JennyMo

Yes, I was going to suggest that one too, although I fear you'd also need to change the wheels & tyres for the smaller Wheeler ones too - the Comical tyres look a bit too big - and we all know the stock wheels rub on the Turbo arches without a few mods anyway... fwiw. I think a 'rally' version of the City Turbo with the arches slightly cut away and all four Comical rear tyres fitted might be just the ticket? Jx

They fit as well as they were designed to do - in that the previous generation WR-02 chassis were always shorty comical monster trucks anyway (with oversize tyres), so the wheels never tended to line up perfectly in the arches anyway. All that ought to be be required it to use the correct/alternative body posts so that the chosen shell sits somewhere over the axles correctly. As you say, there is a Jimny in Lexan, and the FJ40 Land Cruiser too from the other WR-02 chassis vehicles - plus the classic Wild Willy 2 Jeep if you wanted a hard body with more detail. You can even get really creative and shorten pretty much any body to fit if you wanted ;o) STUMPkin STUMPscorcher STUMPkamper Good times! Jenny x

959 Re-re... I'm joking of course. Jx

Ha ha - funny you mention that - I met up with @Pintopower earlier this week, and we talked about doing just that! - ( he has one already of course) I've also had another idea which I think will work really well too... stay tuned ;o) Jenny x

Is it time yet? Soon... Jx

Quick Update: Honestly, I am getting very close to this being finished now - the front lights are installed, and I just need to get the rear lamps connected and some paint on the engine bay... however, I do keep getting new ideas which is why things are taking so long: photo. note everything is superglued in, just in case of a tip-over - nothing ought to fall out! for info. The contents of the load-bay tool chest are a mix of ProLine accessories - the power drill and hammer, and axle half-shafts below; the axe is a cheap accessory part (painted), while the grinding discs are worn Dremel cut-off wheels, plus there is an old shackle and a couple of torches ['flashlights' so as not to confuse the American readership] - plus a mix of M2 and M3 scale hardware... The blue shop rag is squares of real blue shop rag, stained with oil and thinned black paint… I made the toilet roll [as I did for the Baja Blazer] and the bundle of old blue masking tape is a thin strip of 1:1 tape I had stuck to my workbench, and there are a couple of scale soda cans in there too! More soon, I promise! Jenny x

Yes, it's worth noting that Cowboyjon is in the UK, so a lot of the good [cheaper] stuff we get here in the US is not necessarily the same price in the UK - think dollars for pounds (so at least 30% more money), plus there is shipping to the UK if there isn't a retailer there selling direct. This is why (when I lived in the UK) it was often cheaper to buy from eBay/the Far East retailers direct, as shipping was approximately the same. A secondhand SCX10/TRX-4 would be a good alternative too - but again, these cost more in the UK in the first place, so getting something clean for that budget might still be tricky. Good luck with your search CBJ! Jenny x ps. since this is Tamiya Club - is it worth considering a CC-01 based vehicle for your son if it's primarily trial running rather than full-on crawling he intends to do with it?

The 'best' budget crawler, probably, is going to be the RTR Redcat Gen 8 Scout (the latest version in green or purple), but that is going to cost you $299 (USD) plus shipping to the UK. If you can stretch to that bit extra it ought to be pretty decent out of the box for a good while, and spares (and upgrades) are widely available. Otherwise, taking a punt on any 'eBay special' can work out, but if parts do break it can be difficult to get spares which fit unless you are confident they are an exact dimensional copy to Axial [SCX10] for example. Hope that helps... Jenny x

Yes, WR-02C chassis (on the box) is the re-re version. Jx

Thanks you for your kind words 'Crumble! Yes, the whole family have got something to drive now - as per your list - and I felt it most appropriate to do a his n' hers with the two Jeeps as they represent a series of different approaches to the whole 'Jeep Thang' which I think ultimately complement one another overall, and ought to look good parked side by side. I'm glad you appreciate the effort that went into modifying the original Tamiya shell - I too was particularly pleased with how the door handles came out... they weren't strictly necessary of course, but I think helps retain the factory look - even if the handles are a slightly different shape [more narrow] on the real Wrangler half-doors. As for the rear arch mods - stretching the rear box/bed is easy enough on a build like this, but I'm also really pleased with having gone one step further and the overall look of having radius'd rear arches rather than retain the traditional angled style. As I mentioned above, I also ended up doing the same thing to Ozzy's YJ - cutting a template initially to follow the original arch, then using a compass (yes, old school - in fact probably the one I actually had at school!) to scribe the curve, slightly larger than the tyre diameter (so around 120mm in this instance, as both Jeeps run 115mm diameter tyres): I then put a thin layer of Isopon P38 over the joint sections, and sanded it back with increasingly find grit paper. With Ozzy's Jeep I wasn't too precious about smoothing off the body completely, since it's more of a rough and ready trail-beater (whereas I paid a little more attention to hiding the joins with Sharon's TJ) - and in both instances I used this opportunity to remove the checker-plate side panels and redo the rust patches too, considering where the most likely damage would have occurred in real use over the years... Indeed, I think that is the trick to making the weathering look authentic - consider where and what damage might actually occur - such as the paint chips on the panel behind the front wheel (in the photo above) as if sand and stones had been flung up, and concentrate on those area's particularly. The other option of course is to actually run the vehicle a few times and see where any actual damage/scrapes occur, then exaggerate those with weathering and additional paint and a heat gun etc. which is kind of what has happened over the past couple of years with Ozzy's YJ too. Of course there are also some wonderful examples of really extensive scale weathering that make it look like the vehicle has been left to rot in the desert (and then the rain) for dozens of years, with almost every panel riddled with holes and covered in rust, but personally I feel it is more authentic if it is slightly more localised - especially if the model is meant to represent a vehicle which is actually driven regularly... Certainly with this TJ build, I wanted it to look like it was in reasonable condition still, with just rust starting to appear around the wheel arches, door sills and hinges, and base of the windscreen - which are all common places on a rear vehicle of this age of course. Glad you like it! Jenny x

I know right?! - certainly with the Trailfinder dash parts, I've been wanting to try and use up my ever increasing stash of spares (and am slowly getting there, although equally I seem to be amassing an increasing number of shocks of the 'wrong' length these days, typically electing to replace the original cheapies with the better quality Gmade RSD versions on four of my builds now - including this one and most recently the Defender 90 updates too now), and this was just the ticket for the Tamiya Wrangler interior... although technically it's not the correct layout with a 1:1 TJ of that era, it's close enough - and ultimately of course as Patsy says: Jenny x ps. those Trailfinder side bars fitting so perfectly upside down was certainly a gift though! (or rather a $35 purchase to be accurate).

You're very kind... I'll pass your comment on to Sharon ;o) Jx

I apologise for the slight delay in updating this thread - I was so pleased with my rounded wheel-arch mods a few posts above, that I got distracted and ended up taking Ozzy's YJ Jeep apart and doing the same thing! (it's all sorted a repainted now - and will update that thread in due course); and this has been coupled with a general procrastination when it comes to detailing Sharon's TJ (waiting for various bits to arrive in the post) - still, I'm confident you'll think the wait has been worth it... Inside Job Following on from the photo of the modified Trailfinder dash on the previous page, I painted the column and centre of the steering wheel to match in the shade of baby-poo beige: ...and mixed and matched some Vanquish and Tamiya (Wild Willy 2) interior parts for the transmission tunnel controls: Cut and fitted some 0.75mm lexan for side windows and windscreen: ...and also modified and detailed a spare centre-console section from the RC4WD full depth interior set for the Trailfinder II (which I'd used in Hopper's HiLux) - this is basically what the interior looks like all together: Note. that the battery mount/engine bulkhead is still unpainted in the photos above as I'm still waiting on my resupply of Araldite epoxy to arrive from the UK to beef all the super-glued joints up before I spray it... Unfortunately I fear it's probably got lost in the Christmas post now, and have managed to find a US seller on Ebay and bought some here at an extortionate price - needs must! Gimme three steps... well, two actually. The other thing I wanted to address was the rather large [visual] gap between the bottom of the body and the chassis rails in this build - while it's not as obvious with the leaf sprung YJ I built previously (which had the body as low as possible against the chassis rails), this coil-sprung version - which also retains the full front fenders - required the body to be mounted just a bit higher, which left a lot of chassis exposed when viewed from the side. Not having the facilities nor experience to weld and solder here at home, I took a punt on a set of pre-made [metal] sliders for the Marlin Trailfinder, which were actually pretty close in length to the stretched sills on this TJ-L, and what do you know, they were the perfect fit!!! - even lining up with two of the [series of] holes on the chassis, so were directly bolt-on - result! It's worth pointing out that these double rail sliders are actually mounted upside down compared to the Trailfinder II application - the result being what would be the higher slider bar which wraps in front of the sill is now effectively a side-step, and helps to fill the space between the chassis and bottom of the bodyshell perfectly! Quite honestly I was amazed how well these off-the-shelf parts suited this application - the body sits perfectly level just above the inner slider bar, and the outer bar is angled down as a combined nerf bar and side step - and once mounted using the existing holes on the chassis, all I ultimately needed to do was trim approximately 5mm off the rear of the inner rails in front of the rear wheelarch to line everything up perfectly. photo. I'm currently toying with adding a couple of checker-plate tread panels on each side to complete the look! I've also chosen to add a few decals and badges to the front fender panels, again as you might find on a 1:1 TJ Sahara that's being utilised as mild trail rig these days - although I realise that these 'Sahara' logos are actually for the later generation JKs of course. photo. I really like how this Modern Masters Rust effect paint treatment continues to grow - the result even more authentic as time goes on. So I'm getting really close to having this finished now - all that remains is to wire up the lights, and get that engine bay painted - then it's time for Sharon-O to hit the trails! Toot toot! Jenny x

Love it... I thought car #74 (from 12m26s) looked a lot like the inspiration for the Wild One too! Jx

A quick update: Ha - following on from my rather longwinded reply to Tom above - it turns out I've started modifying the TJ even before it's finished! photo. the [stretched] stock 'factory' style fender extensions - even though I did my best to paint them to replicate faded black plastic, I really don't like them on the 1:1 Jeeps, and I don't really like them on the 1:10 either! photo. So Dr Dremel was carefully employed... photo. and some reconstructive surgery (similar to that which I performed on the BJ40 refresh recently) to create some rounded rear wheel arches in the flat fenders - much more betterer. The replacement arches are fabricated from 1.5mm styrene, cut to fit the angled apertures left by carefully cutting the fender extensions off, and transferred to a cardboard template. I'm still waiting for my replacement stash of Araldite to arrive in the post from the UK (old habits die hard, but honestly, it is better the US JB Weld equivalent), then I'll be able to fill and finish the arch repairs... it's actually tempting to leave them half finished in primer grey as a work in progress perhaps, but most likely I'll blow over them with some more TS-2 top coat* to provide a more 'cared for' uniform finish to this particular build - as I don't really think Sharon would be so scrappy ;o) *I'm also tempted to remove or paint the chequer-plate sill protection body-colour too, as I feel the silver stripe on this dark paintwork makes the proportions of the body look a little shallow overall, and also clashes with the gold wheels a bit. The other thing I'm working on is a dash to cover the horizontal battery bulkhead... and rather than fabricate a simple panel as I did with Ozzy's YJ, I felt this truck deserved a slightly more detailed and 'luxury' interior in which for Sharon to reside. A quick rummage through my spares/abandoned ideas box revealed I had an unused dash panel for a Trailfinder II (Hi Lux cab), which was just the right length to fit inside the Tamiya Wrangler shell - all it needed was the curved rear portion cut off so that it fitted square to the Jeep bulkhead, and then painted to colour match the seats, together with some details such as the radio and heater controls: photo. I was amused to find that RC4WD have actually moulded the radio with one of the buttons missing (2nd from the left), in an effort to be truly authentic to an early 80's Toyota pick up! I'm also experimenting with the centre console detailing - the gear lever is from a Vanquish VS4-10 Pro kit, which seems to fit particularly well: More soon! Jenny x