max69vk

Thunder Dragon sold 😄 Having done a bit of a cleanup the weekend, I’ve decided it’s probabaly best to clear out a few projects that I can’t see myself getting time for. These are models I don’t really know too much about, but as they are original/vintage I’d rather they went to someone who’d enjoy them rather then yam me breaking them for parts. More pics can be available on request, & I can post within the UK if required at cost. First up a Thunder Dragon, the paint is literally falling off the body & the very front section of the body has broken away (may still be useable though). The chassis is scuffed underneath but not broken & looks complete. SOLD Next up is a vintage Monster Beetle, well used, but complete, not broken & entirely original. The body could possibly be repaired... you’d be a braver man than me though! SOLD Marui Big Bear rolling chassis. I literally know nothing about this! It has a servo/speed controller fitted & a motor. The front bumper is broken, 1 tyre is destroyed, 2 have splits but could probably be glued, 1 looks ok. Chassis looks clean. £40 Any questions please ask away

I’ve got around 10 Ranger/Blackfoot shells & of those that have damage I’d say the highest ‘breakage point’ is about half way up the front arch. If a replacement part was to be made i’d Suggest taking it up to the top of the arch height to leave enough material to work with.

Re-releases vs Vintage is a bit like buying a print rather than the oil painting. It may not be the original, but that doesn’t stop you enjoying it, also you know that an original will always hold its value as it’s the smaller details that make the bigger difference. Tamiya have always been smart enough to make fine detail changes to help differentiate between Vintage & rere as they don’t want to disenfranchise their loyal customers, & lets be honest the first people to buy the rere are most likely those that don’t want to destroy an original.

I tried doing something similar but by taking a mould of an unbroken fender section, and then using some dissolved PS into the mould to form the shape.. Unfortunately my mould making skills weren’t up to much so I’ll be trying again with a cleaner mould form soon. The biggest issue that 3D printing will solve is making sure the mouldings on the reverse side of the section can be made, looking forward to see how you get on with this.

All good information here so far. The reason I ask about the differences is that I am always loathed to pull apart or modify a vintage model, preferring to restore instead. Now with the Bullhead I can't see anything that makes it different from the re-release in terms of being unique to that release, so in theory I could take a re-re throw in an MSC & vintage motors etc & there would be no way to say it wasn't a vintage model... Something that I think must be pretty unique for Tamiya as there's usually always differences somewhere.

Cool, thanks for that. I won't feel so guilty about ripping it apart to try and do something with it now! 😁

Are there any ways to distinguish them apart? Unlike the Clodbuster where you can look at the body or even colour of some parts to date them, I. Any seem to find anyway of separating the vintage vs the rere. Am I missing something?! 🤔

Thought I’d chime in on this briefly. I exclusively use De-Solv it on my hard bodies and yes it can make the plastic slightly soft after the initial use. What I have found though is that if you apply for 10 minutes and then keep re-applying whatever drips off with a regular paint brush (whilst gently rubbing at the same time) you can get most paint and residue off within an hour without damaging the plastic. At the end I’d always recommend brushing off the excess with the paint brush & then coating the shell in fairy liquid before rinsing it off, this seems to remove any paint/remover residues that might try to stick back to the shell. Also after rinsing off with fairy liquid/clean water the shell seems to harden back up a lot faster too.

Anybody who's interested in seeing more pics of this rip-off should have a look for an Instagram user 'tamiya.taiwan' where they've been comparing an original vs this copy. The quality is actually quite surprising & it looks like a complete clone down to nut & bolt level - Not that I'd ever endorse buying a fake or copy of course, but I've been quite surprised at this at it's almost like they've used the Tamiya tooling (minus branding). www.instagram.com/tamiya.taiwan/

Been a while since anything has turned up but it's been worth the wait Firstly a couple of Vintage boxes, If only a Ranger still cost this much! Next up a TA01 chassis in need of a new front shock mount & a good cleanup, an original DF01 for parts, and finally my first ever M01, which of course had to be a Mini! A nice vintage AP35 ESC which needs a bit of soldering And finally a decal set for a Lancia Delta All in all not a bad haul! 😁

This is what I love about this site, 6yrs later and this thread has helped me solve a few mysteries surrounding the AP35. I recently took a punt one one of these as the price was too good to turn down, After reading the somewhat confusing manual it became apparent that the wires to connect to the receiver were missing as was the all important transistor. Thanks to the pictures in this post I now know where to solder them & more importantly, in what order! Also the mystery of what transistor to fit has been solved. One thing I have noticed is that compared to the original AP35 referenced in this thread mine appears to be the MK1 version of this ESC, the giveaway being the size of the grey wire which solders to the transistor and the Ferranti control chip (8239 vs 8241). If anyone else finds themselves in a similar repair/install situation, the MK1 requires a 10A transistor while the MK2 requires a 15A version.

Lots more deliveries today. First off, let this serve as a prime example of why not to drink & bid over the BH weekend... Overpriced, lots of broken parts, however what isn't smashed or missing is quite nice condition EDIT: I take it all back, it turns out that I may have struck gold as this turned out to be a totally original proper MK1 chassis including double bearing rear arms, with every other part correct for the original release! It's also come with a black 540SD (red end bell version) 😳 Then seperatley a matching manual 😀 Next up some Clodbuster parts, a set of wheels that are being adapted to fit something else, and some alloy anti rotation brackets to actually go on the Clod, I've heard they're a weak point & they were on sale so it was a no brainer

Re release Top Force CVA's apparently. Not sure why, but I was expecting the front and rear shock bodies and piston rods to be different lengths rather than using a spacer internally to shorten the fronts? Either way they were cheap & going on my Lunchbox build to replace the unknown ransoms currently fitted 😁

It all fits, the issue is when the upper link is connected as the length is so short between the hub & chassis that it's almost impossible to avoid creating positive camber, Im literally dialled in at 0 degrees on the back with no where to go 😕

Unfortunately not quite that simple as it's running M03 lower arms which pulls everything in enough to gain clearance for the wheels & keep them under the arches 😬

Whilst this probably doesn't look like much, it's taken me nearly 3 months of swapping by bits around before tonight's revelation where I've finally found a combination of WR02, TL01, M03, M02 & Votec Fighter parts that have given me the look I think the City Honda should have had from day 1; In case anyone was wondering, that's it's actual ride height, which maintains full suspension travel & 100% tyre contact on the road (no silly camber). I just need to figure a way of moving the rear wheel slightly more central in the arch without cutting anything & I'll do a proper build thread.

Finally made sone real progress on my daughters 1st RC. Bearing in mind I've been sat with this so long it's only after the strip down & rebuild that I realised this is an original release model, which would explain why it was so abused. At last it's back together & painted, so testing everything fully tonight before giving it to her at the weekend. Managed to resist the urge of dropping in a 12 triple motor that was in the spares box 😁

Lots of vintage M38 WW parts plus a load of Vintage Rough Rider, Sandscorcher & Ranger SRB parts too 😊

Managed to steal an hour while the kids were asleep, quite surprised how much I got done. First up a total basket case Super Blackfoot chassis that was originally destined to have some Clod wheels and a Beetle shell (still might), instead I threw on an original BF shell & some unknown make wheels & tyres I had laying around, it may need to be lowered a touch & maybe die the chassis black, but it has a touch of 'Bog racer' about it now & looks pretty cool; Next up was trying to save the original decals on a recently acquired Clod Buster. The previous owner decided to paint the front end black (over the decals) for some reason. Lots of rubbing alcohol, elbow grease + scraping, & progress is slowly being made. Before; Getting there; Also re-arranged the garage shelving again, I'm running out of space so quickly as there's another 10 cars to fit in there somehow! Finally the most important job of all, I finally got to lacquer my daughters first RC, a berry pink Lunchbox that I'm redesigning the original decals for so it's more personalised for her; If all my hours could be this efficient I'd have all my cars done in days rather than years!

Did a bit more prep work on half of my vintage Scorcher shells, the idea is that I'll be able to Prime them all at the same time (along with another 3 Scorcher shells not pictured here). Now 2 of these shells have had some horrendous 'modifications' by the previous owners, the shell at the back right is a total scrapper as its had a ton of terrible cut and shuts done so now it's going to lend its rear arches to fix the front wings on the shell centre front... For some reason the arches have been cut to look more like the rere model, God only knows why! At least once they're cut off it may make it look a bit better if I can get the shape right, so I'm using fine line to try & work out the shape. Not convinced at present.

I promise this will be the last vintage model I buy *crosses fingers* no idea why the previous owner decided to paint the front wings black, unfortunately it's trashed the original decals & the rest around the shell are all in pretty good shape.

So my plan to thin out the car collection has gone slightly wrong & I now appear to have an original Clod Buster on its way to me... I'm not going to complain as I only have myself to blame Now as much as I've always wanted a Clod I know I'll never be happy with leaving it standard & so I'm already on the hunt for parts to modify it, and the starting point has to be the chassis - if only from an aesthetic perspective. Does anyone know of a UK supplier of modified chassis or parts? Everything I seem to find for the Clod is in the US & the carriage for most of the parts just doesn't make them a viable purchase

Following my recent theme of buying the most atrociously abused hard bodies, I had this beauty arrived today. Looks like they tried using concrete to repair it previously!

Unfortunately it's only the box, but it'll make a nice home for one of my M38's sitting on the shelf

A google search for MCI decals should sort you out.