Jonesy76

Any particular reason why?

.............that is the question! After re-building my Monster Beetle I now have a big job of two Beetle bodyshells to get sprayed but I may have also added to my monster truck collection with yet another kit to build....... A Wild Willy 2! I always loved the original, but the new one with it's big wheels and totally mental performance encouraged me to get another big wheeled toy to add to the collection (and move the Sand Viper out........it's awesome but just not as much fun as something that falls over in every corner). Now I have the potential of some extra funds next month and it got me thinking.........."what next?". Well the obvious choice to complete the stable of Tamiya monster trucks is a Clodbuster. My spoilt friend in the 80's also had one of these humongous beasts and all I can ever remember of it is its ability to eat through a 1300mah battery in about 3 minutes! I fancy a kit to build next month, and come December I'm going to have my old Blackfoot to restore so I don't really fancy stripping down an 80's Clod in the meantime, and I've spotted a Super Clodbuster Chrome kit that even comes with an ESC rather than the old fashioned mechanical speed controller that the standard Super Clodbuster comes with. Now the question is this....... Do I keep reasonably faithful to the old fashioned Tamiya stable (re-re Lunchbox and Wild Willy, and original Monster Beetle and Blackfoot) and go for a Super Clod, or do I blow the bank and go utterly bananas with a TXT-1?

So this is how it began......... Firstly I managed to get the postie totally weighed down with a load of components for the Monster Beetle That pic shows the 4 new tyres, new Universal Diff components, new Blitzer Beetle bodyshell and components (driver and windows), new gold coloured post brace, new Frog re-re diff gear, King Blackfoot servo cover and speed controller base (saw that on the Blackfoot reliability mods page and thought it would do a better job of reinforcing the front shock tower than waiting in hope for another CRP reinforcing set to turn up on eBay), new Sport Tuned motor, Yeah Racing shocks, new stock front bumper (I like the classic look) and Re-re Frog metal components............and a few bags of screws that I saw on eBay and thought they may contain the much needed large number of missing screws that my Monster Beetle needed. First up was to re-build the gearbox making sure that this time the whole thing was ball-raced Even here I find the problem with my Monster Beetle..........whoever originally built the thing obviously simply snapped all the components out of their parts trees and every single part - including the cups for the middle gear rod - has large and sharp plastic casting spurs sticking out of every single component. One pair of small nips and a scalpel made sure that no sprue tag was left behind. I then re-built the diff using the new Frog re-re diff gears and the original Monster Beetle middle gear. The original gearbox plates were rusty and bent, so they were consigned to a container and the new Frog re-re gearbox plates that came with the longer under-chassis protector were used instead. This was then re-assembled using plenty of good high quality grease, and the new Universal Joint cups were inserted in. Now I had the new bags of screws it was a simple enough task to find a couple of matching screws so that the gearbox could be remounted to the cleaned and scrubbed chassis using 4 screws rather than the 2 that it was hanging on with when I first got it. At this point I removed the old aluminium speed controller plate and replaced it with the plastic version from the King Blackfoot parts. The old style analogue speed controller posts were then hacksawed off and sanded down to leave a nice flat surface onto which to stick the reciever.........and to those of you with eagle eyes you'll see that this photo was taken during the rebuilding process and idiot features here had screwed it in the wrong way round!) Next up was to re-assemble the newly cleaned rear suspension arms, and fit those superb new drive shafts (how I wish my old Blackfoot had those when I was growing up - would have saved me so many ruddy hex driveshafts). The driveshafts are now fitted back into the swing arms with the necessary ballraces so that friction is cut down (made even worse on the old one by the fact that the plastic ballrace stand-ins from the original kit still had their sprue bits left on, and there was no grease to speak of on them - probably due to that tube of Tamiya grease only ever being enough to possibly grease a diff, let alone everything else). The Yeah Racing 80mm shocks were then fitted before finally the new Tamiya Sport Tuned had the pinion fitted and then installed to the car. What I can't figure out is how this poor old Beetle had so much damage to it, and so many missing screws, yet the gearbox gears were actually in good condition..........go figure! My time then turned to the front end, and mission one was to rummage through the new screw bags to find some new screws to screw the front suspension mounts onto the body as 2 of those were missing as well! Due to the battered and worn nature of the original suspension mounts I decided to retire those to the same container as the gearbox sides and used the new ones from the Frog re-re metal parts bag. These were screwed back in place using 4 screws (novel that!) and the new extended metal undertray plate screwed in place at this time. The screw bags again were then raided again so that I could find some replacement bolts for those front suspension arms to stand in for that jury-rigged cable-tie front end that I had in place when I took ownership of the Monster Beetle. The sway bars (or whatever they're actually called) were also replaced at this time, as the old ones were rusty and bent. The new Futaba servo went in at this stage, and a Lunchbox (new generic Tamiya by the looks of things) servo saver was mounted onto it. The Futaba Receiver then went in along with my spare Tamiya ESC and was all connected up to the servo and the motor. The two remaining shocks were now mounted onto the front shock tower, and then the King Blackfoot servo cover was screwed into place over the servo and receiver which has significantly toughened up that weak front end. One aerial in place and voila.............one working Monster Beetle chassis! And finally a couple of shots of the rolling chassis with the freshly undercoated Blitzer Beetle bodyshell More pics to come now after I finally get through with a lot of painting of two bodyshells.........one as an original Monster Beetle, and the other as a 'Herbie'

One complete (and working) rolling chassis. More pics of the build to follow tonight when I've uploaded the rest onto photobucket.

The radio gear is in ok shape (1 servo works) but the aerial cable has a nick in it not far from the receiver and I doubt it'll give good pickup. I've just got a brand new Wild Willy 2 (been flattening myself having to do overtime this month so it's a pressie to myself) and for an extra £10 I got a brand new Futaba receiver for it. As the Futaba unit for the WW2 has two servos I thought I may as well put good, reliable, radio gear into the Monster Beetle. The shocks.......... I got a pair of aluminium 80mm Yeah Racing dampers off eBay for £10.49, so two pairs haven't exactly broken the bank. Of course the originals were mounted upside down on the front end because they're renowned for leaking! These new Yeah Racing ones are a LOT smoother and look pretty sweet too. They're all assembled now and ready for tweaking today. First thing today though is to get the body sanded prior to undercoat (I've restored the original body as well as getting a new body - original will be sprayed red and hit with re-pro decals, and the new body will be sprayed up in full 'Herbie' colours)

Have a closer look...... The door handles are body coloured, but the rubber lining around them is all picked out in black, as are the windows and all the panel gaps! I even painted out the exhaust brackets in matt black on the side pipes, and the front grill and indicators. I said it took ages!

The green and blue are Tamiya spray paints so I applied the green first over all the bodyshell. I then masked off all the areas that were going to be left green and drew out the outlines on the masking tape (tamiya masking tape I find works well) that I then cut out using a VERY sharp scalpel to get the complex shapes of the body panels. This then got totally sprayed over with the blue and left to touch set, before applying more coats to get a good thick coverage. I then left the whole shell to set hard, and I mean hard! I've always found that if the paint is too soft then you're more likely to tear it when you remove the mask. The trick though is to have a nice blunt modelling knife with which to tease up the edges of the mask when you come to remove it and then TAKE YOUR TIME!

Well my dear old Monster Beetle has now met its un-maker! Firstly I disassembled the front end, and worked out what bolts and screws are missing from it after too many years of abuse. So with the front end totally disassembled I found out how bad the poor old thing is........it's obviously been run for a fair while with those two cable ties acting as a bolt in the front suspension, and whoever had it during this time had completely missed the fact that the front end of the chassis was also missing screws so it's taken a fair beating due to all the forces pushing through a loose front end. So it was then onto removing those knackered old rear shocks Currently they're now residing in the parts bin, but when I move onto my own Blackfoot at Christmas (when hopefully my parents will retrieve it from their loft) the complete shocks from that will donate their springs to the old yellow oil filled dampers. Those will then go onto the Blackfoot as I have new aluminium shocks on their way for the Monster Beetle. This next pic just gives an idea of the crummy state of the chassis right after I took ownership of it Now that I had the suspension off it was then onto getting all the wheels off, and getting those awful tyres off the rims. The rims are definately original, but at some stage someone has removed the old studded tyres and replaced them with some utterly abysmal things that had different sized openings on either side of them. Those tyres have gone straight in the bin as they simply don't fit, and it's amazing no further damage has been done to the original rims whilst being run with these rubbish tyres on. The rims though are in a pretty poor shhape, so they may well still end up being replaced with new replicas at some future stage. The gearbox and rear suspension then became the next bits to come off.......the **** gearbox was only held in place with two screws! 2 of the other main screws were missing, but thankfully the gearbox bolts were all in place so amazingly the gearbox is actually in pretty good nick.......even the hex drive shafts are still angular rather than completely rounded. The original bodyshell was then looked at. It's banjaxxed! No driver, no front bumper, no KC daylighters, no number plates, but amazingly still with the VW badge on the bonnet. So the shopping list reads as:- 4 new shock absorbers Original Servo cover New servo saver (original completely broken) CRP chassis strengthener New Frog re-release pressed metal parts for longer undertray, and new gearbox sides New Frog diff and dogbone drive shafts (no more rounded hex driveshafts) Spare bolts for the front end suspension problems Tamiya Blitzer Beetle bodyshell, front end and driver New Beetle front end and driver (to add to the knackered old bodyshell that I hope to repair enough to do up as a runner in proper Monster Beetle colours) Full ballrace set New servo and receiver ESC New motor (the old one is rusty and squeaks!) New front bumper as the old one is scratched to badword and back. New tyres - apparently Tamiya still make the original tyres but they're now marketed as Blackfoot Xtreme tyres

As I'm leaning more and more towards painting the MB out in 'Herbie' colours I think that it'll end up with a fair few mods away from the original Monster Beetle, especially as it's already lost it's original threw and the body is one step away from the knackers yard. I may save the old yellow dampers though as I'm going to get my parents to dig out the old Blackfoot from the roof of their house and those old oil filled shocks will go on there when that gets rebuilt.

You're going to hate me for this........... I just brought a holiday buggy two days ago from Modelsports actual shop in Otley (was up in Leeds for a conference), however when I got it back to the hotel I realised the model had the 380 motor. To be honest I love the look of the model, and I really wanted a fun 2WD to mess around in the garden with my lunchbox, but £80 for the kit with no bearings, no oil filled dampers and no 540 motor meant I swapped it in for the £99 Sand Viper. Heresy I know, but I wanted something my wife could run, and I just figured it was missing a few too many bits.

Huge thanks for the link! All of a sudden I have a huge shopping list to go hunt for! Shouldn't be too bad though because I think that stripping and cleaning the old chassis is going to take long enough! Thankfully we have a steam cleaner in the laboratory I work in and it produced amazing results with one shock absorber so the rest of the buggy is going to go through it now methinks!

Do you ever get one of those ideas into your head? Well I did.................and this ended up happening to my Lunchbox rather than simply painting it yellow! Took me absolutely ages, and some seriously difficult masking to get those funky swirls around the edges of the green banners. I then lined out the whole lot with a very thin line of black to make it pop out from each different section. The racing stripes on the roof carry on down the back doors, and are simply my own addition because I wanted to make the roof interesting! The 'Mystery machine' wording on the sides is from a decal sheet I found on eBay, but rather than using the decals I spent the best part of 45 minutes cutting the words out of the decals using a scapel and an awful lot of patience.........I think the patience was rewarded though I'm now getting a silly idea about blinging a Monster Beetle shell out in full 'Herbie' colours to sit alongside this once my Monster Beetle restoration project is finished!

Firstly a big hello from me! I'm a newbie to these forums but a bit of a born again RC fan. Essentially I got into the RC craze when I was a kid in the 80's when my friends started to get their first radio control kit cars for birthdays and Christmas, and I used to sit and watch them playing for ages until someone would let me have a go on one of their nearly exhausted batteries (back in the day when a 1200Mah battery was an awesome bit of kit!). Finally after agreeing a deal with my Dad that I'd buy the radio gear I became the immeasureably proud owner of a Blackfoot one Christmas..........this same Christmas saw my friend down the road get a Boomerang which of course wiped the floor with my Blackfoot, and all my other friends collection of Grasshoppers, Frogs, Hornets etc etc! However they all loved the totally OTT nature of my huge Blackfoot and the fact that instability aside it was a huge amount of fun to play with. This acknowledgement of the fun nature of my Blackfoot led my Boomerang owning friend to urge his Dad to buy him something similar, and as he always ended up with something one step up from whatever I had, he came home fairly soon afterwards with a Monster Beetle! Anyways.........A-Levels led to the Blackfoot (now sporting a Lamborghini Diablo bodyshell due to the damage to the old body) being put away from where it has never re-appeared as Uni and then adult life got in the way. RC then ceased to be a part of my life (aside from a dabble with a cheap Nitro car that my friend crashed and parts were impossible to find) until enforced convalescence after an operation led me to buy a Tamiya Keen Hawk (REALLY awful name!) to build as a little side project and then run around the garden being pursued by our cats. The Keen Hawk was awesomely fast and a real hoot to scream around the garden, but somehow not the superb fun factor that I remember, so it got sold on eBay and a brand new Lunchbox (thank you Tamiya for re-releasing it) came in its place! YAY..........Childish fun factor has returned! And a 3000Mah battery means it runs for ages! Now here is where the problem starts........................ As much as I loved my Blackfoot I always harboured a desire for my mates Monster Beetle, and it always was my favourite Tamiya kit, so after doing an immense job on my Lunchbox I thought about ressurecting the dead.............. One eBay search later found me a number of Monster Beetles up for grabs, and one caught my attention as it was 'Buyer to Collect' not far from me. The pics didn't look great - but not bad - so a few bids later and this was mine! Sadly having it in my hands did throw up a few more issues than I originally thought And worst of all............spot the cable ties! And the banjaxxed rear shocks (the other side is the same) Now my intentions with this old Beetle is to try to restore it to full working order so that I can have some serious fun and games flying around the back garden and off a few rudimentary jumps. To turn it into some form of runner I'm thinking that I'm going to need :- 4 new 85mm Shocks (I may be able to breathe life back into the old shocks with new springs though) New screws for the front suspension The new Frog rear diff with dog-bone drive shafts (I remember those **** hex drives from my old Blackfoot.........I lost count of how many I got through!) Proper Monster Beetle Tyres A Blitzer Beetle bodyshell, and a driver would be handy The servo cover A new servo saver New Frog metal parts for two new gearbox sides, and the skid plate underneath Full ball-race kit I have a Tamiya ESC complete with stock motor left over from my Lunchbox (that now has a Venom 19T motor onboard) and I'm thinking of loading that into the MB as I'm not sure that the old gearbox will handle a 19T motor.......it may take one of the Tamiya sport tuned things, but from reading forums I'm not sure I'll have many pinions left if I go for something a bit yahoo! Do any of you good people have any more ideas for what I could go for to make this bug even better? I have seen some people with some MB's with some serious metal componentry for the rear suspension but where do you get these from? Watch this space now just to see this Monster Beetle come back to life!