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wtcc5

The tale of the unloved Surikarn that finally found a loving owner.

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I finally became a member of the imaginary "TBevo3 Surikarn owner club" :)

Motivated by @Quincy recent purchase, I bought a used chassis, that didn't look to bad on the pictures. The delivery was blistering fast and I could finally see the well known box art with my own eyes:

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The car looks good on pictures:

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Seeing the standard TBevo3 stickers on the carbon plates made me a bit nervous, additionally to the unfortunately missing servo mounts and wrong bumper foam:

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So I had to take a look into the front diff housing fast:

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The red one-way is there, what a relief!

 

The car definitely has more wear, than I could see it from the pictures. My "ocd" couldn't stand having a dirty imperfect chassis on the table for long. So on the next day I started taking it apart:

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Most of the titanium screws are in a bad condition. Two of the hex heads were round and I had to work on the button heads to get them out. The whole car was very dirty. Soon after my hands looked like this:

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I was happy when I finished the disassembly:

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Good things first: Not one thread was stripped. Nearly all rare parts are in good condition, used, but not broken or bend.

The defective parts found were:

- one bend suspension pin

- one bend screw

- all four wheel hubs are broken next to the screw

- the chassis plate looks like "insert badword"

The previous owner didn't protect it. The front and the rear are badly worn. He also dremeled the battery cut out edges like 3 year old would do. To make it worse he tried to seal all chassis edges with crazy glue, but again worked in a sloppy way and spilled a lot on the chassis plate. After my cleaning, the plate looked like this:

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I make it short: I bought a new one right away...

 

The disassembly and cleaning also revealed a lot of dirt. I think the number of total disassemblies of this Surikarn including mine is now counting 1. I had a hard time getting the wheel hubs off, as half of the carpet slung around the opening between hub and bearing. Dirt was everywhere in and around the suspension. Positive to mention are the drivetrain gears. These look good and the drivetrain was pretty smooth.

Another nice thing are the original Tamiya ball bearing. Some of them were still working smoothly. The exemption were the ones on the suspension. Here I found the other half of the carpet :D

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...and sand:

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With a mix of cleaning methods (brake cleaner, water rinse and oil bath) I could bring them to life again. The seals of these old bearings are very good to open and close. So these were all saved:

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I forgot to make a picture of the clean plastic and carbon parts, but these got back a lot of their "youth". Again, that was really good to see. The aluminum parts came out like this:

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At the moment I am not unhappy with the car, maybe even glad, that it ended up in my hands to gain back its legendary status. Of course, I ordered a lot of parts, including screws, servo mounts, wheel hubs, pinion, ballnuts, suspension pins, one way outdrives, front body posts and more...

The plan is to rebuild the car from scratch and then decide for further beauty actions like anodizing worn parts.

 

I also have to ask what you would do:

I have a lot of red (Tamiya) parts like shocks, turnbuckles, screws, ballnuts 6mm and 5mm. Should I use them or keep the titanium parts. What would be your decision?

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Nice one… obviously replace any screws that are slightly rounded as they will be hassle next time you need to remove. Would be good to just restore back as per original as much as possible to keep value in the car if you sell later. If you intend to run then it’s good to just replace any worn hardware and do what you want to run it.

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Excellent addition.

That's three Surikarns on the forum now👍 that I know of!!!.

I'd be tempted to either strip and re anodise the red bits so they are all the same shade or replace the scratched parts with the aluminium finished equivalent so there's a titanium (ish) and red theme throughout.

Keeping the titanium screws is a must 😉.

Ive probably over red hop upped mine! Red dampers ball connectors etc.

I have added the front racing hub carrier which really helps with front hub wobble.

In all honesty if it where mine I'd do the unthinkable and re anodise all the aluminium in a different colour! Orange or green.

 

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Thanks guys!

@Alangt4: Good argument! If I will run it, will depend on what my friends want to run next summer. I would think, it will have its fair time on the shelf before it runs again.

@svenb: Then we are enough to found our Surikarn club :D I had to sort out a lot of the titanium screws. More than I could get now, so it will get red screws, too. The screws in good condition went in a little plastic bag for now. I think, I will prepare both, the red parts and the original ones to see what I like more.

What is the front racing hub carrier?

The problem I have with anodizing (all) parts, is:

1. There are different red color tones and the source for this work that I have will probably have the wrong tone (more saturation). Which would be a minor problem. More problematic is...

2. ... that the Tamiya lettering would be gone on the suspension blocks and upper deck mounts. And that would be too sad (my opinion).

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Totally agree on the lettering and I'd say only way to get a even colour is to re anodise the lot.

I'll get a picture of the racing hub carrier set up👍

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Great find! Love the red, it's a nice change from Tamiya Blue. When rebuilding my III I was pleasantly surprised at the spares that were still floating around out there - I found the parts trees I needed pretty easily.  I expected it to be on the shelf for months. 

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5 hours ago, wtcc5 said:

Thanks guys!

@Alangt4

@svenb: Then we are enough to found our Surikarn club :D 

What is the front racing hub carrier?

There is a unofficial TB club going started by our beloved but not seen in a while @TwistedxSlayer

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So did Tamiya add this hole intentionally for this or is that a @TwistedxSlayer special?

Where can I find more of your car here?

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5 minutes ago, wtcc5 said:

So did Tamiya add this hole intentionally for this or is that a @TwistedxSlayer special?

Where can I find more of your car here?

@TwistedxSlayeris a top man but I don't think he did the racing carrier for Tamiya!😅 But you never know🤔

It's a ta04 hop up 53458

Ive got that car in my showroom 👍

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This is a lovely find @wtcc5, something really different amongst all that (lovely) blue. I see these pop on eBay every now and then, but as I've assembled all the parts for a full-blue Evo III bits-a-build I've not been able to justify it. So I decided to satisfy myself with a red-studded TA-03 instead!

Really looking forward to following you restoring this back to its full potential :)

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I accumulated a lot of parts and hardware already:

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Now, I am just waiting for the chassis plate. I hope/guess it will arrive early next week…

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… and there it is :wub:

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Friday afternoon it will begin ^_^

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One more here in Canada!  I have a blue one and a red one lol  The surikarn is built never run

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A box with parts...lets do this!

 

And it starts directly with the chassis. Good, that I got a new one, otherwise the fun factor would have been much lower:

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Steering posts and inner suspension mounts installed:

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The rear suspension arms are next:

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Same procedure for the front:

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Arm installation:

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For the front, I used a wider block. The B-block is in a better condition than the heavily used A :P

 

That was a good first build chapter:

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Steering rack with red turnbuckles:

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:wub: The red aluminium with carbon fiber looks really nice. The low friction ballstuds are a bit tight :lol:

 

It feels definitely faster to build than a plastic car. Already working on the shocktower:

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... and the diffhousings. Here the TBevo3 special aluminium clamp comes to play:

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Shocktowers attached to the diffhousings:

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Now, the rear balldiff. The previous owner had used a combination of Kyosho and Tamiya parts to be able use metal diff-outdrives. A good choice for racing I guess. For this rebuild I will build the diff with original parts like the manual suggests (of course):

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Clean white!

 

Not much to do on the front one-way:

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Nice!! I like the red screws and ballstuds. Might have to do that on mine as well. I didn't want to get rid of the titanium, but some are worn just like on yours.. So where can I join that Surikarn club now? :D

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3 hours ago, Tizer said:

So where can I join that Surikarn club now? :D

I'd already counted you mate😉👍

@wtcc5 @Tizer @Sweatpants and me @svenb

Must be others on the forum, can't be that rare!!

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Super sharp photos mate and looking very nice👍

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So so good.

all these red builds make me wonder why they ever went to Associated sorry Tamiya Blue…….

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