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dinorider

Vintage Bruiser full restoration

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In the spirit of more pics, less words, It's game time.

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Only reliable way to lay down the stickers is with the soapy water technique. The big stripey sheets were heart-stopping. Took 3 sessions to do it all.

 

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People have noted that it's 'impossible' to get the stickers laying flat over the ridges and curves along the flanks, but it can be done. A hair dryer and a lot of patience will do it. But don't overcook it. I have completely ruined polycarbonate bodies with too much heat. Trick is to put your hand on the part and heat your hand together with the sticker. Once it starts getting too hot to handle, back off the heat.

 

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Original front bumper, with hundreds of crashes probably... You can sort of see the crack on the windscreen.  A lot of polishing smoothed it out, but the line will always be there.

 

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See the pointy blue stripe tips on the tailgate? Recipe for a peeling disaster in the tropics. I left a lot of clear vinyl around it, thankfully it blends well into the body. It's unlikely that I will ever find an affordable wing mirror part, so that will stay that way for now.

 

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Those sponsor stickers on the flanks are not Tamiya vintage nor rere fake logos. They came from a Traxxas sticker sheet because I was badword bent on putting real, non-fake logos on the truck. The sticker sheet didn't have the exact same logos as the vintage box art Bruiser, so I aimed for at least an approximate color match, with period-correct brands.

 

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The truck bed I actually cut and placed a sheet of thin black foam onto it. It's just lying there with no glue. Does give the bed a nice finished look without having to paint anything extra. Also hides the big trench that the body posts exit from.

Are we done? Not yet. It needs Calvin Brookman at the wheel.

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I went full scale model paint techniques for this. The parts were glued, puttied, and sanded so that the joints disappeared. This is the face after 2 colors, the base skin tone is Mr Hobby flesh + brown. On top of it is flesh, straight up. The figure was  90% airbrushed.

 

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The third color is added to the skin. A highlight that used Mr Hobby flesh + yellow. All that graduation you're seeing on the face isn't the light. The shadows and highlights are painted on. The hair is Mr Hobby red brown, straight up.

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After a spray for matte clearcoat, the detail work is done. The eyes make or break any figure. The big mistake many RC painters make is to assume the pupil is a big round circle. It isn't, and painting them as such gives the driver a wide-eyed, shocked-to-death stare. The whites are also not pure white. That's unnatural. It's white with a hint of red that I used. You also need to paint the edges of the eye lids. Miss that and the figure looks strange again. Here they are all in the midst of being tweaked. The eye sculpt isn't symmetrical, and I had to tweak with the paint job to level it out. It's a little hard to do on this figure because the sculpt is pure 1970s and the edges of the facial features are vaguely defined at best.

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Boom. Final result into the cabin. All the color on the face and hands are painted. The hands used 3 skin tones and the face used 4. All the dark shadowed recesses under the cheeks and around the nose, mouth, are part of the shading process with paint. Many people forget the sideburns too and I nearly did. Towards the end of the project, I noticed that the hair looked weird, and that's when I realised that there were no sideburns, and I painted them in.

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All that detail in the ears and grooves between the fingers, and fingernails, had to be painted. Note the not wide open eye shocked stare. The top and bottom of the pupils in the eye go 'under' the eyelids, and I went no further though there is the option of painting even more detail inside the pupils. This figure has its 1970s charm. The hands are so vaguely sculpted that you could paint them as gloved or ungloved hands too.

 

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The hair was further highlighted at the top of the head with a light airbrushing of red brown + a pinch of yellow. The jacket and trousers were also painted with multiple shades for shadow and highlights, all airbrushed. The seams on the arms and head were quite bad and took a lot of sanding + putty to eliminate. I avoided painting the cabin floor area black, as that makes it look like the figure is sitting in a tub of oil. This will do I think.

This is about 6 months of work, all condensed here.

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Looks good. It takes alot of work to restore these trucks. I did 24 back in the early 2000's. Replated everything and bead blast the aluminum parts, brass and cast parts to give a nice shiny appearance. I got burned out after about 5 years doing this. I still run one old Hilux 4x4 and a Bruiser from the mid 90's. They will last a lifetime if you take care of them.

 

Cory

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On 6/25/2022 at 8:21 AM, RC4x4 said:

Looks good. It takes alot of work to restore these trucks. I did 24 back in the early 2000's. Replated everything and bead blast the aluminum parts, brass and cast parts to give a nice shiny appearance. I got burned out after about 5 years doing this. I still run one old Hilux 4x4 and a Bruiser from the mid 90's. They will last a lifetime if you take care of them.

 

Cory

Very true, you can't rush these, nor let it turn into a 'job'. This one, while fun overall, was very involving and I can't see myself wanting to fully restore another one of these again.

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What an amazing rebuild. Working on it and seeing this come back to life must have been great fun and rewarding. Worth every moment too by the looks of it. A+!

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On 5/29/2022 at 10:52 AM, dinorider said:

DSC_5185.jpg

People have noted that it's 'impossible' to get the stickers laying flat over the ridges and curves along the flanks, but it can be done. A hair dryer and a lot of patience will do it. But don't overcook it. I have completely ruined polycarbonate bodies with too much heat. Trick is to put your hand on the part and heat your hand together with the sticker. Once it starts getting too hot to handle, back off the heat.

Congratulations on such a great restoration work. I love the truck, and also went through the process myself with one of these lovely models.

Not sure you know but the original decal is thinner than the one that comes with the re-release truck nowadays. Still, it's near to impossible to make it work properly and if you get it in place, the decal lift afterwards. When I did my resto I decided to do without the side stickers for that reason. By the way, I see you decided against shut lines on your doors.

I've painted black the frame of the truck --even though the manual says nothing about it-- because all of the built trucks Tamiya used for promotional pictures and videos back in 1985 were painted that way.

I feel your pain regarding the side mirror. I waited for years to find one of the repro they used to sell, and then a friend here gave me a re-re one. They're not the same, the new one resembles the original. Works for the truck, but definitely not for the trained eye.

Thanks for sharing pictures of your work here. Great job!

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On 7/6/2022 at 1:28 PM, mongoose1983 said:

Not sure you know but the original decal is thinner than the one that comes with the re-release truck nowadays. Still, it's near to impossible to make it work properly and if you get it in place, the decal lift afterwards. When I did my resto I decided to do without the side stickers for that reason. By the way, I see you decided against shut lines on your doors.

Yes the thickness was an issue. However these re-re decals seem to have some quality variables. Mine felt like the ink was not yet cured before being bagged up for sale. The light blue portions of the side stripes were getting scratched off as I applied the big decals! Thankfully I have the exact shade of light blue to touch it up so it's invisible. My decal sheet had extremely strong glue, and nothing has lifted up. Might be based on my technique of simply never stretching the decals with application as well, which is why I went straight over the shut lines. Trying to bend the decals along the body contours and the shut lines together would be asking for trouble. The stripe decals actually fold behind the seam of the cab and bed, and I left a lot of clear sticker at those parts to be trapped securely between the 2 body sections when screwed together.

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Great resto job, thanks for sharing it.

I often end up with my drivers having that shocked expression. With the way I drive I think it's pretty appropriate.

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Erm, wow! Welcome back after a 10 year break. That is an epic restoration there. 

I have a ReRe bruiser and built it to a reasonably high standard a about 3 years ago. It too has seen a considerable amount of use. And modification. My Bruiser Build - The Builds - Tamiyaclub.com

There are now a few more battle scars on the body. Tempted to give it a touch up over the winter. may post up some pics for opinions.

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