TheMidnight Pumpkin

I took my '50 Chevy, Pumpkin, and Lunchbox out for an afternoon of running at my relatives track. I took a bunch of video to be shared later. Fun day with no parts breakage. Plus I think my relatives wife wants a Lunchbox done up as the A-team van! -lol

I use Super Lube on mine. Its both a good general synthetic grease, and dielectric for electrical connections. Plus it comes in larger tube sizes. http://www.super-lube.com/synthetic-multipurpose-grease-ezp-49.html

A 5.5 is going to flat put a whooping on this poor little guy. I hope Herbie has some of that "movie magic" left over, cause he's going to need it! -lol

There's always flat paint, or you can get a plating kit from Eastwood to blacken the metal parts, if it truly bothers you.

One thing I like to do is drive my cars around in my house (at slow speeds) and at work down the long carpeted hallways. The nice thing about those cooling fans is they help should you choose to do this. Inside driving is pretty fun even if you can't open it up. There always seems to be something that you didn't plan for, that makes it more fun! Like dragging a string for the cat to chase. Or jumping the wife's flip flops. Or making ramps with the couch cushions for a bit of crawling. The options are limitless when the women aren't home! -lol

What was the first RC that you ever purchased? My first purchased RC was (as my username suggests) a Midnight Pumpkin. I was 12 years old and I saved for months to buy it. This was in the late 80's. My second was a Lunch Box. Third was a Blackfoot. My first ever RC was given to me, and it was a Radio Shack RC quad runner. It was weird in that it had front atv wheels that didn't steer it. They simply worked like swivel caster wheels. The steering came from the rear wheels skid steering like a tank. I still have a couple pieces of it, as when it broke I stripped it to make other toys from the parts. I have a Estes rocket powered car made from pieces of that quad runner as shown in this picture. The rear rocket car wheels are the front wheels from the quad runner RC. Yes that is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle on the rocket car! -lol

I've never purchased any of Tamiya buggies new in the box. I do like them. But I never had the money, or desire to buy them, at the same time. I've owned 2 that I got used. A sonic fighter, and some 4WD buggy that I can't remember what it was. However I have a sick fascination with wheelies. In fact I'm buying one of each of all the wheelies in the whole product line. Why? I make no excuses. I simply want them. (I'm also buying a Blackfoot and Monster Beetle to go with all the wheelies.) Presently I have 10 RC's, most are Tamiya's. I want more of them!

I believe they will eventually include the bearings, if we the consumers demand it. Look at the old days of the "arc welder" speed controllers. Everyone hated those, so eventually they upgraded all the kits to have the electronic speed controllers. I believe the crappy plastic bearings are on the way out. On the price topic, yeah they used to be stupid expensive by comparison. I mean an OG, R10 was the same kind of money. But it gave you a much tougher and faster aluminum platform to begin with. But I believe they solved their problems by moving the manufacturing to China over them being made strictly in Japan. Not to mention all the fan support from guys like us. We buy shelf loads of Tamiya's, where as the regular RC guys * might * own one random Tamiya model. They are doing things right to keep their brand and business going strong. I just wish they would offer all their kits, all the time. I.E. stop discontinuing models! There's some oldies that I wanna buy and I refuse to paid stupid excessive old stock ebay prices for them.

@Nitomor, nice collection! You don't see many people storing RC's in glass cases in my part of the world. Mine are subject to a life of closet fodder. I only see them when I'm out driving one. Maybe I can convince "the boss" to shelf them in the living room? Yeah no, she won't go for that.... -LOL! @Vrooom666 Yeah buggies with big tires makes them more fun. They tend to float over terrain which make them more fun to drive. Once you try it you won't go back. At least that's my opinion.

-LOL Fair enough. Then I have another idea. The contact area appears to be what, maybe 1mm at the most? So what if you just move the shock to the end hole which will slightly lower the chassis. It appears in this picture that it would pull the suspension arm up, in return allow more clearance for the axle. Then you would likely need to adjust the fronts, but if it solves the problem....

You know the axle touching like that is not a giant contact patch based on the picture. You might be able to just drive the car and let it "wear in" instead of clearancing the arm. I'm not saying its the most right way. But it appears like it would work.

Can you just clearance the arms with a dremel? Or turn the axles to clear the arms? (its hard to suggest a solution when you don't have the parts in hand) I frequently heat an ice pick to melt plastic for numerous tasks. I drill holes with it, clearance parts, cut parts like a hot knife, etc.

Yep I can see your build from that link. I'd use adjustable tie rods to change the chamber for the rear wheels to prevent the rubbing. If I understand your problem correctly from the pictures.

Backstory, I was given a couple Lunch Boxes that have been sitting in my shop floor for a couple years. I've been hoping to find a project to use them on. You know how it is, you don't want to throw them out since they are prime Tamiya fodder. Thus you are being inspirational for others even if you don't realize it.

Me, I have never dyed any RC parts. But I have a friend who did dye his stock Clod Buster bumpers and some other parts on it. His did not turn out very well, as it had a blotchy color pattern afterwards. He tried to make them dark blue (from being red) and he got a funky pink and purple blotchy mess. So as Backlash said, try dyeing a parts tree before doing the real parts. I'm also pretty sure there's a youtube video on how to do it, since dyeing RC parts is pretty popular. @mongoose1983, also the BullHead had yellow bumpers/parts and a red chassis.

No you are not going mad. But a lot of these aftermarket upgrades appear for a while. Then when the sales drop they discontinue them for the next hot sale item. Its how small businesses stay in business....

Hobby King sells adapter cables. But if it were me, I would simply cut the plug off and solder them on the new battery. On a 1S lipo like this, there's no real current draw concerns for a soldered connection to fail. I mean as long as its soldered properly, and heat shrinked. If it were a higher S rating battery. Then I use crimped on connectors, that are also soldered on to adapt different plugs. But I avoid using those batteries on high current draw applications as much as possible. As I've seen high current draw melt soldered on battery and motor connections in RC planes.

Oh wow, I would have never guessed that the KH was sized so close to the LB body. It looks SO MASSIVE on the pictures. It makes you expect it to be a bigger version of a Clod Buster. Yet really its not that big at all. Now I'm imagining an extended body Lunch Box! Or maybe a 4 door Midnight Pumpkin!

I have an early 1970's 1/8th scale gas powered Jerobee with the stock fiberglass body.

those are 1S lipo batteries, you can buy them on ebay cheap

Thanks for fixing the pictures. These are one of my favorite chassis's from Tamiya.

Ugh.... Photobucket completely ruined this topic! Sammo your truck picture is cool. I might have to rethink my old F-150 w/ '50 Chevy body to be converted wide after seeing your pic.

I paint the windows on most RC's as I don't like seeing the RC stuff inside. Your car looks pretty cool, so I wouldn't worry about the windows. Just go sling some dirt with it!

Sure, no problem. The RC flying event is in October. So it will be a little while before I'll have it all together and setup. But I'll troll the event pic's with my modified Bullhead, so that there's at least one land based vehicle in them.

So I was looking pretty close at these pictures and I had an outside the box thought. Most of us like to modify our RC's and seeing how this gear box is laid out. It appears that one could do a couple cuts and add separate motors to drive this thing. Or if steering was an issue. Then you could remove the drive from the fronts pretty easily to make them turn farther, while keeping the 4WD in the back. I guess the point that I'm making is that there's more you can do with this setup than some other RC's from its modular design. Plus its only a matter of time before parts retailers mod this thing to become insane crawlers.