Selling some models - Alejo's Project Thread

[Andreas W]

Nice.  It's good you went with the three colours. In black and white only it would remind too much of Pelle Politibil . Now it's a proper Hornet-hommage.

[Busdriver]

Love it. What wheels are you going to use? VW wheels are notoriously difficult to reproduce or will it have “Hornet “ style wheels??

[OoALEJOoO]

3 hours ago, Andreas W said:

Nice.  It's good you went with the three colours. In black and white only it would remind too much of Pelle Politibil . Now it's a proper Hornet-hommage.

Very true, it would have had a police car feel to it! My M06 Beetle has a fairly comical take. The photo below is when it was new, now it's somewhat beat-up (no shelf queens on my lot!):

2 hours ago, Busdriver said:

Love it. What wheels are you going to use? VW wheels are notoriously difficult to reproduce or will it have “Hornet “ style wheels??

The plan is to have a car that can take a bit more jumps & dirt than the Escort, which would demand tires larger than the regular 60D tires (~58mm diameter). Even on the Escort the 60D's look a bit small, same on the Hornet Beetle:

The fluorescent yellow is perhaps a tad too bright. I am leaning towards the TT01 truck tires (~70mm) I originally got for the MF-01X Nissan but at the end didn't use. The silver color seems nice:

They would also need the body to be jacked-up by 3 post holes, otherwise trimming the wheel arches would be needed (I'll prefer not to do this yet). All things combined, I suspect that the car will suffer from grip roll pretty badly with these tires.

Perhaps something in the order of ~65mm would be best. Regular touring car tires are 65mm, although the larger rim might not look to good. I'll try to fit some and see how it goes. Having blown my budget, buying new wheels will have to wait until 2023.

I'll probably temporarily settle with 60D rally tires for grippy surfaces and the truck tires for gravel/dirt/jumps.

[Nikko85]

6 minutes ago, OoALEJOoO said:

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The fluorescent yellow is perhaps a tad too bright. I am leaning towards the TT01 truck tires (~70mm) I originally got for the MF-01X Nissan but at the end didn't use. The silver color seems nice:

They would also need the body to be jacked-up by 3 post holes, otherwise trimming the wheel arches would be needed (I'll prefer not to do this yet). All things combined, I suspect that the car will suffer from grip roll pretty badly with these tires.

Perhaps something in the order of ~65mm would be best. Regular touring car tires are 65mm, although the larger rim might not look to good. I'll try to fit some and see how it goes. Having blown my budget, buying new wheels will have to wait until 2023.

I'll probably temporarily settle with 60D rally tires for grippy surfaces and the truck tires for gravel/dirt/jumps.

That looks great! I think you are right about grip roll. My MF01x has these tires, and it will roll a little. Have you seen how it looks with 10 mm hexes? I've found they will just about work with the original hardware and will give you a little more width, which does reduce roll a fair bit. But it will give a less realistic stance of course. 

Someone mentioned Traxxas 7674X as a good option.

 

 

 

[OoALEJOoO]

1 hour ago, Nikko85 said:

That looks great! I think you are right about grip roll. My MF01x has these tires, and it will roll a little. Have you seen how it looks with 10 mm hexes? I've found they will just about work with the original hardware and will give you a little more width, which does reduce roll a fair bit. But it will give a less realistic stance of course. 

Someone mentioned Traxxas 7674X as a good option.

I thought about 10mm hexes but unfortunately that will increase interference with the wheel arches as it would put their edge right in the middle of the rubber  With the regular 5mm hexes the tires just sit right inside the arches fairly optimally, minimizing the need to jack-up the body.

I just realized I have some 3Racing 60D tires lying around that are actually 61mm OD, as opposed to Tamiya's 58mm. That might be a good compromise.

[GeeWings]

1 hour ago, OoALEJOoO said:

 

They go really well with the overall feel and really help the scale look. 

[Busdriver]

Looks fantastic The truck wheels are great but are the front and back different. Surely the fronts on a truck would be bearing and the rears hex?? You seem to have found both with hex fitting. I think it would look best with 4 of whatever’s on the front. 

[OoALEJOoO]

6 minutes ago, Busdriver said:

Looks fantastic The truck wheels are great but are the front and back different. Surely the fronts on a truck would be bearing and the rears hex?? You seem to have found both with hex fitting. I think it would look best with 4 of whatever’s on the front. 

They are the TT-01E truck wheels (51588) and indeed they are different front/back. Both have 12mm hexes. I agree that the front look better but I'm stuck with a single set 

[OoALEJOoO]

1 hour ago, GeeWings said:

They go really well with the overall feel and really help the scale look. 

 

2 hours ago, Nikko85 said:

That looks great! I think you are right about grip roll. My MF01x has these tires, and it will roll a little.

I'm thinking that if the tires are packed with sponge, they should deform less and potentially have less grip roll. I'll have this set reserved for loose surfaces (very difficult to find such a place where I live).

[OoALEJOoO]

Rally Cockpit

For this build, I'll cover with more detail the process I go through when building & painting a cockpit.

I'll be using Tamiya's Rally Cockpit Set 54491 to detail the Hornet Beetle and a combination of Vallejo Model Color acrylic paints + Tamiya TS sprays.

The first step was to wash, trim and paint the bulk of the cockpit using Tamiya TS-14 Black (both sides). Even though the cockpit material appears flexible and perhaps lexan-like, it is actually styrene and therefore PS paints will not stick. No primer was used.

For the helmets, they were primed with Tamiya White Surface Primer, the faces were then masked, and then everything painted with TS-14 Black.

Remember these are tiny 1/10 figures, and this is why you need to shade to begin with, light doesn't automatically shade the way it does on real 1/1 scale. If it did, all you would need to do is paint the whole model the same color, but the reality is that only applying a base color makes everything quite bland.

There are two main approaches regarding painting scale models realistically. One aims to authentically reproduce true colors faithfully, while the other aims to authentically reproduce "how a 1/1 would look if seen from a scaled distance". The former will tend to use the exact real color (e.g. eyes are not really pure white), which makes the model look really good on close-up shots but the tradeoff is that they would tend to look a bit bland when looked in real life at the regular arm-length distance you normally look at a model. The second approach is trying to make the model appear the same way a real one does (e.g. real eyes look sharp, although they are not really pure white) by "scaling" colors and shading, i.e. the eyes are painted pure white so that they "appear" as sharp as full-size real eyes. The downside is that they tend to look a bit "exaggerated" in close-up shots, but they look fantastic when looked at arm-length. The same goes for shading and highlighting. One school aims to subdue colors, the "scale" school aims to over-shade to make everything pop. Again the trade-off is mostly whether you favor close-up shots or actual arm-length looks. There is no right or wrong, it just depends on what you are shooting for.

With that it mind, my cockpit models are painted using the latter approach: scaling (exaggerating) colors & shading for added contrast.

Moving to actual brush painting, all base colors have been done:

Shading will come next, followed by highlighting and finally by adding little details.

[OoALEJOoO]

With terrible weather outside, I'm stuck at home painting.

Helmets' paintwork is complete. Meet Ruffshod Rod and his co-pilot Greg Martin :

Base:

Shade:

Highlight:

Detail:

Once it's fully dry (and assuming the weather cooperates), the helmets will get a coat of TS-13 Clear, place stickers (Hornet stripes) and finally brush the skin with matte acrylic varnish.

The cockpit's paintwork is also complete.

Base:

Shade:

Highlight:

Detail (including a map so that our fearless drivers don't get lost in the desert):

Once fully dry, the whole thing will get a coat of TS-79 Semi-gloss Clear, at which point the acrylic paint will align with the TS-14 black in more seamless way (you can see there is a black matte outline on the figures which will disappear). The figures will then get a brush coat of matte acrylic varnish.

You can see that the process is really not that complicated. It's not really necessary to be super precise or careful.

• Base color
• Shade: add a little darker color to the base color (e.g. dark brown to the red) and paint all the valleys
• Highlight: add a little lighter color to the base color (e.g. added skin tone to the red) and paint the crests. I did this on 3 progressive levels for the uniforms. You can clearly see the brush strokes.

[Aerobert]

Impressive work on the cockpit and heads. 👍

[OoALEJOoO]

The cockpit is now finished.

[GeeWings]

@OoALEJOoOWOW! That cockpit is seriously impressive. Some lovely touches and so well done. Congrats!

[OoALEJOoO]

Build Details

Originally a MF-01X Mercedes G320 trail car, it was later converted to a rally car with an Escort body. The chassis has maintained it's rally intent, with the Hornet Beetle being a secondary (or maybe primary!) body.

• Motor: stock silver can
• Pinion: 20T
• Tires: 3Racing TY-061202
• Wheels: Tamiya 11-Spoke M-Chassis wheels 51394
• Expected top speed: about 23 Kph
• Servo: Futaba S3010HT
• ESC: Tamiya TEU-101BK plus external BEC.
• Hop-ups:
  • High-torque servo saver
  • S-Mini CVA shocks
  • Rubber-sealed ball bearings
  • Locked rear differential (to encourage slides)
  • Slidelogy Gyro SDY-0104RD (currently mounted in the front, but considering mounting in the rear to better hold slides and eliminate some minor chatter).

Mods:

Hacked away a few fins of the motor heatsink to get it further towards the rotor and cool the motor a bit better:

Steel washer protectors for damper mounts. Greatly prevents the otherwise exposed ball connectors from getting chewed. Instead of the ball connector, I used a step-screw (or a screw with a ball-spacer also works) and a washer right behind the screw head:

Front:

Rear:

Anytime Baby!

[OoALEJOoO]

Photo Shoot

Time to hit the park 

[Badcrumble]

Fantastic work on the body and cockpit with some nice mods to the chassis too. Thanks for sharing!

[Goudar]

Great job she look fantastic !

I really like your job and detailling on the driver/co-driver figures. Nice tutorial.

[OoALEJOoO]

Thanks for the comments guys!

The Hornet Beetle will get it's maiden run this weekend. I wonder how long the rearview mirrors will survive  

Before I start on the last project of the Chain Reaction, let's recap on how thigs have progressed so far:

• 4 complete new cars:
  • MF-01X Nissan Hardbody
  • CC-02 Land Cruiser
  • CR-01 Toyota Hilux
  • G6-01TR Unimog
• 1 new body:
  • MF-01X Hornet Beetle
• 1 new paintjob
  • CC-01 Isuzu Mu

The final project will be using the Sand Scorcher body, bought to provide the stickers for the Hilux, to create a TT-02 Blitzer Beetle. I'll recycle a TT-02D chassis kit to essentially make something akin to a TT-02T in 251mm wheelbase.

The Blitzer Beetle will accompany the CC-01 Isuzu Mu in being a Rally Raid car: a Rally / Buggy hybrid.

[Juggular]

My goodness.

My poor brain can't keep up with this complicated schematics after the second row...

(The Hornet Beetle is fantastic, by the way...)

 

[Nikko85]

On 2/25/2022 at 10:03 AM, OoALEJOoO said:

Very true, it would have had a police car feel to it! My M06 Beetle has a fairly comical take. The photo below is when it was new, now it's somewhat beat-up (no shelf queens on my lot!):

The plan is to have a car that can take a bit more jumps & dirt than the Escort, which would demand tires larger than the regular 60D tires (~58mm diameter). Even on the Escort the 60D's look a bit small, same on the Hornet Beetle:

The fluorescent yellow is perhaps a tad too bright. I am leaning towards the TT01 truck tires (~70mm) I originally got for the MF-01X Nissan but at the end didn't use. The silver color seems nice:

They would also need the body to be jacked-up by 3 post holes, otherwise trimming the wheel arches would be needed (I'll prefer not to do this yet). All things combined, I suspect that the car will suffer from grip roll pretty badly with these tires.

Perhaps something in the order of ~65mm would be best. Regular touring car tires are 65mm, although the larger rim might not look to good. I'll try to fit some and see how it goes. Having blown my budget, buying new wheels will have to wait until 2023.

I'll probably temporarily settle with 60D rally tires for grippy surfaces and the truck tires for gravel/dirt/jumps.

@OoALEJOoO a solution thinking outside the box, the Kyosho 14x rear tires (found on their 1/14 QD type series) fit M Class wheels very well. 

65 mm diameter excluding spikes, 70 from spike tip to spike tip.

 

 

[OoALEJOoO]

Thanks @Nikko85, I'm not very familiar with Kyosho, do you have a link or P/N for reference?

Browsing though Plaza Japan, I came across these tires & wheels for the T3-01, which normally uses M-Sized tires on it's rear.

P/N 54830, 65mm OD, need special M-size wheels of 30mm width (54831):

P/N 54832, 65mm OD, also needs special M-sized wheels of 34mm width (54833):

They look great but might stick out the Hornet Beetle. Anyhow, my budget for the year is busted and will have to wait until 2023.

Currently swamped with work, haven't been able to even touch the Blitzer project 

[OoALEJOoO]

TT02Ra RWD Datsun 240Z Build

Hello there folks!

It's been a while since I've posted any progress on projects. I've decided that instead of doing the TT-02 Blitzer Beetle, the TT-02 chassis will be used for another Rally build.

The plan is to reproduce the following car:

All parts will come out of the good trusty parts box, which would impose some boundaries, but should still allow for a nice project.

Planned setup:

• Datsun 240z lexan body + rally cockpit
• TT-02D chassis, raised suspension setup
• RWD mod (disable front-drive by removing propeller shaft)
• TT-01 truck tires. These were originally intended for the MF-01X Nissan, thus still connected to the chain-reaction!

[OoALEJOoO]

Body:

I was able to progress fairly fast during the week. The body has been painted and now I'm working on the stickers:

The Simoniz lettering is done using vinyl letters from the stationary store. I'll hunt for some smaller ones needed for the rest of the lettering, otherwise I'll resort printing the letters on paper and then sticking the paper with clear tape.

The print-tape technique will also be used for the other sponsor logos. The part I'm struggling with is to identify the following logos  (circled in blue):

I haven't been able to find better pictures that allow identification and I have no clue what they could be. If anyone can provide any pointers would be fantastic! 

 

[Andreas W]

The yellow one is a Stewart Warner-logo like this 

 

More about the car here 

https://classicmotorsports.com/articles/bres-baja-datsun-240z-kisses-asphalt-goodbye/