Jato the Neo Fighter DT-03

[JatoTheRipper 94]

I started this build way back in 2021.  My first RC car was a Hornet that I got for Christmas in the 1980's when I was around 7-years old so I was in an out of RC once or twice, but I had been heavily into the hobby for over 10 years leading up to 2021.  Then in January 2021 my girlfriend and I bought a house so we got busy being adults, I packed up all my stuff - too much RC, and moved it to the new place.  She suddenly, tragically and unexpectedly passed away from COVID a mere three months later in April of 2021.  Obviously, this destroyed me and I stopped working on the Grand Hauler build that she bought me for Christmas and bought this Neo Fighter kit.  I just couldn't get back into RC.  All I wanted to do was ride my motorcycle and "get away" when the weather was nice.  Life sucked then.  Fast forward to now and I'm happy again, in-love with my new girlfriend, and I got the RC itch badly again!  This past Sunday I went on my first scale crawler trail run since early or mid 2020.  I also restarted this DT-03 build.

I was dog-sitting my girlfriend's dog as she took her son to NY for a long weekend.  Unfortunately, I could not tag along because I do not have enough vacation days for all of our adventures.  Meet the cutest and sweetest pocket pit bull named Zombie.  Named by my girlfriend's son who was 4-years old when they adopted the dog.  Zombie wasn't much help with the build.  She gets super depressed when her "mom" goes away.

 

This is where I left off in 2021 and where I am restarting the build.

 

I had to order up some more parts because I needed a servo and, of course, because I "needed" bling.  The parts from the Aeration dampers and over to the left are new.  The stuff on the right was bought previously.  No idea why I only bought the front carbon tower to start.

 

Cheap-o servo installed in the aluminum mount.  Once you have the joy of a super expensive servo, it is hard to go back to these cheap things that tend to be weak, slow and not up to the claimed specs.  We shall give this one a try...

 

Servo installed in the car.  I really wish at least one servo manufacturer would get smart and allow you to put the lead on any of the four sides of the servo.  This servo has the wire coming out at probably the least convenient spot for this chassis.  Minor gripe.  I'm an engineer so I nitpick things.

 

I used the Kimbrough mid-size servo saver.  I used the bottom, outermost holes.  The upper holes, closest to the servo splines, look closer to the kit servo saver, but I was afraid the balls would come in contact with the servo so I used the outermost holes.

 

Onto attaching the gearbox to the chassis using these pretty blue parts.

 

Rear assembly installed.  See how great those blingy blue parts look?  Doh!  Well hopefully they at least lead to more strength.

 

Another niptick.  The one countersunk hole on the chassis was not molded properly.  This caused the one screw head to not recess into the hole like it should.  I did not have a countersink tool at my girlfriend's house.  I may try to fix this at my house if I can find my countersink bit.  If not, I may need to pick up some cheapies at Harbor Freight.  Those should be fine enough for plastics.

Next up is shocks.  I am not the biggest fan of building shocks as bleeding can be very tedious.  Anodized aluminum shocks are always a thing of beauty and the Tamiya grey and blue are awesome.

 

It was kind of tedious getting all of the shocks to match rebound.  I did not drill holes in the caps and use the bleed screws.

 

Complete and just perfect looking.  I chose the Aeration dampers over the DF-03 buggy shock set because of the white springs.  The DF-03 set Tamiya# 54993) came with ugly gold springs.  Those do have bladders so they are probably easier to build for me and also partially aluminum caps.  It was a surprise and a disappointment that this set of dampers included so much plastic.  The caps are plastic, the bottoms are plastic, and even the balls are plastic.  This is really weak, Tamiya.

 

I filled the shocks with 30 weight oil from my Team Associated RC10 40th Anniversary kit.  Of course I had Noleen SF3 AKA "green slime" on hand.

 

Now let's install those carbon fiber shock towers.  What is this?!  Tamiya wants us to seal the edges because they were too cheap and lazy to do it?  Again, weak and unacceptable, Tamiya.  I did not have CA glue at my girlfriend's house and I will most likely forget to do this once I return home.

 

Shock towers and shocks fitted and just looking awesome!  We got a slider.

 

I could not, for the life of me, get the inner beads of the rear tires to seat in the correct place on the wheel.  I tried and tried for multiple days.  Then it hit me that I had just received a pair of non-marring pliers in the mail.  This worked well.  I win, tires!

Before pliers:

 

After pliers:

 

Wheels installed and now we have a rolling chassis.

 

Last up, we have my arch nemesis - paint!

[Grumpy pants 5178]

Nice thread, great choice of hop ups 👍

[toyolien 5490]

Hello @JatoTheRipper What a great, detailed build thread. Your crawler builds are always great, so I'm expecting a similar quality build on here too. Subscribed.

[JatoTheRipper 94]

3 hours ago, Grumpy pants said:

Nice thread, great choice of hop ups 👍

Thank you, sir!

 

3 hours ago, toyolien said:

Hello @JatoTheRipper What a great, detailed build thread. Your crawler builds are always great, so I'm expecting a similar quality build on here too. Subscribed.

Thank you!  This is an honor coming from you.  I have read so many of your threads and envied so many of your builds over the years!  

Sorry, but I must admit that, until just now, I always misread your username as toy alien...   Please forgive me.

[JatoTheRipper 94]

Before I start a separate thread that will most likely get more visibility, do any of you know the angle of the countersink Tamiya uses for their flathead screws? I need to order a bit. 

[JatoTheRipper 94]

Let's see some more of that nekkid undercarriage in better lighting.  Look at that pretty Tamiya blue bling glow!

 

Now on with the show...  Paint hates me.  I hate paint.  It's a very toxic relationship.  Now what color(s) do I want to paint the body?  At around the time I got my Hornet in the 80's, my dad also bought a Frog for himself.  I remember him saying there was no way he was putting light pink on his RC car.  Pink had a different stigma then than it does now, but I still agree.  No light pink for me.  I've always loved fluorescent pink though.  So I thought a white and fluorescent pink would be a nice retromod homage to the OG Frog.

I mentioned I'm an engineer.  There is a stereotype that we are lazy beasts.  I would certainly categorize myself as lazy in certain regards.  I took the lazy way out and masked off the pink section and painted the body white first.  Upon spray the first layer of white paint, the Tamiya can of PS-1 spritzed!  UGH!  This isn't the first can of Tamiya paint that has spritzed on me.  Yes, I shook the can for 2 minutes.  Has anybody else had issues with Tamiya PS cans spritzing out large droplets of paint?  Thankfully I was able to hide those.  Then I came back with pink and finally a white coat over everything.  It was easier to mask this way.  But I forgot that no matter how thick you layer on white paint, the other colors always seem to bleed through.  So I have a flourescent pink and white with light pink frosting.  Doh!  It is more noticeable and looks worse in photos than in reality, but the pink hue is definitely there.

 

I am back at my house for the rest of the week where I have access to all of my RC tools and supplies including my rotary tools.  I plan to finish trimming the body and making it look nice then adding decals.  I will say that this body was more of a pain to cutout than I expected.  I guess you could partially blame my laziness again, but why does that side of the body not remain straight.  It has to be cut to go around those random standoffs near the front of the car.  Are those used on other kits?  They seem to be pointless for the Neo Fighter.

[JatoTheRipper 94]

Let me just say that if I am ever reincarnated, I do not want to come back as a bug.  What possesses bugs to go after freshly painted things?  The caustic-smelling fumes are apparently like candy to them!  I had probably 10 bugs land inside this body while painting.  Thankfully, none of them ruined the paintjob.  I am wholly capable of doing that myself!

 

First up was a step that I forgot.  I had to cut off the Tamiya Molex connector and install an XT60 plug.  Thankfully Deans have finally been replaced by something much better after all these years.  Now if only everything would come with an XT60.  Tamiya will never make this change.  They will stick with that Molex connector until the dinosaurs come back.  Anyway, changing connectors requires soldering.  Soldering, much like paint, fights me like I treat it badly.  I do not.  I am the one on the bad end of these relationships!  I took a gamble soldering the ESC installed in the car.  This is the third time I am soldering after a 4-year hiatus so a brazen move for sure.  And I lost the first round when this glob of solder landed on the chassis.  Thankfully, it popped right off like cooled solder normally does and no permanent damage was observed.

 

XT60 installed.  Yep, I used both heat shrink and the grey caps.

 

Tamiya does what Tamiya wants.  They are one of the few companies that can get away with not caring about their customers.  They still do not die cut most of their decals.  Sigh, I'll finish your job, Tamiya.  Yep, I admitted to being lazy.

 

Let's get out my Ryobi "Dremel" and smooth out the body a bit.  Remember the lazy part when you notice imperfections.  I'm as much impatient as I am lazy so that also plays into this.  I know this may disturb some people, so I will warn you that what you are about to see is NOT box art and I also mixed Neo Fighter and The Frog decals...on the same car!  I know...madness!

With no further ado, I present you with the Pepto Neo Frog.  Pepto because she's definitely light pink.  Neo Frog should be self-explanatory.

I don't like how the front shock tower, or damper stay, hides The Frog decal.  I guess I didn't plan its placement out very well.

You can point and laugh at me now because I have a Pepto-Bismol, light pink Neo Fighter The Frog.  Thankfully, it looks more white in the sunshine.

 

 

 

[Andreas W 2168]

It turned out nice. But what would the old man say about that color scheme? Sometimes unexpected things happen and the result is great. This is a good example of this, as is the color @skom25 ended up with on his Viper.

Next time you need wheels a set of JC Racing Astute or Wild One wheels would look good. You even get them in pink . 

[TurnipJF 9722]

13 hours ago, JatoTheRipper said:

I guess you could partially blame my laziness again, but why does that side of the body not remain straight.  It has to be cut to go around those random standoffs near the front of the car.  Are those used on other kits?  They seem to be pointless for the Neo Fighter.

You are correct. The Racing Fighter uses the rear ones for body post mounting and the Aqroshot uses all four.

[skom25 1736]

4 hours ago, Andreas W said:

This is a good example of this, as is the color @skom25 ended up with on his Viper.

Painting in reversed order is really hard to understand and there are MANY things which can go wrong. When first color is not perfect, it is almost impossible to tell what end result will be. It is even harder, because coverage of some colors is really weak. One thing to be honest: how should I know, that yellow color with gray backing will turn into green?  Experience. There is no other way.

However, I stopped to care to much about bodies. My cars are runners. It is always the same: a lot of preparations, painting, applying stickers, thinking for hours which scheme is better. When it is finished, you take it for a run and... Boom! Curb. Boom! Stone from under the wheel. Boom! Rollover.

I really car about my cars, but things happen and sometimes it is not worth to sit and cry, that color is not as we expected or there is paint stain. Next time will be better.

9 hours ago, JatoTheRipper said:

And I lost the first round when this glob of solder landed on the chassis.

Next lesson. Do not solder things on car. I did the same and touched plastic End Bell of Super Stock motor. I was really, really angry.

[JatoTheRipper 94]

5 hours ago, Andreas W said:

It turned out nice. But what would the old man say about that color scheme? Sometimes unexpected things happen and the result is great. This is a good example of this, as is the color @skom25 ended up with on his Viper.

Next time you need wheels a set of JC Racing Astute or Wild One wheels would look good. You even get them in pink . 

Haha!  That's funny.  That old man has calmed down a lot over the years so he'd shrug his shoulder and say "It's fine...run it!"

Thanks for the tip on the wheels!  JC has some great looking stuff.  I especially like those Predator wheels.

 

3 hours ago, TurnipJF said:

You are correct. The Racing Fighter uses the rear ones for body post mounting and the Aqroshot uses all four.

Thanks for the info.  Also, I love your avatar!  Brilliant idea to use the Mabuchi 540.

 

1 hour ago, skom25 said:

Painting in reversed order is really hard to understand and there are MANY things which can go wrong. When first color is not perfect, it is almost impossible to tell what end result will be. It is even harder, because coverage of some colors is really weak. One thing to be honest: how should I know, that yellow color with gray backing will turn into green?  Experience. There is no other way.

However, I stopped to care to much about bodies. My cars are runners. It is always the same: a lot of preparations, painting, applying stickers, thinking for hours which scheme is better. When it is finished, you take it for a run and... Boom! Curb. Boom! Stone from under the wheel. Boom! Rollover.

I really car about my cars, but things happen and sometimes it is not worth to sit and cry, that color is not as we expected or there is paint stain. Next time will be better.

Next lesson. Do not solder things on car. I did the same and touched plastic End Bell of Super Stock motor. I was really, really angry.

I kind of agree.  I get frustrated when paint doesn't turn out as expected, but for me it happens often so I should be used to it.  And when I run my vehicles, I run them hard and beat them like they owe me money.  Not saying I can or will do that to this car.  I know Tamiya vehicles don't withstand bashing like Traxxas.  But I recently did something I have never done before.  I got an RC10 40th Anniversary kit and built it to be a non-running shelf queen.  So I'm kind of in buggy shelf-queen mode right now.  I will just run out of room for all of them quickly.  I already have too many RCs, but most are scale crawler trucks.

[skom25 1736]

I really recommend you to install adjustable turnbuckles. You have really nice shocks, so I would be a shame to not have some more adjustment.

I had DT-03 and difference was huge when I installed them. Much more front grip on settings from manual.

[JatoTheRipper 94]

30 minutes ago, skom25 said:

I really recommend you to install adjustable turnbuckles. You have really nice shocks, so I would be a shame to not have some more adjustment.

I had DT-03 and difference was huge when I installed them. Much more front grip on settings from manual.

Thank you.  That is my plan.  I may also install on-road tires and sway bars.