casethejoint

Knuckles and uprights.... Sorry, I ended up re-building these and forgetting to take photos along the way (I get enthusiastically carried away ), so these are now done:- However, I remembered that I had a pack of special alu hubs from Chris (Rogue Elements) from ages ago that were for my Hilux and never made it on, so I dug those out:- These are a beautiful work of art. BUT, big but, they're Toyota. So don't really fit on a Chevy. Totally wrong in all respects right? Or can I get away with it? Thinking on it.... the plastic originals I have are not too bad, but have been painted at some point and will need a delicate clean up. Pargu also has some black alu ones on eBay that are tempting... Bolted together it all looks a bit like this:- I have measured the tie rod and it's the correct length, but has quite a significant toe-in - is that to be expected? I may tweak that out a little.

Axle #2.... So the rear has a slightly different bushing in place - it's a flanged affair, a larger one than in the gearbox. I didn't measure it and look at replacements, as with the front their low on wear and I'll just run it lightly. Again I've just replaced two bearings where the second gear mounts and otherwise really just degreased, cleaned and re-greased.

Axles today! I had originally hoped to replace the bushes with bearings but after an hour or so of fiddling with with a makeshift tool to remove UJ pins (which was basically a bench vice and a bit of wood with a hole in it) I gave up. Not sure why this is proving so hard - I definitely did this with my Tamiya Hilux 3spd and I don't remember having such a problem. Were some of these factory glued, or maybe it's a temperature thing? Anyway, I'm only going to ever run this very lightly, so I figured it wasn't a major problem leaving the 3 brass bushes in place. They're very low on wear, and I was able to put 2 bearings in where the secondary gear sits. Better than nothing - at least I feel I have upgraded it Parts were all degreased and cleaned but no tumbler polishing or anything else needed I thought - they look great natural! All screws have been replaced with Stainless Steel too....

Three of these parts are done and out of the polisher after a few days. I couldn't fit all 5 in at once so have had to do in two tranches . This means I can't rebuild the gearbox for another week. I'll give these a quick clean but they've come out really well. What's great about the barrel polisher is pot-metal parts come out clean and smooth but not shiny. It's a kind of matt or satin finish that looks factory fresh and not "restored". It takes ages as you have to leave it for a few days, but at least it's zero physical effort... I have some time this weekend to carry on with the rest of the chassis and the body, and crack open a NIB Acoms 4 channel radio I have for this... so more pics and progress to follow!

Yep, it's the one and only J-man @shodog, nothing damaged on the J-Man roof fortunately.

Hi guys, I was lucky to find an unrestored one, and the hole in the bonnet is the only molestation (and fairly easily fixed). The J-man roof is probably now impossible to get hold of I'm sure. For me this project is a selection of parts I've been collecting over several years, so the largest ingredient is probably patience. I managed to get the original mechanical speed control, some repro rear lenses etc. Not expensive, but I had to wait. Tires though do pop up from time to time on eBay. They're not cheap though - I paid about £140 in the end for 5 (a single new one popped up on eBay before I got the second NIP pair). They're the same tires as on the Wild Willy 1, so worth widening search criteria to include that. Prices on them are rising - last sets I saw were heading up to around £100/pair. There were actually some repro tires on eBay a while back (first time I'd ever seen pattern part Tamiya tires!) but unfortunately they didn't have the Sand Tires Unlimited lettering on them so impossible to paint (not going to freehand that!).

Gearbox disassembly - I'm following the fantastic guide by Zepplin here : http://tamiya101.com/bruiser_transmission_manual.pdf Motor off: Stage 1: Stage 2: Stage 3: Stage 4: Case parts following a good dose of silicon remover: ... and into the barrel polisher they go while I go and degrease all the internals:- My experience with Tamiya "pot metal" parts is they need a good 3-4 days of tumbling in the polisher with green cone media. They won't come out polished, but they should come out looking factory fresh. So I'll be back in a week to let you know how that went and with some pics.

Taking a break from that, I decided to strip the chassis down - sorry but some of the pics got bajanxed thanks to some grease on the lens, so there's a bit gap in the middle, but you can at least see the condition from these. It's in fair order - nothing major broken, just needs a little TLC. ... and now all ready for a clean tomorrow:-

I soaked the body in brake fluid for about...... 2 years :). This wasn't particularly deliberate but I was all excited about starting the project, shoved it in the bucket of fluid and left it at the back of the garage whereby life promptly took over and did what life does. Anyway, the good news was it came out pretty clean and didn't require any scraping :). So, first up, the hole in the bonnet is bugging me. I backed this with some 1mm styrene so that I can start to layer up the front. Build up with P38 filler:- ... and this is where I've got to:- Needs a little more work. I've devised a system of gluing 800 grit paper to a toothpick which makes it relatively easy to shape this as I go. Another hour or two of fiddling and all should be good.

I love the three speeds, but the Blazer is special for me - no idea why. A bit like the Scorcher I guess, it's just a classic look. This has been on my to-do list for ages and I bought the project from TC member Kokuzu. Original pics:- On of the things I really liked about this one was that it came with a hand made alloy roof (I believe it's a J-Man work of art):- This makes it a bit special Unfortunately, it was packed terribly (wrapped in one piece of newspaper and then chucked into a box) so suffered not inconsiderable damage in transit from Germany to the UK. Radio box was smashed, front body mount bent beyond repair and a few other things. Annoying, but not a crisis as I have an immaculate condition radio box and picked up a body mount on eBay. If you look at the body pic above you'll also see that someone at some point has cut a slot in the bonnet - no idea why. Anyway, that's first repair. I have a few extra goodies too - like a NIB set of tires (I have 2 of these, so got all 4):- ... amongst other goodies :). More info to follow as I go....

I have a 25+ year old Tamiya 6v pack that is in near perfect working order (it did surprise me and I wouldn't say it's the norm).

Thanks zeppelin/matman. I'll expect some shimming from wear and tear but I guess what I was after was a sensible starting point. I think with what I have I'll start with no shims and check tolerances as I go.

Got it - thanks Zepplin, so on that basis I guess I'm looking to shim the bearing side and not the flange side ?

I have a quick question actually on bushing replacement. I note the guide suggests to use 4 x 0.5mm shims on the 850 flanged ball-races if you're replacing those bushings. I have some 850's, which appear to have a near identical flange thickness. The difference is about 0.08mm. Ballrace:- Bushing:- Is the gearbox really that sensitive that I'll need to shim this out or do you think I'll be safe with a straight swap ?

That's a fantastic piece of work Zepplin - thank you for sharing it. I'm going to go and pull to bits my Blazer right now

Heh, nice album cover. Your man needs a cigar now though . Has anyone done a General Lee Tamiya ? On the matt lacquer, you know what - you have to use what you can get your hands on. If you can't get it in Chile, don't worry about it. It's worth looking out for it (Tamiya do it in both aerosol and bottle if you can get those there) but I honestly wouldn't fret too much

I've been working on eyes today, trying to get a bit better at doing them (I was shockingly bad at this). Watched a couple of videos and read a few how-to's and got as far as this guy. Am quite pleased - a big improvement on my previous efforts. The right one I think came out a bit better than the left. Will try and few more and see if I can hone the skill!

Nice work - love the copper idea! Can you get matt lacquer in Chile? That can be used to good effect.

Thanks for the comments guys, and for watching I'm calling this done. I switched out the grey bumper for the J-Man one that I had, which matches the rollbar better. Decal wise I decided to just go with the Sand Rover bonnet sticker - had no choice as had to cover those holes - and that's it. I'll run it lightly. Might try a 3.7v LIPO on it to see if I can bring speed down a little (or re-gear it) as even with a 30 year old 6v battery it goes faster than I dare drive it

Awesome! I'm glad it all arrived OK and in one piece. I did warn you about the polystyrene explosion that was bound to follow opening the box Good job on those front suspension mounts! As mentioned above the pinions are press fitted to the motor. I did this once before with a 3-speed, years ago. I used a vice and basically squeezed it on making sure the motor shaft was taking the strain by being in contact with the opposite vice jaw to the gear. I found this video if it helps:- ... which is basically what I did but I didn't remove the stator, I was just careful to ensure the rear of it was in contact with the vice face. It's not an original hole. It looks to me like someone at some point maybe had the antenna mounted there? Two critical questions for this thread 1. have you named the driver yet? and 2. have you picked a colour?

Windscreen is on, front lights are in and the gear stick. In fact, I think I'm all done but for the decals :). Think I'll go light on those - maybe the Sand Rover bonnet sticker and C A L I F O R N I A.....

OK, dashboard..... I had some parts lying around from a while back (came from 4WDRC I think), and included a speedo and a rev. counter that I thought would work well here. I also had an ignition key socket and some keys I'm now onto the driver, after which it's front lights and rear number plate and I think we're pretty much there. Might start putting it on the chassis to see how it all looks together

Certainly good enough for my museum Erich! Some progress today - the J-Man roll-cage is on (these are fab, not sure if he's still making them?), interior painted with dark tan seats and a black floor pan. Rear lights are also on (these are Tamiya translucent red over silver which worked really well). There's some sticky residue left on the body from the masking tape (you can see it mottling the finish in the pics), so I'm pausing here to give it a good clean before I have a think about what I'm going to do with the dashboard (I have options - either kit sticker or some bits I've collected over the years - will get some pics up in a bit).

So, here's where we are so far. The gloss has had a week to harden off, which in my experience is about long enough, so I spent most of last night and a bit of this morning working my way through the MicroMesh. I tend to start with 3600 grade and work my way through to about 8000. If I want a super-gloss mirror finish I'll go up to 12000. I did that in this case, as I think a super-gloss somehow suits the Sand Rover (where it wouldn't for example on a Ford Ranger). It came out well, no flaws. The nice thing about the gloss is it also somehow manages to "deepen" the orange so that it looks a little darker and a little more interesting. I really love it. Next step was to mask up ready for the black floor, which will then just leave the seats to paint. Masking started... Masking done Will come back to painting later today. With a bit of luck I might actually get this bug finished by the end of the weekend

Wow, I hadn't even noticed that... good spot! I'll have to find out what size bushings now...