistance to large amounts of current, not because it's wasting power in the form of heat to slow the car down. The "heatsinks" on the re-re Hotshot are purely for decoration; they're just hollow bits of aluminum stuck on there to make it look like the old version. For a heatsink to draw heat from the motor, it has to be attached directly to the motor can itself.

Wow... who knew little toy cars could be so artistic? That's beautiful, and a ton of fun to watch. Best shot IMO: the "flyover" towards the end where the red car clips the green car's antenna, and it "twangs" back in slow-motion. Hmm, let's see... can't afford a Scorcher, but if I lock the diff on my Grasshopper, and raise the suspension back up where it's supposed to be, and stick a Beetle body on it...

Bingo. The best hop-up is the one you make to the muscles controlling your transmitter, by driving and driving and driving some more.

I decided it was finally time to paint my Lunchbox shell. I originally just ran it plain white, with the stickers. Then I took the stickers off and was going to paint orange stripes on it like a U-Haul rent-a-van, but then got the crazy idea to paint my Grasshopper like a clownfish, so it got the orange and white treatment instead. I asked my wife what color I should paint the 'Box. She said "Purple." So I looked around at the shelf of spray paint in the hobby shop, and found a can of Testors Model Master paint, in Plum Crazy Purple, one of the old Mopar 70s muscle-car colors. The van's a Dodge, so why not? I have the shell stripped and disassembled, and I'm going to paint it tomorrow. I was just in the process of painting the wheels silver when it hit me: Lunchbox R/T! The hood will be flat black, to look like the lightweight fiberglass hoods. I'll ad some stripes, and a flat black rear spoiler, and try for an overall effect something like this, only a bit more square: I might try to do "540 Six-Pak" logos for it, too.

It's a temp gig with a company that designs and makes office furniture and cubicles and stuff. I guess they use Sketch-Up to do the quick and dirty drawings for approval and then move it into Autocad. I'm still waiting to hear back about it.

It's getting more common. You might find the odd manufacturer who doesn't sell their shells with protective film, but I would say that at this point most of them do.

Got a can of Plum Crazy Purple spray paint. The Lunchbox is due for a face lift!

TLT and Hi-Lift axle parts sets, eh? (re-visits idea of 2wd desert truck and realistic muscle car chassis...)

Just FYI, since I have a stock LB sitting right next to me: Clearance at lowest point (center of gearbox) - 1.25 in (32mm) Clearance under center of chassis - 2 in (51mm) It's taller than you think, and the 'Box is geared for torque, so it should go through grass pretty well. Traction might be a problem, but a switch to spiked tires in the rear should solve that. As for a twin brushless Clod Buster, there is just such an animal in the May issue of RC Car Action.

Yes, the front wheels will fit right on. Tamiya front axles are one of two lengths: either the short ones, which are used with all the small wheels (Frog, Brat, Grasshopper, SRBs, etc) or the long ones for monster-sized wheels (Blackfoot, Lunchbox, Wild Willy 2, and the Blitzer-chassis vehicles). (One day we ought to do a wheel compatibility chart to show what wheels fit what chassis without modification...) One more suggestion: get the Tamiya adapters for the rear, not the HPI ones. If you use the Tamiya adapters, which go on in place of the five-point adapters, the KBF rear wheels will bolt right on. If you use the HPI adapters, they go on over the top of the five-point adapters, and you'll have to modify them slightly to get them to work with anything but HPI rims. It's not hard, but it's an extra step.

Noticeable, but not huge. It's another way to tune the car for what you want it to do. If you drive in close quarters where you don't really have the room to open it up, you'll have more fun with low gearing. If you have a big open space, you might want to gear up because the car will seem too slow going across all that open space. Gearing lower can add run time, too, especially if you're braking and accelerating a lot.

A Leatherman is basically a Swiss army knife that folds open into a pair of needle-nose pliers. Has a knife, screwdrivers, wire cutters, etc. (No corkscrew though; I enjoy a good pinot noir, but you really shouldn't drink and drive. )

I had to download and learn Google Sketch-Up for a possible job today, and naturally the first thing I had to try drawing was a car. So here it is, my mutant-holiday-buggy-jeep-thingy, in all its 3D glory: http://picasaweb.google.com/markbt73/PlayingWithSketchup It's a fun program to play with, if you've never tried. All of this took me about an hour to figure out.

Yeah, my Alfa GTA shell has a couple of faint lines like that in it. If I remember right, so have a few others, like an M02 Porsche 911. Still light-years better than the shapeless polycarbonate blobs the rest of the industry puts out, though.

African or European?

Today at the thrift store I found a little shelf thingy that's exactly the right dimensions for RC cars. And the best part? Only $10! So here's the fleet in their new garage: