Howards

Also if anyone so much dares to suggest Zahhak I will come for you

Saved itself really by providing cheap access to Egress and Avante spare parts But yeah on all other measures its a shocker

Speedy delivery of that iron and helping hand station then!

Hopefully before December 31st

I know I know... I think they are trying to make it easy for new entrants who maybe have just built a DT03 or something. They don't want them to get to the end of the build and think 'well, I really fubar'd that paint job up didn't I?'.

VQS shell is pre-painted but presumably not stickered. Interestingly the box says 'body is pre-painted in black' which is odd as the body is actually black and egress silver on the nose around the canopy. The original box art has a border around the cockpit window that's also missing on the sticker sheet and not mentioned on the painting instructions, presumably as it's beyond even moderately able painters to get anything near an acceptable finish on it. Will be interesting to see if they've pre-painted that and what they've done with the nose. The Vanquish is probably the hardest to achieve a good finish in box art due to the missing cockpit border, the silver and black paint requirement and the number and complexity of the curves you need to mask. If I did one again, I would use liquid mask as tape and a pre-cut window mask barely cut it, no pun intended. There is a bit of method to their thinking on including a pre-painted body as there's a great chance of making a meal of it - google image search for examples!

Tamico has the hi-cap shock set for 44 euro (out of stock, obvs.) This seems inexpensive for a nice set of alu shocks. Is it a pricing error or is this roughly what they go for?

Got a multi-meter? You can check the resistor.

Just painted a Vanquish shell - I now understand why Tamiya decided to include the painted and trimmed shell. It's next degree difficulty compared to Egress (******* easy) and Avante (moderate and that window shape...) There's a lot of scope to make a mess of it and the cockpit window is a tough shape. It also needs a window outline that the sticker sheet doesn't seem to include.

I'm guessing the thinking was that once you've sandwiched two sheets of it together the resulting assembly is stiffer, stronger, more durable and will survive more disassembly reassembly cycles than an ABS tub without a large weight penalty. Also less likely to melt. BITD you either had an aluminium tub or composite decks on the pure racers but part of that was probably the relative ease of manufacture compared to a moulded plastic. Once glass re-enforced plastics came along then the tub came back in to fashion. Didn't look as good as composites and aluminium though

Heh, yeah, don't do this. 1. Do an initial 'dust coat' - a fine spray from 25-30 cm away moving quickly over the body. This provides something for the next coats to adhere to and helps prevent runs. You don't have to worry about this coat landing dry - Tamiya PS paint is pretty savage stuff and is well sticky. But it should be 'dust' and not 'blobs'. 2. Do a complete coverage coat again from a fair distance. Move slower over the body to give it a bit more paint. but you are looking to simply get a bit of paint everywhere. Not too thick. 3. Initial wet coat. Here you are aiming to get enough paint down so that the body looks 'wet'. You can get close. As close as 5-10cm. But the risk here is that too much goes down and it runs. You need to know where to stop and move the can fast do not linger for a moment!. After the initial wet coat, the inside of the body should be smooth and shiny. 4. You can now either apply a backing for effect or tune the tone of the paint by adding more wet coats.

What else went wrong? Tamiya silver is quite dark, if it was Tamiya silver. The Bright Silver is much more fun. Can get some lovely subtle metallics with it.

As above it looks like dry spray where the paint has lost liquidity before hitting the surface. Does the rough coat flake off? If so, yeah, probably dry spray.

New, maybe. Used, there's a plentiful supply in existing RR/RRR spec cars being given away like the example above. OK buying used sucks a bit but the price of those alloy blocks is pretty wild. You are looking at £60 to do the set. If you buy a used car, take what you need and sell on the rest you might get them for free...that car I listed above has at least two full sets and will sell for about £150.

The person who actually needs the parts is, judging from their other posts, in the UK.