Yalson

Not an import/export specialist, so this is just me speculating, but if you are ordering items from Asia to be delivered in Canada, is it possible that the items were opened and boxes damaged while they were being examined by customs on their way in? Items will get scanned or x-rayed when they enter most most countries via post or courier and customs have the authority to open anything they don't like the look of or don't understand. Some countries (I think the UK is one, but I am not sure about Canada) also allow companies abroad to pre-pay the import duty on items they are sending into the country, which may account for the extra $81 shipping on what was a pretty sizeable order.

If those are the launch shots, then it all looks pretty familiar. Nice that they are brining the gold shocks back, although they do not look like direct reproductions of the originals. Not sure if those "Peugeot" wheels are direct copies either. Kyosho continue to make their box art liveries look terrible with excessive quantities of unnecessary text. And does this thing come equipped with 64dp gears, as it looks like it. Weird, as I don't think any Kyosho model came equipped with 64dp.

Penguin not pictured. Perhaps it was supposed to be listed as a Super Sub-aqua?

No, it seemingly just drags over the upper chassis. Which is... odd. I don't like the lack of clearance under the battery either, as it seems it has plenty of opportunity to rub on that too. I loved following your build of this car and the fit and finish of the parts looks to be very much up to Kyosho's typically impeccable standards. But it seems they made some very strange design choices with regards to the routing of the chain. It seems like all in it weighs about 850g and change, so it rather baffles me why they didn't have the spare weight to specify a chain with a couple of extra links and some ballraced chain guides to route it around the major chassis components and the battery. As far as I am aware there are no race series for 1:12 4WD on-road cars, so the chassis is a weird anachronism in any case and it isn't like Kyosho would be making the car uncompetitive in comparison to any rivals by doing so.

That looks amazing, but does the chain actually rest on the upper plate as it seems to in your pictures, or are there tensioners guiding it over the top or something?

Continued stripping down the Marui Hunter I have had sitting on my shelf for about 15 years, the mechanics of which I will be transferring over to a Marui Galaxy RS chassis that I bought a few years back, which unlike the Hunter chassis is uncracked and in much better condition. Other than some damage to the rear suspension mounts on the original grey Hunter chassis (which is one of the well-known flaws with this model), the parts from both chassis look to be in surprisingly good condition. I have a repro Hunter body and wing from TBG waiting to be painted, a set of the now extremely rare Hunter/Galaxy/Jeep/Land Cruiser rear tyres on the way after finding them in a cheap Tamiya tyre job lot on eBay, a Shapeways-sourced idler gear with bearing recesses waiting to be installed, and I just ordered some other 3D-printed upgrades which will be arriving soon. Now I just have to decide how to paint it and whether to fit it with the peculiar original Hunter suspension or the more conventional Galaxy suspension with its oil-filled shocks. Exciting stuff!

Wow. Doesn't seem much point in getting involved in the auction as I'm in the UK, but best of luck to anyone in the US who is thinking of bidding. Larry was clearly a guy who loved the hobby and you'd hope he'd want the collection to be in the hands of enthusiasts rather than speculators. When I first got into the hobby 35 or so years ago, I never thought we'd be in a position where RC kits would be bought and stored as appreciating assets, like property, classic cars or works of art, but here we find ourselves.

Let's not run before we can walk, eh? But I did consider that possibility with my Dad over a beer on Boxing Day.

You have to remove the fuse from the circuit, though, or switching from full forward to full reverse will blow it in fairly short order.

Yeah, don't bother. Hornets are virtually indestructible and spares are cheap. Alternatively, find a friend with a car and go bashing with them, as that way you can use theirs as a brake.

Oh, and @alvinlwh was absolutely right. Mr Hobby's Mr Stain Remover worked a treat to get rid of the overspray. It came right off, so thanks for recommending it!

Another Poor Man's Sand Scorcher: The concluding part. So anyway, the paint did come off with the tape, but fortunately in a way that wasn't disastrous for the end result and I found easy enough to touch up again with a brush afterwards. Crisis averted. I may switch to using masking liquid when I do this again, as the tape and paper were not ideal and the brushed paint was definitely not solid enough to withstand the tape being removed. And did I manage to get it done before Christmas, so it could be presented to my daughter on the day? I did. Finished it on Thursday night, to my great relief. So what did I learn from my first completed build in over 25 years? Well, the paint stuff, obviously. I now realise I can no longer reliably brush paint details on 1/10 scale bodies. This is partly because the paint technology has changed and water-soluble paints do not take to being brushed on to polycarb very well. It came out OK in the end, as you can see, but I am going to have to reclaim my airbrush from my father and learn how to use it and mask up properly. Although the window frames and other details came out OK on this shell (eventually!) I also wouldn't trust my hands and eyes to do the job forever, so improvements in technique are needed there. Also, the body mounts are obviously way too high. I built this as a Baja Class 5 tribute (like the Sand Scorcher) hence the number, but they are intended to convert the Grasshopper/Hornet chassis into a monster truck and while the Brat/Pajero wheels and tyres look good and are bigger than the originals for the chassis, they aren't really big enough to fill the arches. I do have a set of Blitzer Beetle wheels and tyres which would look great and even fit in with the colour scheme, but the offset is too great for the standard Hornet axles and they do not fit. Since the height of the body is indelibly set by the height of the metal front bracket, in order to fill the arches I may see if getting some axles from the Mad Bull might allow me to fit the bigger wheels. The number decals themselves were custom ordered in black/orange/white from MCI for an entirely different, long-stalled project, but they fit in well with the theme and the fact that my daughter is very proud of being 5. The mount kit is also intended for a truck body, meaning it doesn't fit well under the curvy nose of the Bug, which pushes it even higher. I may invest in a more malleable CRP double front mount kit for my Grasshopper II, swap the Bug shell over to that and fit truck shell to this one, so that it sits better. Other than that, I am rather pleased how it has come out. Sure, it's too high, but it looks rather handsome from some angles and although the high body may make the habndling a bit lairy, the bigger wheels would increase the track and put more weight down low to tame it a bit. It was immensely satisfying to make this work, so after being mostly away for a quarter century I am now definitely back in the game. Did the recipient like it? She did. She was very happy with it, but it hasn't been driven yet due to her being more interested in the large scale RC digger that her grandfather bought her. Kids are fickle. Next up I will probably modify my GH2 to match this, so we can go driving together. After that I am thinking about the Marui Hunter and Galaxy chassis I have sitting up on a shelf, which between the two chassis should make one good, functional model. I already have some spares, a repro Hunter body and a Shapeways idler gear with bearing sockets for the gearbox, so that should be fun.

That must have made driving very uncomfortable for both of them.

In my experience the standard internal gears on the Mid were all black, as @Tamiyastef suggests. None of them had white 48dp spurs as far as I am aware. After the Optima Pro, all Kyosho race cars had 0.6 Mod external gears up until, I believe, the Lazer ZX-R. I have read that some of these were sold with 0.6 Mod gears and some with 48dp, presumably with the latter in the US as it is an Imperial measurement, while 0.6 Mod is metric. Obviously any of them could have been regeared later with different size and/or pitch gears. I had a Mid and an Ultima that ran on 64dp gears, for example, which made them lovely and smooth but rather liable to chewing up spur gears. The similarity in pitch between 0.6 Mod and 48dp also meant that owners and workers in LHSs frequently mistook one for the other, with occasionally disastrous consequences.

The gears were 0.6 Mod on the Mid. Which is very close to 48dp. The Hobbyshop listing says the new re-re will have 48dp gears.