[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

Hi gang,

Apologies for the long delay in between posts. The usual family and work commitments have been in the way, but I finally managed to grab a few hours to make some progress on this build.

In truth, it's not all family and work. I'm on the edge of my capabilities with this one (which is great, nothing like pushing yourself  ) so there's probably an element of trepidation/lack of confidence. But a little bit of rare spare time and a couple of Peroni's have seen that put to one side tonight

So here's where we're at.

I put together the chassis because I need something to try and understand how the body sits in relation to the wheels etc. Prior to my last post I managed to get some bits into the polisher for a few days, so basically we have uber-shiny bling. I know that a lot of people here don't like 'em shiny, and I know it's not really very "scale" looking, but I'm a sucker for it so there you go :).

So this is my chassis.

 

 

Which at least gives me a good platform to start hacking the body into shape. This is where I got up to last time.

So, today, I started trying to work out where my line is on the side flares. This is my final placement, based on looking at a few real Funcos online and deciding that the rear line starts where the existing Tamiya molding has a protrusion just before the rear shocks.

... to my eye, that line should continue with the side flare so it becomes one line. This is about a 5mm drop from the original Tamiya RR shell.

Here's a side-on view showing how this sits with the reduced rear tracking and also my sliced up reduced width Sand Blasters (which didn't come out great - more on that later).

These rear wheels I think are perfect btw - they came from Chris at Rogue, but I seem to have a set suitable for a Ranger and not a narrow front pair. Will email him tonight just on the off-chance if he has a set of narrows.

So, into the vice the side flares go :). This is the saw-eye view.

 

Speaking of saws, this is what I used. It's a Tamiya razor saw. I know Tamiya tools are expensive, but there really is nothing nicer than working with decent tools. And this really is a decent tool - made this so easy. And I also am a firm believer that exceptionally sharp tools are actually safer to work with.

This is the first (left side) flare after first cut.

And in situ, will be something like this.

I'll need to get this slope angle right - I think I have it pretty much bang on where I want it in this pic. Hopefully I'll be able to position it right when the time comes.

The inward curve is about the radius of a Halfords spray can lid, which was convenient

This was a rough cut

And then after a little dremeling, this is what I have

 

The rest of my evening was spent doing the other side, which I now have and a nicely matched pair (I used the left one as a template).

I have given a light coat of primer to the shell to show up any areas that need filling before I make the ribs and start to glue this together.

I hope to have some more time again pretty much every evening this week (yay!) and will post more progress pics as I go

 

 

[Sand Scorcher body parts resin cast]

One was a guy called James - ebay ID : jamesmumbojimbo

I bought a couple, and a couple of his licence plates too - best repros I've seen.

Pretty sure he's a TC member, but can't remember his nick here....

[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

Yep, I'm loving the material and ease to work with (and the PlasticWeld glue is great for speed to set and strength).

Thanks for the tips. I've also found some good videos on heat forming for the curves, which is the bit that I'm worried about as I've not really done anything like that before.

The great thing is other than the body cuts, I can't really go far wrong as it's non-destructive. I'll just have to throw away what doesn't work and try again. So perfect opportunity for me to learn a few tricks with the stuff.

[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

Thanks - if you compare mine to @ScaleXtreme you'll see his cuts are much better (amazing in fact, it's not easy) than mine.

Since this pic I've filled it and once primed and painted it won't make any difference. That said I'm using this project as a way to hone my styrene chops a bit. I've used it a little in the past but mostly for repairs to shells. This is my first full on conversion.

So will be styrene all the way rather than balsa. I'll use the rib method to ensure both sides are equal and I'm going to heat form a styrene sheet to get the curves. That part is something I've never done before, so I've ordered, ahem "a few", styrene sheets so that I can make the odd mistake and not tell you/pretend it never happened

[Project burnout?]

On 2017-5-8 at 0:35 PM, Mad Ax said:

I think it was a rant about how I find it hard to motivate myself to do my least favourite jobs, like body trimming and masking

Sounds to me that the time you have to yourself in the workshop is precious/valuable, so you don't want to spend that time doing tasks you don't enjoy. And you'd rather spend that time doing nothing/wandering the workshop and looking/thinking. That's quite understandable. That's your brains way of doing something enjoyable and spending that time wisely, it's not a loss of motivation at all.

I've had the same "burnout" and what I do is try and have 2 or 3 projects on the go at various stages. That means if I only have an hour spare, I can spend 20 minutes doing something I don't like and 40 that I do.

 

[Media blasting]

Even soda blasting is pretty abrasive. OK on metals but I would strongly recommend not using it on styrene.

 if so would it work through a air gun compressor

You need lots of air. Lots. An airbrush compressor certainly wouldn't cut it - you want ideally a few horsepower motor and a decent sized tank. 20+ CFM would be great, otherwise expect a lot of stop/starting.

[1977 Tyrrell P34]

On 2017-5-3 at 2:40 AM, frameskip said:

I just saw today that this kit is being re-released a second time as kit #47359 if you happen to be interested in a second go at it:

https://tamiyablog.com/2017/05/more-details-on-tamiya-47359-110-rc-tyrrell-p34-1976-japan-grand-prix-special/

Yep, and worth buying just for the parts for restoring your original.

[New? Hard to find? Dull? or something else]

Same as MadInventor I've only ever added kits that I've done "something" with, or that I think will be of interest for some reason. The bulk of what I own isn't in my showroom (including 2 from your list).

[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

I managed to get the sides off today and have filled one side with some 1mm styrene sheet. Will do the other side later in the week.

Next I need to make a horizontal line across the sides in order to get the right alignment of the side cheeks. They need to be a little lower than the Rough Rider, and the driver also needs to drop. @ScaleXtremes thread is proving very useful for ideas.

Anyway, I don't think I can start to work out my horizontal line before getting a chassis together to put this on. I thought about using my Rough Rider chassis as a guide, but with the narrowed rear track and the fact that I'll also be reducing the rear camber a little for this Funco build, I realise I can't proceed now without finishing the chassis first so I can put the body on and work out those final lines. 

So I have to await the barrel polisher and might go quiet on you all for a week.

@njmlondon - 

 

[A tale of two Scorchers - RC project for 2017]

That looks like it's in great shape!

I often find that some paints come off with brake fluid, others caustic soda, others this graffiti remover stuff we can get in the UK. They all vary and sometimes you need to use a combo.

[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

Thanks @SRB Bloke I may need to take you up on that, but I'll have a go first

Right, Scorcher pics out of the way I disassembled it all and got the new rear arms ready for the barrel polisher (basically had to dremmel polish the bits that I know the polisher will miss):-

... and in they go, where they'll stay a couple of days and should come out nice and clean together with some mucho shiny UJs.

Meanwhile, back in the garage it's gonna get messy:-

To be continued...

[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

Found the right rollbar, so here's a few more as a Scorcher Erich. I think it's good - more scale?

 

@Backlash - yes, actually there's lots I'd like to do at Shapeways :). For rapid prototyping though for me I still quite like a hacksaw and a few other metalworking tools. There's a lot of time you have to invest in 3D printing on the modelling side, getting the dimensions right, print/test/tweak cycles etc. Takes weeks, whereas this all took me maybe 2 hours. And I got to use a saw, which isn't that often in Tamiya land :).

 

 

 

[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

@Shodog - indeed. The only way this thing is ever getting around a corner is if I can find some 6" gauge railway track, but that's a whole other project for another day

[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

I personally think it looks better Erich, as the SRB was always, from a scale point of view, too wide at the rear. I don't think that's limited to Scorcher and Rough Rider either, I think this will work better with all the SRB's (I'll try each of them).

Of course it will have a serious impact on the handling of the buggy in corners. And as we all know the SRB is famed for it's "on rails" handling so that's a shame

Stock SRB width:-

Width reduced:-

 

The shocks will definitely not work correctly with Scorcher wheels and tires. So for this I'm thinking the Superchamp rear suspension might be better. I can't see a simple way to reposition the stock shocks.

Sorry for lack of side on pics but the body isn't mounted properly due to wrong rollbar being fitted. I'll dig out the correct one and post some more pics later....

@SRB Bloke - thanks. I might need to pick your brains on tire width reduction, for which I know you're the resident expert. Specifically, do I run glue all around the cut and put it together in one hit, or do I do a centimeter or so of glue and work my way around piecemeal? Also, should re-enforce from the inside once done? I have some old Ford Ranger tires ready to experiment with, although the glue hasn't arrived yet.

Thanks!

 

[Funco SRB Build (short rear track width)]

I have been inspired recently by the awesome Funco Rough Rider based buggies by @ScaleXtreme :-

... and @TamTom and others here, and I've always fancied building one. So I have decided this is to be my next project

My issue with all those that I've seen so far is the rear track width. The original SRB is not very scale in this respect - it's far too wide. Makes for better handling of course, but to me it's never looked quite right.

So I decided to start with this problem to see if I could solve it. What I noticed is that there's a spacing bit of metal in the rear swing arms, that's about 10mm, and I think could be removed with a little black magic. So this is where I started, bye bye little 10mm piece of pot metal:-

... and mated back up again, looking something like this:-

Now, I know what you're thinking : "But Dean, the shocks won't clear the rear wheels!". I know, I had the same thought. But in the spirit of making it up as I go along I thought I'd proceed and see where I got to.

So I cleaned up the cuts with little filing to get a good face edge:-

I need to get some bulk and strength back into this piece, so I fabricated a collar from some alloy tubing:-

 

This fits like this:-

 

... and made a jig for myself with a vice and a piece of 6mm dowel to keep the hole clear and enable me to put it all together:-

Glue of choice for this type of thing for me is J B Weld, so I mixed some of that up, filled it into my fabricated collar and clamped it all together (the collar is a tight fit).

And it came out like this:-

Which will take about 10mm off each side of the track width.

Happy with that, so I proceed to put together a gearcase from some spares that I had (won't show you pics of that, you all know what an SRB gearcase looks like - nothing special here, no diff or anything, but I did ballrace it of course and also used some stainless screws).

I then built up the one shortened side that I'd built to see how it all hangs together:-

Looks pretty good.

Made some shortened drive shafts:-

... and popped a wheel on to check out how bad the shock problem is.

Now it gets interesting. Believe it or not, if I can mount it like this:-

... it just clears

So I think this is going to work! I have already planned to make some slightly narrower tires by cutting out a ring of tread and re-gluing (waiting for my flexible CA to be delivered) to get some scale looking tires. For that I'll have to shave off a couple of mm from the wheels and I think that will ultimately give me the track width that I'm after for this build.

So I finished off the other side and here's where I'm up to, now waiting on the JB Weld to cure.

 

 

[Modelling Paint Booth]

Hi guys,

16 hours ago, njmlondon said:

I really like this. Have been thinking of making something similar myself and I really like your design. Let us know what filter material you are using.

After the dishcloth, my next test will be some 3mm thick activated carbon foam. As far as I've been able to find out, there are three pore sizes for different grades of filtration - the 3mm stuff seems to be "small". I'll let you know how that works out. I might need to try different sizes.

@Mad Ax - if you have height with your design (and so large air volume that the paint is moving around in), I don't think a 20 watt bathroom extractor type fan would cut it for you. With my design (where I've tried to limit volume and also create a funnel effect) it's just on the limit. With my airbrushing it's about perfect. I use mostly acrylics and so I'm painting in the 10-12 PSi range which is pretty light and low paint volume so the fan can keep up quite easy. When I spray a rattle can, which obviously has higher pressure + paint volume I find I am having to spray slightly more slowly to allow the fan to clear the booth out. Maybe 25% slower than normal (eg pauses in between passes).

This may not necessarily be a bad thing - anything that slows you down can have the added benefit of making you concentrate more. Don't know if it'll affect paint finish (I really doubt it) or my natural flow but time will tell.

Also worth noting - I read a lot about how an immediate right angle (like I have in my design) in the ducting can cause turbulence which is not ideal. That's why most commercial booths vent straight out the back. Again, I'll experiment and see if it's a problem. I wanted a side exhaust so that I could get a maximum (60cm) work area to match my workbench and not have anything protruding out the back. But I may have to review that.

With your bench design, you may have the opportunity to put a false floor/base above your bench and put a fan underneath, effectively pulling the air downwards. I noticed that a lot of the high end booths do that and a lot of people in various threads I read swear it's the best way to do it.

Also, one other other idea I came across when researching that might suit yours is someone used an old oven/hob extractor hood to great effect. You get the filter already there, a few hundred watt fan, speed control etc all built-in and all you would need to do is add the 100mm ducting. Probably plenty of old extractors like that on eBay.

 

[Modelling Paint Booth]

I finally got around to this last weekend. I have been thinking about making one for ages, mostly so that I can spray larger stuff indoors, in the garage, when it's too wet/too cold. And also for airbrush work which is always in my garage (where the compressor lives).

I've seen a few videos of these on YouTube, and lots of talk about the danger of sparks from bushed motor fans etc. Largely I have dismissed these, as most of what I spray is water-based acrylic and the flammable stuff I spray (mostly rattle can paint and lacquers) simply isn't in a concentrated enough form to explode when not under compression. So worst case scenario it might burn. Which is not a big deal for me and I have a fire extinguisher nearby and handy.

So what kick-started this for me and got me going was I saw this in my local B&Q for £25:-

... which is the full kit including extractor fan and 3m of hosing, plus a couple of useful fittings for the hosing.

The fan is 20 watts. It sounded too lightweight to me to be effective enough but I figured in any event I'm going to need a baffle/filter box with a 100mm hole in it, some fittings and some hose. So I can always put a more powerful inline fan in later if I want to.

My basic design is a 6mm MDF based box with a 100mm hole in one end and the fan mounted. The filter frame is 2 parts of 6mm MDF with 4 slots cut in them (I did both at once with a jigsaw) that enables me to "sandwich" a filling of filter material in between them. The outside one of the pair is bolted into place with M3 nuts which you can see in the pic below. These will be replaced with wing nuts when they arrive which will make changing the filter easier.

 

Currently my filter is a dishcloth ;). Thought I'd at least test that - some proper filter material is on way to me.

This gives you a sense of dimensions:-

The dishcloth filter clogs up pretty quickly as you can see. This is Ford Tasman Blue I'm painting an F350 tailgate with:-

I took the vacuum cleaner to the dish cloth filter and found I could clean it out again fairly easily.

It clogs up even more quickly with lacquer. In fact that pretty much turns it into fibreglass

All that said, it's working surprisingly well. The 20 watt fan is proving a lot more effective than I thought it would and if I'm careful and don't try and paint too fast I can ensure that no overspray ends up in the garage. In theory I can also vent the hosing to the outside to remove fumes etc, but haven't got that far yet.

I can make the unit a little more efficient by sealing a few of the gaps I have and I'll also try the new filter material this weekend if it arrives in time and will let you know how that improves things.

 

[Buggy Champ vs Fighting Buggy - runner]

Oh PS, for beach running I would suggest don't put in a diff, just in case you were thinking of that upgrade. You're better off without one when you're on sand.

[Buggy Champ vs Fighting Buggy - runner]

In my experience the Buggy Champ has better tires for sand (Sand Scorcher even more so), and I would say a well sealed (at the wire entry points) radio box is probably slightly better for running on sand and near water. They're far from waterproof and water (and sand) *will* get in, but at least your steering servo isn't completely exposed.

Use sealant on the gearbox too, whatever your ultimate choice.

Handling-wise I've never noticed all that much in it. They both handle pretty badly, which is what makes them fun ;). Use green slime on the shocks - lots of people on here say they have badly leaking shocks on their SRB Runners. I've always built mine with green slime and they've been fine.

[Advice sought on rediscovered vintage Rough Rider]

Keep it. Those of us of similar age can all guarantee you will regret it if you sell it. 

Have fond memories of running and fettling it when I was a kid though.

You can now re-live that . I think that's probably what most of us are doing...

[3D and RC parts]

I will be doing an episode on just this topic in a couple weeks on my Youtube channel if you are interested. I have some tricks that could help. 

I'm interested in seeing that.

I wonder if 3D printing will also push down the cost of decent CNC milling equipment which for many things is as good/better than 3D printing?

[Mistakes made in RC]

When attaching hobby solid fuel rocket engines to Celica LB Turbo, make sure to reduce the steering

That's not a mistake, that just automatically qualifies you as an epic individual

I threw away a bunch of R/C stuff in about 1986 before I realised that it would become collectable and I'd come full circle back to it one day. Now I never ever throw anything away, ever.

[Mad Max Fury Road War Rig build]

Not sure what word is 2 or 3 steps up from "epic" but that's the word.

Fantastic build!

[1981 Sand Rover RC project]

White KC or Yellow KC Daylighter?

Big game, enjoy.

[1981 Sand Rover RC project]

Great! Are you still at the same address? I'll whack it in the post for you tomorrow.

Agree about the roll-bar - that pic conclusively tells us that white is out

I can help you with the stickers for the lights too - I got these a while ago on eBay so have quite a few :). If you want to pick which ones you want I'll put in same envelope.