raysan

Well I've read often enough in this forum about guys finding old vintage cars and well now it's my turn I guess! I thought I should share the good news with some people who would also appreciate it . I was buying some things from a local hobby shop that was closing down and they said there was some old bits and pieces in the loft above the dunny that I might be interested in. Well I couldn't resist and definitely didn't need to be told twice so I fought my way past the roaches and spiderwebs and found some old Tamiya boxes....This got my heart going straight away. There was a Grasshopper box, an F150 Ranger Blackfoot box, a couple of random cardboard boxes and a Nichimo Vantage box! Plus a whole heap of Nikko boxes and a 1/14( or maybe 1/12 cant remember, I put that in the container already for another day) of a Tamiya Manta Ray. Well I was pretty happy at the find so I opened up the first box, the Grasshopper, built with radio and other stuff in it. Ok I thought, its a bit dusty but looks pretty complete, wonder what the rest turns out. I opened the Blackfoot box hoping I might find a buddy for my Monster Beetle......no Blackfoot but there was a pretty much complete hardly used Super Shot in there also with a radio, as far as I can see the bumper mount is busted but the rest is in pretty good shape. Cool I thought. Straight into the Vantage box next. I'd heard of these and remember Nichimo from the magazines back in the day. Fair dinkum! fully built hardly a scratch on it Vantage with Futaba Attack radio and manuals for both. Spotless gold wheels near new tyres and the only thing missing was the wing and rear diff!! hahahah I then realized there were no mounts or output shaft and so I checked the manual and the pictures on the box and I quickly realized and remembered at the same time that this was a front wheel drive. Awesome, how good was this day turning out to be!! So I took the 3 boxes down and grabbed the first random box I could find. Ha a Frog! with radio too! man I always regretted selling mine to a bloke who left town for $50 that I never saw, stupid how these things can grate on a bloke for so long...must have sold it in yr 9. But now I had one in my hands again. By now I was feeling pretty excited, funny how something so simple can get the blood going hey. So I opened that last box expecting my luck to run out soon but nope, this was going to be a good day!! Near complete hotshot!! also with radio, dusted it off and I rekon it has probably been used once! and crashed once! hahaha, both top front suspention arms have cracks in them at the hinge pin but it should drive, powered it up briefly with a battery to the motor terminals and yep she ran on the stand. Has a fugly paint job done on the wrong side of the body shell but hey i'm not worried heheheh So anyway I made them an offer and bought the lot for a price that I rekon was very reasonable....... if you're reading thanks guys! . I still haven't had a look at the Nikko stuff yet, there was a caribic-star boat and a couple of Jet something or other buggies, 1 complete and a few bodies and half cars. The small Manta Ray was a puzzle still had its box but it was with the Nikko stuff so I left it in there for now. Now i'm having trouble trying to upload the pictures. If someone wants to give me some pointers i'd be happy to post some of them to share for you guys. I also bought a couple of boxes of parts and random Tamiya stuff. Will have a look through that and might be interested to do some swapping to get these 5 cars up and running again, just need a little time to deal with it all. Cheers

If you have any of the sprue from the body left it can be used. On the Pajero body I had there was a piece of the sprue or tree that was nearly a perfect fit in the hole, cant remember where it came from but it might have been in the sun roof area. Try putting a piece that is a tight fit in then use an ABS or styrene solvent cement to fix it in place. It will fill the hole perfectly. You can then let it set hard and remove the excess and sand. Any small imperfections can be filled when you prep the body for painting. I like to do this as it keeps the materials the same and will be less likely to show up when painted. One way to do it anyway. Cheers.

Ah bummer on not being able to download it, I have win 7 and had the IT guy at work show me where to find it as I didn't know it was there. I'm pretty bad on computers but still rekon that WMM is well worth looking into if you can. It definitely make's light work of editing for sure.

Howdy, have you tried windows movie maker? It's free and pretty easy. I've started using it after years of no luck with other programs. Basic simple to the point video editing. If you're interested I can send you a link to the first try I had with movie maker. Good luck

Just put a Bruiser on hold. I saw it on Saturday and nearly fell over when i saw the price at the hobby shop, i wussed out and didn't buy it. Anyway, i've been thinking about it ever since and remembered when i was 12 in Singapore on holidays and they had just come out and were over 800 bucks. That was when i bought the frog, my first rc and ive wanted a new Bruiser ever since. Fully happy now that I called the shop and asked them to hold it until Saturday when i can go in and get it......cant wait! Especially cant wait to try it out against my F350 highlift and scx10. Which one to buy.......all of em

Its a great looking chassis, be nice to be able to get it with a 1990 Celica GT-four body!

If your using shells that are old and need to bring some life back into them you could try a plastic rejuvenation product. We used to use one called Kunstoff, it was also an anti-static that helped a lot when you cleaned down plastic as the cloth rubbing on the surface causes static and dust sticks to the thing you're cleaning as soon as you've finished cleaning it! Pretty annoying. Here in China I use an anti static aerosol i found at a car care shop. The Kunstoff was too hard to find. I found that any abrasive used on the shells never helped me much, maybe others have had more luck than I have and it would be good to hear some ideas. But I have found that the normal window cleaners have amonia in them and they leave a cloudy finish over time especially Mr Sheen. On the plastic's, i rekon you're both right, happy to hear if anyone can expand some more though. The Polystyrene and ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) is pretty much the family. ABS is generally a lot tougher and is used in many forms for all kinds of uses,, one being injection moulding. ABS is made by polymerising styrene. The Styrene most guys use on the custom bodies ect is also an ABS type.

Hello, I have a terra crusher but sorry its back in Aus and i cant show any pictures. I had some real problems with mine, especially with the spur and pinion, and the longevity of the original motor, until i replaced it all. I dont know anything about the wild comando you mentioned but here's something for you. I ended up replacing the spur and pinion and clutch with that from, a Kyosho 1/8 buggy that was very popular around 2004-5. The local hobby shop always had them in stock. I had to cut some of the plastic gaurd from the gearbox to fit the larger diameter spur gear and had to do a couple of pretty simple mods to the slipper set up to make it all work. But the clutch bell and pinion were from an aftermarket company also to fit kyosho 1/8 buggies. The clutch itself was from another aftermarket company and it matched the bell, i think the bell and clutch might have even came together. Sorry its all a bit vague but it was a fair few years ago when i did this. The motor was a 0.18 OS racing job as it was the easiest fit. It was probably a little under powered for the beast of a thing but it worked well. The mods i mentioned sound a bit odd i guess but it was all finished in 1 night and then the next day i took it racing against some pretty powerfull modified HPI savages and the like at the local track. The first time since i had raced my monster beetle in the 80's. I ended up getting 3rd in the main final!! So you could say i was pretty pleased with the mods. I dont think the gearbox was ever the same since but that day of racing was worth it for sure. Just to see the looks on the faces of the HPI guys getting beaten by a Tamiya they all said would not last the day hehehehe. They all nicknamed it "The Peoples Truck" So if you have no luck getting Tamiya's parts to fit you might have some luck replacing the whole clutch, bell pinion and spur with some parts else more easlily sourced. Good luck with it.

Go on, you know you want one!

Not a whole car but does part of one count? It is the engine from the Fiat Abarth 1000 kit. Has only 3 spark plug leads becasue i ran out of wire......anyway i'm still looking for some matching wire to finish it off. I found some EVA foam off cuts the other day so decided to try adding an air filter. Its made with EVA foam and i used a piece of 1mm ABS, double sided tape and alfoil to make the chrome filter cover. Then i rolled it over a piece of mesh from the XR311 using an old vegemite jar to get the pattern. Was the first try and will do it agian next time without so much force. The chrome parts on the engine are also done with alfoil and double sided tape.

Had trouble fitting the body propery to start with. Figured out i just needed to press harder into the front mount. Should have some more pics soon enough of it fitting well. The pics i have so far are showing the body not forward enough, needs another 4-5mm and i don't want to post them because they look wrong. Now i've figured out why that happened i will post up some more later on, it was just figuring out how the body mounts worked. Still painting the driver and am thinking about some side curtains for the cab next. Will drive it around and then think of adding some weathering. At the moment i'm liking the new look. Will also paint the wheel nuts next.

Body fitting

Profile shot before trial fit

Body nearly done, watch out for those finger prints! Interior shot

Another angle

Trial fit the sub chassis

Paint the fire extinguisher Paint the passenger seat and check the fit.

Here are a few progress pictures of one of my last projects, a birthday present from my wife. Adding some reinforcing for the back shelf Dashboard reinforcing painted

The HPI cup racer Datto 1600 or (Datsun 510) is a very nice body, love it, looks good with good details and nice chrome touches. I also have the ABC Toyota Corrola Levin that turned out really nice. Its on a custom shortened M04 Chassis. I like the ABC bodies and would get another one if the opportunity came up. It came in a nice tough box also if your going to get it posted. I'd recommend either of these for sure.

A tip for helping to stop bleed under masking tape when spraying is to tape over and past the line where you want to mask up to. Then, with a brand new scalpel blade or similar (the sharper and finer the better 10A scalpes work a treat) you make a cut that is just deep enough to get through the masking tape and put a slight score into the plasic along the line you want to mask up to. Then peel off the excess tape. The cut does 2 things for you. The first is that it helps to stick the tape right down onto the surface as you cut. The second creates a phisical barrier in the slight score that will stop leaks dead, so long as you dont flood it. This should work especially well on your clear window surface. Only thing needed is a steady hand to cut to the line. Tamiya tape is really good too and i agree about the 18mm wide and under being better.

Not really stock any more. I've done a bit of work done on the suspention and used a few tips i found on hear to get better ground clearance. The TRF shocks make the biggest difference for the handling though. If your interested here's the list of mods from memory. -Tamiya alloy drive shaft and drive cups (best upgrade) -hobbywing brushless and exceed lipo (best fun) -full ball bearings (always) -Tamiya carbon chassis brace (probably does something to keep it all a bit stiffer but it looks cool too) -3racing steering set (after the original fell apart) and titanim turnbuckles and plastic cups for the links -Tamiya front one-way ball diff -i tried 3racing cvd's but in the end i went back to the original modified dog bones and drive cups. I found that shimming these up they had way less wheel slop than with the cvd's on the front end. (dunno why, i have a feeling the milling toerances where a bit out the day they made mine and besides that the alloy ones where way heavier) -rear Tamiya cvd's and diff out put set. -adjustable camber suspension arms front and back (plastic) -alloy pivot balls and retainers on front stock hubs -titanium king pins -TRF shocks ( played around with these and combos of different ends and internal spacers to get my ideal ride height for this park. -About 20mm travel, ride hight sitting still is about 13-15mm) -Tamiya rims and rally tyres -I might have carbon shock towers but cant remember as the car's at home and i should be working. -Alloy motor mount -cant remember drive ratio but whatever it is it seems to work for me. -Hitech hi-torque digital steering servo with carbonite gears. -Futaba 3PKS Fasst system I think this was the config when i made the video, there might be a few other changes but i cant remember. I really like my TT-01 and it was fun to build up and watch the thing turn from a bit of a pig into one of my favorite cars. All of the parts were bought on trips down to HK and at local hobby shops here in Shanghai. Thanks for the kind comment.

I finally got around to putting the video of the Lancia (TT-01)running the battery together. My first try at youtube. The battery goes pretty well and lasts about 45mins of this type of driving with the Lancia. In the f103GT it'll go another 20mins on top of that. Enjoy. Cheers,

I lived in Nijmegen for a few years, this museum is based around operation Market Garden and the liberation of Holland. Groesbeek is only a short bus ride from Nijmegen. Some great pictures of the parachutes, gliders and planes filling the air from taken from the site of the museum during Operation Market Garden. All of this area was where the action of the famous movie "A Bridge Too Far" was based on. http://www.bevrijdingsmuseum.nl/ They've got some nice models there and a pretty good little museum. Hope this might help. Cheers

1, They look so cool 2, Almost real in detail 3, Lots of metal parts 4, So expensive when i was a kid the only person i knew who ever had one was a mates dad and he never let us near it. Still want an original new Bruiser now. 5, You can change gears! Driving off road in 1:1 trucks is good fun and i do it a lot. But there also something about being able to try a hill, obstacle or a bog with your model car and get stuck, back it out try another gear and make it through. Even mates who never got into rc love the 3 speeders and line up to have a go. 1 white can if they put her on her side, 2 white cans if they roll her.

I'm liking the look of the cars in this picture for things to come from Mr T .