mitsubishi jeep Yogi-bear makes a kit but doesn't build a kit - The Marui RC9 Mitsubishi Jeep

[yogi-bear 2447]

hmm, where to start, well firstly credit needs to go to @silvertriple as without his hard work, this project wouldn't be possible.

So, Marui in the 80s, one of the early iconic RC manufacturers which made the first RC monster track, as with Tamiya, they had a RC catalogue with all they had to offer. Except one car in their line up never made it to market. In fact as far as I can tell, there has never been a picture of one, not even a prototype, and that is RC 9 Mitsubishi Jeep

the Chassis is shared among the Big Bear, Golden Eagle and Toyota Landcruiser. I am not too sure why Marui abandoned this, especially as they clearly intended on releasing it, but either way there doesn't seem to be any examples at all, even a prototype, of which at least a couple of them must have existed.

So chatting to @silvertriple, he'd been diligently 3D modelling the Mitsubishi Jeep based on what little pictures there are as well as referencing the other models this to bring it to life, and I had offered to make a sticker set for it, the idea was hatched to make a kit version as well. So this thread will track this project, with the idea of making everything so that it's just like a boxed kit you would have bought if it had been released. That includes the box, all the bags, and packaging etc inside the box and hopefully some sort of manual as well. The plan is to have the complete kit by the end of the year. The plan is to make everything too, well as much as possible. I'll of course source the nuts, bolts and screws, motor, electronics, some metal pieces, but everything else I should be able to make in some form, by either 3D printing, vac forming or general printing. I will also have to recreate all the artwork for the box, the manual (I'll borrow heavily from the Golden Eagle and Toyota Landcruiser manuals) and then make up the rest of the header cards etc based on the other models.

 

@silvertriple 's thread where he 3D models this and the other Jeeps can be found here, its worth checking out.

 

[Man1c M0nk3y 616]

Sounds like an ace project. 

I know nothing of the brand or models but look forward to seeing this progress. 

[yogi-bear 2447]

so the first part was making the stickers. I took screenshots of the 3D model and sized them in Illustrator. From there I used the catalog reference to setup the artwork and adjust.

I also checked some of the other decal sheets, for the Eagle and Super Wheelie to get an idea of the lights etc. Silvertriple helped me check the sizing too as at this point I hadn't been able to print a body yet.

I printed the decal sheet on some optical clear vinyl using white ink. The sizing is pretty close, but I will refine it once I can print my own body.

 

 

[yogi-bear 2447]

Lots to do, but until I can print all the parts, I might as well crack on with the box. So this is only reference I have, plus images of other boxes and they all follow a similar style.

The first step was to re-draw the logo, that was not too bad, with some editing in photoshop, you can get a better image and then I hand traced it.

Because the jeep shares the same basic chassis as other cars, there are many elements I can borrow from other boxes. Luckily @silvertriple had a Golden Eagle box in decent condition and sent me some hi-res scans.

So after a couple of hours artwork time, I had an initial layout with partially cleaned up scans from the Golden Eagle box added in, plus some hand blending of the body gave me this.It probably looks better as a smaller file that it actually is. Parts of the body are still badly pixelated and the scans on the side will need tidying up some more.

At the time I had done this artwork I was also going to see a demo of a printer I want to eventually get. So this artwork become one of the sample files I use and I printed a test box at full scale. The size I based it on was the Marui Galaxy box I have and it's likely to be very similar to the others. I was pretty happy with this test print, and once I have printed all the parts I can see if I need to adjust the box sizing.

 

[silvertriple 4083]

@yogi-bear, thanks a lot for this as I'm yet to see someone else than me building this car... If you even do a video build, that would be great :-)

Sizing of the stickers were spot on, I had no issue with them. The only issue was the first version of the bodyshell, which made them difficult to apply in the top rear part, but the later version will be fine.

And while I think about it, there is still a CJ-7 somewhere on this box that needs to be replaced by something else... And we really need to get the Japanese text reviewed to get it right :-)

[Mad Ax 10575]

Wow, this is incredible!  I love the attention to detail.

[silvertriple 4083]

4 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

Wow, this is incredible!  I love the attention to detail.

if you like this, you may definitely like the content of my Super Wheelies and Big Bear thread :-)

When I started this, I had the vision of the Mitsubishi Jeep as an objective, but @yogi-bear made it even greater :-)

[yogi-bear 2447]

its probably about time I updated this thread 

So printing starts with the body and my main 3D printer is a Bambau X1C, and it's just bit small to fit the body in one print. My initial 3D prints of the body meant I had to cut the back and front off to. Apart from this, I able to get some nice prints in ABS. I have a couple of small errors where I didn't have enough supports, but overall the body printed quite well.

 

I'm using a tree type structure to support the print as its minimises the amount of material used.

front and back pieces

se

 

I briefly toyed with the idea of mounting it to the Wild Willy 2 chassis, maybe in a future project. It is probably a couple of mm too long though.

 

[yogi-bear 2447]

next up was printing the chassis. I didn't think I would be able to do this one one go, so @silvertriple designed a 3 part version.

The initial print wasn't that great, wrong orientation in the printer meant there was weak spots and I didn't have the right support. But it was good enough for a test.

 

The I proceeded to print the rest of the parts. I resin printed the accessories like steering wheel, gear lever, roll bar and even an example of the gears for test fitting.

so the next step is to start assembling and work out the screws and bolts I will need.

Assembling the chassis, I wasn't happy with how it was going together.

So I started to play around with trying to see if I could actually print it in one go, and lo and behold it was a lot easier than I was expecting. And I managed to get a much better print too. Although much like the body I ended up printing around 5 of these to get the right amount of supports and best settings

 

 

[yogi-bear 2447]

so while this was going on, work was pretty busy and I ended up treating myself to a larger printer, the Creality K1 Max. This meant I could print the body in one go. The initial prints I did was in the supplied PLA. First print was a hunter chassis as that would probably be the most difficult. 

 

apart from not enough supports at the back end of the battery area, it came out really well

 

So I moved on to printing the Mitsubishi Jeep in one go. While here I also decided to do the roll bars and some other bits and pieces just to see what I could get. So many hours of printing later, plus test fitting with various screw and nuts I have a complete body. While a slightly courser print than the previous I was still pretty happy with how it went together. The gear stick and the turn lights on the fenders I learnt have to have some flex in order to be assemble, the resin prints, even though they looked better, broke as the mounting clips didn't have enough flex.

 

 

 

 

next step is to assemble the gear box, drive train and front suspension/steering

[silvertriple 4083]

Nice results... Thanks for sharing the pics and hints for the orientation...