BuggyDad

Thanks! That Neo Falcon thing is an abomination. Good name though, shame it's taken.

Mount Fuji! ❤️ You truly are the chosen one.

Good point. They're 1150. 5x11x4. So if I could find a well sealed 5x11x3 bearing that would also solve the problem. I'm not sure such a thing exists though? Or have you sleeved the 1050 out to 11mm? Another (rather more convoluted) solution that tempts me is to design my own arms. These could take a longer CVD to widen the track and be sized to fit the gearbox end perfectly as well as adjust the shock mount forward a little. They could also either toe in the standard uprights or (more likely) take DT-03 ones. One for the future though. I don't fancy my chances of cutting into the uprights accurately enough for a deeper bearing recess. On that note I was looking at the available CVD lengths. It seems to me in the ballpark from Tamiya we have: 54016 DB-01 64mm (which I intend to use in TD4 rear with DB-01 arms and XV-01 uprights) 53791 DF-02 70mm (which are coming up either a little short as direct replacements in the Blitzer or a little long in the Blitzer with DT-03 arms and uprights) 22028 TD4 73mm So, I'm tempted to design new arms to use with TD4 CVDs and otherwise all the same parts I've got fitted currently (and a longer turnbuckle). If that's 2mm extra wriggle room and a +3mm shaft it's +5mm either side. Worth a try I think.

Painted and stickered my Falcon shell, except the wing which I messed up, so am saving the stickers for another option. No steering yet. I hope to make a bellcrank system work in this but await various parts and some luck and creative tinkering before I know whether that'll be a goer.

Painted and stickered the shell tonight. I messed up the wing, so I'm going to save the wing decals this time. I have a second shell and set of decals. I'll do one stock wing and use a different one for a second setup. Maybe do black with red sides (or vice versa) on a Revive RC one mounted a little further back on a custom mount. Anyway, although there are some issues with this shell it serves as a successful test for the next one. PS-2 red is very translucent isn't it? I backed with bright gun metal after plenty of coats of red and it's gone very dark. So proper Falcon colours have to be unbacked I reckon. Which is fine. Or maybe I back with another more solid red. Or white? What else? The big side decals have some black lexan behind them because I cut the shell way longer than the line, even though I moved the sticker back a bit (to accommodate my post holes). So I need to decide whether to cut the shell forward to the sticker or leave as is. Cutting it further forward exposes black chassis bits, so clean black shell there isn't so bad. Alternatively I could paint this section red on the next one but I doubt it'd match the sticker colour very well. Also I raised the rear of the shell a little on the posts. If I decide that's the way to go I can cut the next shell quite differently.

I was using one. It's not so much that I was doing something difficult, rather that I just cocked it up! In fact, it's quite likely I had achieved half decent coverage in the hard to reach wing sides, but I then went too far. My silver backing coat I did straight from the can, thinking it wasn't worth the decanting, cleaning etc of an airbrush coat. That then turned the above relatively minor error into a mess.

Painted my Falcon shell. Body should be passable, fingers crossed, but on the wing my attempts to get paint into the sides led to the red pooling up, I thought it was dry enough to back but it wasn't, so now silver and red are mixed. And wet. Impatience strikes again. Very annoying but at least this is my runner shell and it was already cut somewhat experimentally. I have another. And these wing sides are actually quite doable with patience.

I got a little further on my Fake Falkon. I've test fitted DT-03 arms and toed in rear uprights. I'm not 100% certain it'll all hang together right but it's progress. They also move the rear wheels back a bit which should help weight balance. Also a promising body mounting solution and its first real proper bit of Falcon Yellow 😁 So my Blitzer's fate is seald...

Today, ladies and gentlemen, the FrankenFalcon received its first* piece of real life bona fide yellow Tamiya Falcon. Its fate is seald. *quite possibly only, I fully accept! It wasn't quite so simple though. The good folk of Tamiya designed even this piece to be different on the Blitzers. So I had to cut and space it. It may therefore, I admit, now be a little less, er, seald, than it might otherwise have been. No matter. Onward and upward. To the arms. I had an idea to try DT-03 arms (requiring only ~1mm filing away at the inner mount) and a pair of @ThunderDragonCy's toed in DT uprights, because I have both in stock. If it works it'll give me the toe-in but also take the rear wheels about 5mm backwards, which to my simple mind could be a useful addition to this rear weight biased chassis. I didn't really like how the CVDs I have fit in the stock parts either, so although I had a hunch my new arms might make this worse rather than better, I was already thinking I might need to shop for different length CVDs. I also wasn't sure how the shocks would like their now slightly out of plane mounting although a slightly raked forward shock would look more Falcon. But I did know I have perfect fitting hinge pins for these arms, so there's at least one problem my idea solves rather than creates 😁. Fitting the parts a few things come up: - it turns out, contrary to my expectation, my CVDs are now a shade too long rather than short. They spin OK but they won't take any negative camber without limiting suspension travel. Perhaps I could cut the bearing recess in the upright a tiny bit deeper, if I find the right drill bit, or find a way to bring the outdrives in a shade (they have ~2mm of exposed shaft outside the gearbox case). Or if none of these things is a goer and I can't find fractionally shorter CVDs I could design slightly different uprights or arms for 3d print. Also this situation must mean I've narrowed rear track a little, which isn't desirable. - these uprights just foul the star dish wheels, but they don't the Fox ones which have a lot more offset. Thing is though, I really like the Fox ones (assuming I can dye them OK) and I don't really care for the star dish ones. Also, I've room for wider hexes and 1mm more would do. And, if the car wants wider track then more offset is good. - shock bottom shock mount does now sit a bit rearward of top mount but I don't think it's enough to matter, although I'm not certain.

This is just getting silly now I feel a strongly worded letter coming on.

Yup, no change as far as I could see.

Dual block tyres (how do C and K compounds compare? I got both to try) and TD4 bits from PJ. Stickers from MCI Not so sure about the quality. Mostly good but black lines are very pixelated. They'll do my uses though. And, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean float my Tamico Falcon yellow shock parts. Got them sent to my mate in Germany, but he wasn't really in Germany in the normal sense, rather the boat he's on was docked there, then he forgot my parcel on his last trip out, so I need to await his return home from whatever voyage he's now on.

Torture! The same again! Although, there is a fan in the bottom of the box. Now what the heck am I going to do with that?

I think you should go and sit on the stairs and think about what you've just said.

I echo the flat rubber markers thing, or chalk. In fact, there's a lot to be said for just using chalk alone if you're on a surface that's easy to mark and see the mark on, like clean tarmac, because you want anyway to mark a point that won't move that you can reposition your marker to after a run. So when you add a rubber marker to an already visible mark you're just adding something that's both a bit too big really and prone to moving. So if you've got a suitable surface I'd say save your money and just get a pack of big chalks. I'm hoping I can get a good run this coming week. This track looks ace, so long as I can manage the 6m+ width.