LongCatisReal

Other than cosmetic damage the only part broken was the servo mounts it self. I used a small candle to make a corner mold so I could pour in resin and cure it. Just to be safe I added micro rebar in it. finally setup the servo with saver and made sure there was no flex at full turns ( had to lower a bit in the remote setup but was not too much ) Last image shows the repair, only shaved of a little but at the end of the servo saver as this could hit the battery box. Next fun step, touch up the ruined parts with paint and if I can fix the front lip of the car ( gonna be though so might leave that bit ) Candle mold : it was very brittle ... Drilled a hole in it and sanded it down to match the dimensions.

I did repair the steering and servo to some degree & added servo saver.

I got to say it handled smooth until the servos own mounts snapped and then it just went like dukes of hazard but with a twist. Turns in really nice but no jtcc spec need to get rid from lots of slop and stiffen this and that. And a picture in its habitat.

Normally I would just clean up with paint remover but in this case it was already double layered, so it would smear and mix into gray ... it did make me almost cry but I held my cool and said it is what it is. You can easily fix the problem but that meant to completely start over. I am happy with the results and very satisfied with the small Tamiya paint X-1 black and X-8 yellow the small touchup's I could do and the color matched perfectly.

Finally the annoying part was done, with annoying I mean cutting the wheel stripes. I do not have a very steady hand anymore for cuts like these so scissors it is... They turned out looking nice. Fyi the rims are 24mm and the tires on it is the 26mm versions so the tire walls are a bit thicker than usual, I felt like the original tires that came with the set looked a bit smaller than usual. Only thing I did not do is painting the mirrors, the mirrors are from the golf vr6 and like this I think they look nice. Enjoy!

A Quick final touch up with Tamiya paint, I used these for the bits that were not aligned perfectly. Yellow and Black bits only, conveniently only bits that needed it. You can see on the other pictures where they do not match perfectly ( door and arches front, rear arches and some other bits that felt/looked too open )

Fixed the ride height, added mirrors and the Takumi's are doing a final inspection.

Good news, I have been stickering for a while now and we can say its done. Minor downsides are some areas are not perfectly aligned. When opening my sticker pack I notice I am missing 3/4 stickers ... before this I thought I was crazy of could not count ( apparently when I bought the set, either factory or seller did not notice the defect / missing bit ) 'I improvised on the missing parts' Fixed the image size so less spam. Enjoy : So here I have had a problem, while cleaning the outside of the body of black paint on the front bumper area there was a crack and the paint remover seeped in to the other side ..... When I notice this after cleaning the bumper I was already too late the paint got soft and when rubbed of it mixed ( white and black ) I stopped doing and checked the damage, cried and cursed but it is what it is, to fix this I need to remove all the paint so I don't want to do that again.... I left it as it is and later on you will notice it is not that bad. The front bumper did get some cleaning so was not all to bad ( still crying ) Fun parts Hard part No body liners Body liners added The left and right air vents 'square' were the missing parts of the sticker set and also underneath the license plate the 2 black stripes. I cut them from another body sticker set I had from another brand and it just needs some alignment or might redo again. Finally only the wheel stickers and mirrors are left over, I might use a bigger mirror set as I have the golf ones left, I had a subaru version from another set that looked very nice on it but I lost one sadly enough.. And not to forget, the body lines did turn out great.

The labour of love betrayed me There was a tiny gap on the front bumper, while cleaning with a cotton ear tip a amount of paint remover seeped inside and having white and black layer on there it did a small mess, wont be possible for a quick fix as black and white turns gray. I will post the pics if I am done stickering soon.

Some of the masking and painting. I did notice some repaired bits ( body post area and front lip ) did not come off the greatest but that is why I got the body liners / stripes ( it will take focus away from bad bits hopefully if I do it good )

Got the paint and body stripes / liners in. Sadly enough the photos exceed the max size so I have to spam like this

If I recall correctly I got it off amazon.

I used 3m perfect it 'fast cut plus extreme' The tools used is an old dremel and a mirka deros sand/rotating machine ( for example outside the body you can do a good polish with wool pad ) the pads I have some big ones from rupees and a small bit set from amazon or alieexpress I think. Sadly enough the dremel I have since I was a kid I think, so after a rebuild I noticed the speeds dident match and once plugged and turned on it jumps to hyperspeed, might replace for a new one ( I can get way better results ) Edit 2: forgot to mention I just take a normal elec. drill ( I got a regular parkside drill ) and put the small polishing pads on that one ( it will not be as fast as a dremel but way safer for sure ) Edit : I also have 2 other 3m compounds yellow and blue (finishing for swirls etc) , but I think these go well for the car clearcoat and would be overkill for a small lexan body, I have 2 body's to test on so I would not mind experimenting on these in the future. I hope mods wont mind if I share a vid I did on restoring lights / lamps of a car. The car lights are also polycarbonate lexan ( maybe with a extra layer or 2 on top ) but as you can see you can get a glass finish. This is also possible on a tamiya/lexan body but you have to be extremely patient and only use crazy sandpaper like kovax 3m specials.

Final state of the FF-03, have not even done a proper test outside yet with the dampers on now. Also a team of yellow Takumi's are inspecting the chassis.

Finally covered the windows and holes for paint ( I will need to pick up some ps1 and ps5 paint so this I will post when done ) The body posts wont be seen after paint I assume and even if they are there it wont be noticed that much, the only bad part is the rear window that now does have 4 holes fixed and visible. I do have a plan b but it will be risky. I took an old body and cut off the front window and for some funny reason I could match it with the rear of my vectra ( it was a non tamiya body ) If I am not happy I still could do the window swap and fix it by cutting out the window and adding the new window but I will need some extremely good epoxy and I did not find any glass like epoxy so that will be on hold. Finally I could mask the windows with smoke paint from the outside and this could do the job a little bit better. That is all for now. The resin used for the holes and rear window is called UV Resin ( no brand ) and available on amazon alieexpress etc. FYI if you fill a clean rounded hole and put enough pressure on it, the resin peace can pop off or even break