casethejoint

Excellent - thank you both, knew they must be out there somewhere

There always used to be a few on eBay, but searching (UK) showing nothing. Anyone know if any other online stores still sell these ?

Welcome to the nut house! Great collection of bits. How long until you retire? I'm sure we'd all like to see what you come up with

Absolutely stunning!

Dogbone time.... And then some uprights. Sort of ends up looking a bit like: Then it all drops in with a pin and couple of screws. Nice and easy. Starting to look like a roller.... Front next, pretty much the same thing. The mounts are just sitting in place - makes it a little tricky to get it all together without it falling apart. The manual says to great the inserts on the ends of this pin, but I chose instead to grease the female side as it was a little easier and less messy. Then they drop into place and this blue alloy stay is screwed into the chassis to hold it all together. I love simple design like this. Front uprights. Different colour dogbones, not sure why (different metal?). Again pretty straightforward. Then they drop into the place the same as the rear - couple of pins and stays. "Bit too much blue alloy and carbon on that Tamiya", said no-one. Ever.

Took a break from that to tackle the bit I really don't like, which is cutting out polycarb. Edged all the edges in rough with a Sharpie as a guide. ... and took my time with the cutting. No mistakes, thankfully. I've cleaned the edges with 600 grit silicone paper.

Will be box art. I don't usually (or at least not without a twist) but it seems appropriate here. I have some PS54 and also some TS Cobalt Green for the hard plastic fin and other bits. I did take a look at the stickers earlier, and sh*t myself :). There's a lot of stickers. And I mean... a lot. Scary. I might opt for painting the black rubber parts instead. Anyway we're not there yet, so fresh underpants at the ready we can start on that steering rack. I don't like making tie rods/turn buckles. But this tool does at least make it a tiny bit easier. A couple of screws and the steering rack is pretty much there. It's all double-ballraced and feels very smooth indeed. Best steering rig I've seen in a Tamiya. Couple of bolts and it's on the chassis. It really is smooth, and there is zero slop which is something I've never had in any RC car. Am very impressed.

You're absolutely right Graeme - I typed "injection" without even thinking about it. I'm sure they're vac moulded. Even so, someone had to make a former just for this kit. And yes they use them in biscuits but probably for sale in the millions. I still think it's representative of Tamiya putting quite a bit of effort into this packaging. I love it Time to finish off the bulkheads. Almost all blue, simple construction. Won't bore you with the detail, suffice to say it all goes together easily. Next up, steering rack....

Not much to say here other than easy to build and actually nice and smooth. Again if you were racing, you'd probably do some polishing and use a higher end ball and grease. But not for me, it would break my heart to have a high speed crash in this one, so keeping it all stock.

Hi all. It's been a while since I've been able to find time to do anything Tamiya related (18 months or so I guess ). Anyway, I've had a bit of time lately and fancied getting my Tamiya wrench dirty. I have a part finished Funco SRB conversion on the bench (which I will get back to) but that requires some engineering effort/hard work and I fancied something a little more "ready to build". So I've had this baby on the shelf for a while now. I bought it about 5 odd years ago on eBay for £375 (I think), which was a bit of a steal then and looking at recent prices it was a great buy. I always intended to build it, I'm not one for NIBs staying that way forever. Everything gets built eventually :). That said, this is one of the few examples where I completely understand people leaving them NIB. For those that don't know much about this kit it was released in 2006 as a commemorative model to celebrate the original 934 from 1976. It's a lovely model and it's worth taking a good look at the packaging, as it's without any doubt for me the nicest that Tamiya has ever produced. This is high end blister packaging :). It's actually two part, and the outer skin lifts off to reveal the parts in the inner skin. Lots of blue in here. And lots of carbon. And lots of that reinforced plastic (the dark grey stuff). The kit itself feels very TRF, just in display packaging. TRF dampers I think, too. It comes with this nice fold out which explains about the model release. You can see Tamiya went to a lot of care and attention here. Great details. Someone loved designing and making this kit and really thought about the experience of the person owning and opening it up. Lovely job Tamiya. I'll try and do my bit by putting lots of care and attention into the build. The carbon is marked up "30th Anniversary". Again feels very TRF to me, nothing cheap about this kit (well, maybe a couple of small things - more on that later). Note the German flag colours here (from memory they did the same on the Black Porsche special edition?). Outer skin off one of the blister type packs. Again, the care and attention to detail here is great. If you think about it, someone had to make a pair of injection mould formers just to make these blister packs (inner and outer skin). Only usable on this (limited run) kit. Reminiscent of the 70's/80's kits like the SRB that were vac-formed on cardboard, but upscaled. Did I mention lots of blue here? OK, on with the build! So first step is to CA the carbon. And I skipped that. Two reasons - first, whenever I've tried to do it I've made a mess, and mine always look sloppy and I don't like that look. Secondly, I'm only ever going to run this lightly and carefully, for obvious reasons. So I'm not really interested in the re-enforcement, which I'm also a little dubious about as I've read mixed opinions on it here. So I went to what is technically step #2 which is middle section motor mount and spur arrangement. The manual does actually mention that threadlock isn't required. I'm not sure why - due to all the alloy, there's lots of metal on metal and I've never had an issue with using threadlock, so I used it anyway, on all screws going into alloy. Next up we'll attach that to the chassis and put together the main bulkhead supports. Black and blue Going to be a pretty chassis this one I think. It's based on the TA05MS, but slightly shorter to take the Porsche body. Diffs are up next. Pretty standard affairs, not quite TRF quality and here's where you start to notice a few things you'd probably change if you were racing this thing. Like the bearings, which are absolutely fine, just the typical packed with grease variety and probably good for long life but not speed. Again, speed isn't what this is about for me so I'm not upgrading them. Will be building the whole kit stock as intended.

EPIC.

I always liked the "wolf in sheeps clothing" idea and having already put some LIPO 7.4 2S cells into a vintage SRB style Tamiya case, I thought I'd try the same with a receiver. So here we have a FrSky (great value for money FASST compatible 2.4ghz Rx) going into an old Acoms MKII receiver: It's held down with some servo tape. Ever-so-slightly reconstructed the servo plug holes so that I could just pass everything through: ... and hey presto, one period looking SRB that's actually 7.4v LIPO with 2.4ghz FASST radio Oh, PS - yes the ESC is the original period Acoms. I don't have an old broken one otherwise I'd probably try putting a modern ESC inside the case

Sorry, I probably just should have left it. It was about Fibre-Lyte and how their service works. But I found their website and info. Great to know, certainly a bunch of stuff I now can get made

Fantastic project :). <edit>Deleted question - found the answer with Google </edit>

@shodog - that box is clearly not lead lined - are you mad? Safety first. You should know better.

Great idea.

I'm having a productive Tamiya week Tire lettering and rear tailgate on the F150 done. Now just awaiting a receiver, which is due to arrive tomorrow, and I'll take it for a spin. Still on the lookout for a "F O R D" set of tailgate letters....

Did you manage to get any? I've just come across a few of these in my box of bits, new from kits I think where I've put in a different motor Message me your address and I'll stick them in post to you.

The X150 got a new tailgate and sunroof today, courtesy of a Blackfoot tree. Also got to use the spray booth again and help conclude that dishcloths make the best filters Pretty happy with the colour match. I mixed it myself - Tamiya X-7 red with a tiny dash of orange. Left matt to match the original faded and matt'ed off shell. Sunroof needs another couple of coats but I ran out of red so that'll have to wait.... Anyone know where I can get the Ford tailgate lettering without having to spend £20 at Shapeways (or make them myself) ?

As mentioned if you can live with a little noise you can use a regular compressor which will be a fraction of the cost of a dedicated airbrush compressor. And as mentioned above a car inner tube will get you started, as will rattle can air supplies (although cost of those will add up quickly so I'd recommend not going that route). Spray booths are pretty easy to DIY :

Booth got some action again today. Rear tailgate and sunroof for an X150 SRB. I have now tested a few filter materials - 2mm black carbon stuff on eBay, some white paper-like stuff very similar to disposable face mask material and the classic dish cloth. Surprised myself but have to say that classic dish cloth wins, by a fair margin. Excellent balance between "catch the paint" and "don't constrict airflow too much". On top of that of course it's cheap and very easily and readily available. With my airbrush (typical acrylics at ~14 psi) it keeps up pretty well and almost no overspray/fumes leave the booth. With rattle cans (I use Halfords here in the UK but I imagine worldwide they're probably not that different in terms of pressure etc) it does struggle to keep up and if you don't pause every few seconds you can see a build up of fumes and overspray inside the booth that gradually creeps out. Reality is I'll continue to spray rattle cans outdoors when the weather is good, but I can airbrush year 'round in the garage now If you look at this pic you can see what the dishcloth is catching (it was originally blue + white). I can't find any overspray anywhere in the garage (and it would go *everywhere* before I built the booth ).

No that makes perfect sense actually. I think you mean like this (using my original shock shafts in the shoe rather than your suggested regular shock ends + bolt which I think might shorten the travel too much?):- Which is a nice idea because (a) non-destructive to wishbone and (b) I can probably use a standard tamiya rubber bushing + metal insert. Rear-most shock might rock a little but that'll just add to the fun. I like it, thanks. Sold Smoke, mirrors and great camera angles

Thanks Chris but no it's the black ones for the steering tie rods. I have plenty of them, just haven't got to it yet. @moffman - nope, different one. This was not in that good condition, had red wheels when it came and the body is different. It is red though ;). I'm liking the red colour - grew on me.

Thought I'd get some pics during a rare moment where this shell is all one colour! Still lots of filling, sanding, priming (moved onto white primer now in final stages) going on... Here's where I am on the double shock mount thinking. Ignoring the top mount for the moment (which should be a fairly simple bracket I can fabricate in alloy), I'm thinking about a "shoe" in alloy that takes both shock shafts, held in holes with M2 grub screws and I'll attach that to the rear wishbone standard shock mount with a screw which I'll drill all the way through. The above is an initial mock up of the shoe part so no M2 hole taps yet, or other mounting - it's all just resting in place. I think this might just work, but I need to build in some flex here, so this week I need to see if I can get a rubber "sole" onto the shoe so that it's not such a direct mechanical coupling. For any latecomers to this thread the reason I can't mount the shocks normally is because I've reduced the track width at the rear meaning even a single shock mounted in the traditional way rubs against the rear tire. Any thoughts much appreciated. Once I drill the hole in the rear wishbone to mount this I'm kind of committed, so will sleep on it a day or two before making any final decisions

The old Ford XLT150 SRB that I bought from a TC member (for the life of me can't remember his name/handle at the mo!) about 4 years ago finally got taken out of the box and fixed up today. It arrived in reasonable condition already. The plan was to built an authentic runner with a restored shell, but the original shell that came with it has really grown on me so I'm keeping it as is. New bits/upgrades include: - Tamiya ball diff - Stainless steel screws - Alloy wheels (Pargu) and new rubber - New radio box from re-re - Coil over shocks (RC channel) all round - NIB vintage Acoms AP35 speedo - New re-re front bumper - Not new but fairly mint vintage Tamiya black motor - 2S LIPO "hidden" inside a classic vintage hump back case Couple of things to finish up like a missing real tailgate + sunroof (I have a replacements, currently in primer), tire lettering and it needs a new set of ball cups and a receiver. Other than that pretty much ready to run now. Looking at the spec, other than the stainless screws this actually was my dream SRB as a youngster back in about 1983, but couldn't afford it. So I guess today I built my nostalgic dream buggy