MadInventor

So folks, the cancer has finally caught up with me, I have been put on end of life care by the local hospice. Its been great fun interacting with you all and thanks for tolerating my non tamiya scratch builds on the tamiyaclub forum. I have passed my forum account to my son (who at the moment is 11). I hope that if he questions, particularly about parts ID, that you will collectively help him out. Thanks. The last 10 years have been a lot of fun. Goodbye my friends................

You've got 2 bearings on the outer end of the drive shaft. One in the plastic and another one proud. Remove the one bearing, push the drive shaft all the way into the axle tube so the circlip is flush with the bearing. Check that you have a circlip and bearing fitted at the other end as well.

FOMO doesn't bother me as I don't indulge in social media. I do have scratch built models that I used tamiya bits on I thought would be plentiful that are now very hard to get hold of and I wish I'd bought more spares for, high lift axles and TXT-1 wheels are the 2 main ones that spring to mind. With the creativity being impacted by parts availability, tools, etc, my personal experience is that having good tools does make a difference. I was able to make the chassis rails for this over the course of 2 days thanks to being able to accurately drill holes in it with the milling machine. Try to measure with a ruler and then mark holes with a centre punch and drill with a hand held drill would have taken a lot longer and the result would not have been as good However I made this custom axle just using a dremel and a hand file. So sometimes having great tools helps, sometimes not. Having the milling machine and the lathe has meant that I can be more creative, not having to rely on what I can find from manufacturers, the transfer case in the 8x8 is a custom job made by me, but again, it took about 3 weeks worth of spare time to make it.

I use white spirit (Turpentine ?) which is normally used for thinning oil based paint. This cuts through even old grease really easily and doesn't damage the gears. If you've applied the grease relatively recently I'd think about just wiping it off with kitchen roll. Fold the the tissue a couple of times and then use the folded edge to slide between each gear tooth.

My Re-re hotshot. I always regretted selling my original back in the day. My scratch builds. I built them because I wanted a model and couldn't buy what I wanted, so built it myself. My TXT-1 with the 1/8th brushless in it. Pretty much the rest of the tamiya stuff I wouldn't be bothered about selling if my son wasn't interested in it. I'm lacking in space and spend my time doing other things now.

I recently got gifted this and it's not my cup of tea so best sensible offer secures. You will have to collect from the vicinity of Amesbury in Wiltshire as it's 1/5 and massive so no postage. I will take cash or trade for tamiya or kyosho stuff by agreement. There's no transmitter with it but it does have a flysky 3 channel receiver fitted and a 1/4 scale servo. I've pulled the engine over, it's not seized and appears to have compression. Front wheels spin freely. Other than some surface rust on the components from what appears to be prolonged storage it appears to be in good condition and does not appear to have had much use. There is some wear in the rear drive cups (see pics) but that and 1 small crack in the bodyshell where the only things I noticed.

Yes, and Yes. I have quite a few runners that are not in need of repair, so I know I'm not using them enough

He's older now and has the Comical Hornet I won in a TamiyaClub competition (Thanks Chris) for blasting around with.

I let my son loose with Juggernaut 2 in the garden when he was about that age. He blasted it full power through my wife's flower border. After that he was relegated to a vintage Clod Buster in 'Economy' mode...

For me, value for money comes down to what am I actually getting, in terms of quality of components and competency of design. The cheaper kits are good value as they've had a lot of evolution behind them, although some cost cutting is evident, such as the plastic diff gears in the TT-02B (Buggy version ?) , which was a step in the wrong direction from the DF-02 metal gears. The metal gears would hold up to a powerful brushless motor, whereas I suspect the plastic gears are only good enough for the stock motor the car comes with. For me the value is in the building of the chassis more than the shell (I'm not a polycarbonate guy either), my last purchase was a King Hauler with a pre-painted shell, which was for me and my son to build together. He did a great job of putting it together with a little bit of guidance and help from me, and it was great fun sharing that with him, I got more 'value' from it than I would have done building it myself.

Oh yes. It's lift mechanism is powered by a 540 motor with a reduction box running a worm drive, so it can easily pick the front end of the model off the ground

This works very well on trail/mud. Selectable summit diff lock in the back, articulated chassis makes it very manoeuvrable, and near 10Kg of weight means plenty of traction. 5674 sized brushless motor on 3S LiPo and 150:1 gear ratio give ultimate torque. Plus 540 powered winch is good for towing.

I would echo the suggestion to just replace the gearbox casing. Also note that you have the lower rear suspension arm(s) fitted upside down (Assuming the left hand side is the same as the right hand side).

I used to use WD-40, that seemed to work quite well.

PRICE DROP Bump: Blockhead motors version of this is now around £220-£240 new, this colour scheme looks better, and the car comes with roller bearings. Dropping price to £150 to encourage collection from Salisbury / Amesbury area in Wiltshire UK

Bump: Price drop to £140 to encourage collection from Salisbury / Amesbury area in Wiltshire UK

You've got to be a bit careful, as that servo has a metal (Looks like brass) output shaft, and came with a machine thread screw (Looks like an M3 from the advert). Tamiya assume that the servo has a plastic output shaft and supply self tappers, which may destroy the threads in your metal output shaft of your servo. The good news is that M3 screws are easy to find on Ebay or a similar site, you just need to figure out what length you need for your kimborough servo saver.

To look at it from a different point of view, if Tamiya are making sufficient profit from what they are doing, then for them, creating new models is a financial risk, as to whether or not they will be money makers. They have made some duds in the past. Personally I've no interest in F1 style cars that require mirror smooth tarmac to run on. I've always thought they could do a lot worse than bringing out a 1/10 scale tractor, in a similar vein to the R/C lorries, marketing it as a scale model rather than a high speed off roader. There's a lot more farmers in the world than there are F1 drivers. Maybe not as many farmers as F1 fans, but not every fan is going to want a R/C replica of an F1 car (and I realise that argument applies to farmers as well).

I just use my main site user ID and password to log in. If that doesn't work I'd suggest contacting one of the administrators.

I was hoping for a plain Hotshot II release with the low roofline and a paintable shell. Oh well.....

I think the first one I bought I got for just under £200 from Banzai Hobby...

If I remember rightly the bruiser kit was quite a bit more expensive than the high lift kits. I'm on my second high lift after like you, bought one, kept it for a while, then got rid of it. My second is doing exactly what the first one did, which is spend most of it's life in a cupboard. The bodyshells are expensive which makes me reluctant to run it in case of damage (Which is quite likely with my driving), and a quick look on Ebay shows that there only selected spares available (No sign of any axle housings) and some parts such as the shocks are pricey as well (£33 for a set of shocks). I would quite happily sell mine now if I could recoup what I put into it (I bought it at a time when they were a lot cheaper than they are now). Are you sure you're not looking back on your previous ownership through rose tinted glasses ? Why did you part company with yours in the first place ?

Got the cab frames finished, and most of the cab now has paint on it

Just my scratch builds. What I lack in quantity I make up for in weight