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This evening I placed an order (backorder) for the F104 Pro II that I'll be building while my wife is away on business in June.

While I totally get the "full house" approach to hop-ups being followed by @Willy iine with his one, and I am very much hoping that he does a build thread, I have already gone down that road with my F104 V2 Pro Black Special.

While the resulting car is a symphony of carbon fibre, titanium and black anodized aluminium, magnificent to behold and amazing to drive, it represents such an investment of time, effort and funds that I cannot bring myself to drive it under anything less than perfect conditions, and even then I am rather careful with it. 

So this time I am adding the hop-up alloy motor mount and camber block, and leaving it at that. The Pro II kit already comes with enough blue alloy pieces to make it look classy, yet nothing is so rare or expensive that I'll be concerned about running it. I want a F104 that I can treat as I do my F103RS, which is well specced and well cared for, but can be driven at the limit without fear that a crash will break anything irreplaceable. 

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6 hours ago, Willy iine said:

@OnTheTrail Love your car!   Would you be doing the door outline as your hood?  I think it will make it look even more outstanding.  

Funny you mentioned that.  The hood outline was actually a decal on the included sheet (a SERIOUS PITA to cut out by the way ;) ) but they didn't include one for the doors or the rear deck lid.  I may try to cut some black airplane trim tape I have into real small slivers and see if I can do them that way.   You are right, it does make a difference when it's done right.  I did the panels on my MST DC1 (LR Disco) with a fine point Sharpie but it was barely sharp enough and that body is a lot larger than this A110.  

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Got a Blitzer Beetle yesterday, started building that tonight. Designed a new rear wing for my TT02 Mustang, that'll be the weekend's painting job. Also finished a new rim I've been working on for a few weeks based on an old JDM rim made by Kyoho called the Ame 781. Taken me ages to figure out how to make it work best as a multi-piece print so that I could keep the original design of the real thing. Think I need to get myself an R31 bodyshell to go with this now.

 

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1 hour ago, OnTheTrail said:

Funny you mentioned that.  The hood outline was actually a decal on the included sheet (a SERIOUS PITA to cut out by the way ;) ) but they didn't include one for the doors or the rear deck lid.  I may try to cut some black airplane trim tape I have into real small slivers and see if I can do them that way.   You are right, it does make a difference when it's done right.  I did the panels on my MST DC1 (LR Disco) with a fine point Sharpie but it was barely sharp enough and that body is a lot larger than this A110.  

Sounds good on attempting the door lines.  I use a cheapo fine tip Sharpie and one pass is good for thinner lines, then multiple passes for thicker lines.  Like the Beetle's panel lines I did like 4-5 passes to get a solid black line.  

Some folks over do the lines which make the body look weird...so for me, the trick appears to be to figure out how solid I want the line for that particular parting line to be, and decide how many passes to do.  Pin stripe tape is a bit tricky as it is a bit too solid for me and it can show up as double lines due to the reflection.  I found the Sharpie to be a bit more natural looking.. well, for a polycarbonate body.   Looks fake anyway with decal window trims and all.   :D

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"It's done!", I said.

"I'm not adding lights!", I said.

I lied to myself.

I found an old 3Racing light kit I had laying around and some spare Tamiya TLU LEDs. Trimmed out the light buckets and threw on some paint and I think it came out pretty good if not a little bit excessively bright. Will look good on lit indoor carpet tracks though!

Idle headlights. For well-lit idling.
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Driving headlights. For well-lit driving.
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Idle tail lights. For a well-lit butt while idling.
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Brake lights. So some a-hole doesn't run into you when you slam on your brakes.
PWI2Cv6.jpg

Reverse lights. For well-lit reversing.
G8l5X8b.jpg
 

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@No Slack love your TRX4M - but you can see why I want to put an interior in mine! Cables and no wheel arches don't look very scale.

@bavee I thought I was the only one who collected all those bags with the biohazard warning during lockdown! I have so many of them with RC parts in them!!

@Elbowloh Sorry to hear about the 'Rona... hope you feel better soon.

 

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7 hours ago, lsear2905 said:

I thought I was the only one who collected all those bags with the biohazard warning during lockdown! I have so many of them with RC parts in them!!

Nopes, you are not alone. I use them for small parts in the parts bin. And for temporarily keeping parts together when rebuilding something. We have a lot of them. My wife is a teacher so we were assumed to test a lot...

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My first ever Tamiya was a grasshopper followed up by a TA01 Escort Cosworth way back in 1994. 

I fell for the 1/10 touring cars from Tamiya back then and would dribble all over my Radio Controlled Model Car magazines at all the other beautifully recreated racecars I knew an loved.

I used to race my TA01 at one point, in the local sports hall. I remembered wishing I could afford to build a proper racing car out of my little Escort to look like some of the other cars the older folks had brought.

So, to today I've started collecting some of the beautiful kits from the 90's with their beautiful bodies and interior parts and unique wheels that you don't see as much today.

I didn't want to build just plain TA01/02 chassis on all the kits, so I chose to build the race car I wish I had back then from one of the kits. Using only bits available at the time (where possible) 

Today I've finished putting it together.

TA02 with the following...

-Carbon chassis kit (will change to frp when I find a mint one)

-Pink low friction dampers & springs-

-Stainless shaft and c clip wishbone pivots

-F&R universal shafts (or CV as I call them)

-High speed gear set

-Alloy king pins and C hub carrier for caster

-Rear ARB

-Silver alloy motor mount

-hard prop shaft and cups

Powered by a Novak Rooster and Yokomo prostock touring car motor.

PXL_20230217_145256260.jpg

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3 hours ago, John Gordon said:

PXL_20230217_145330790.jpg

How are those low friction shocks? Always curious about those compared to oil filled ones..

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1 minute ago, Sogogi said:

How are those low friction shocks? Always curious about those compared to oil filled ones..

I'd say they are a halfway house between CVA and a higher end trf.

I like them because that's what was on the side of the box back in the day, so that's what younger me lusted for back then.

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10 minutes ago, John Gordon said:

I'd say they are a halfway house between CVA and a higher end trf.

I like them because that's what was on the side of the box back in the day, so that's what younger me lusted for back then.

That sounds perfect for me! Was looking for additional shocks for my m chassis.. and didn’t want to use trf ones for the one that I bash around trails… while looking for something better than plastic cvas. Low friction ones are half the price of trf ones but bit more than cvas

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Finished the gearbox on the Monster Racer rebuild. This gearbox is really something special:

1676664309690.jpg.46e50fabeba68848c0de2f4112616fc9.jpg

Unfortunately the lower mount for the gearbox cover is missing on the aluminium gearbox plate:

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Didn't notice it while cleaning it (although I did notice the screw missing) and I don't have a spare one... So for now I covered the hole with a piece of tape and grease sealed the gearbox cover.

Have to make my mind up on a replacement gearbox plate...

Oh. And needed one 1150 bearing from the parts bin.

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I added some new wheels and tires to my JP MF01x. I've been super busy with half term and a 10 month old, (who now can get around the house needing everything to be packed away every night) which is limiting what I can do.

Regular readers might remember I had two wheel options for the Jeep, the original tires from the Taiyo Renegade chassis from which I took the body:

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As well as an option using sand paddle tires:

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The Taiyo tires looks much more scale, but the rubber was 37 years old and had really quite poor grip and at only 75 mm didn't help over the rough stuff that much. The Sand Paddle tires at 83 mm worked much better, but didn't quite look the part and rubbed on the arches. This rubbing was exacerbated when I swapped the battery from a pair of 18650 Li-Ions to an NiMH stick pack, compressing the shocks more on acceleration.

On a bit of a gamble I picked cheap set of tires on Amazon, and a little spray paint later I am really happy with the result. They were advertised as 80 mm diameter,  the tire sidewall says 82 mm, and in reality are around 81 mm! Discrepancies aside they look more scale than the sand paddles and don't rub as much but have much better grip and are larger than the Taiyo tires, which really helps with the trail/crawling.

There was still very minor rubbing, so I also used a blade to just trim the rear arches back a little and now they work perfectly.

This is once again one of my favourite little cars. The wheels are not quite as nice or accurate to the film as what I had before, so I may 3D print some better wheels in the end, although I'll probably get over it.

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With the new ties the off road ability is really pretty good. A locked diff would really help, but I quite like the way it drives on gravel, tarmac and grass, so I think I'll keep it more as a trail truck and scale runner than go all in as a crawler (although I'm interested to see how these new tires deal with bigger rocks and obstacles).

In other news despite saying I would leave it for a while I picked up two new-to-me cars. One is another Nikko Thunder Road for a Hobby Grade conversion (I missed the old one I had and want something to match the heavy dump at nominal 1/25 scale) and the other is another Taiyo Jeep renegade. I may use the body for a Quick Drive Monster truck, but the car works I may spray paint as another JP Jeep and give to my colleague as a leaving gift (he loves JP and has a two year old who I think would like a truck in the garden).

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Cleaned up the decals, drew parting lines, installed Futaba receiver, swapped servo to 1252MG, installed tail red LED’s.  

Getting ready to take some snaps..  waiting for the sun to go down to not mix light temperature. 

 

 

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Update.. Posted pretty much the last of the attachment memory left for Willy iine in the gallery thread.  Please check it out if interested.  I have a reel posted on IG if interested as well.  #pretendrcshop

Edited by Willy iine
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9 hours ago, bavee said:

 

Unfortunately the lower mount for the gearbox cover is missing on the aluminium gearbox plate:

20230217_210609.jpg.ed9b526ebb1dcb726d5c61a844eb07ba.jpg

Didn't notice it while cleaning it (although I did notice the screw missing) and I don't have a spare one... So for now I covered the hole with a piece of tape and grease sealed the gearbox cover.

Have to make my mind up on a replacement gearbox plate...

 

Try a press nut first.  I'm pretty sure a press nut can be pushed into place or pulled in with a screw with the motor removed.  

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6 hours ago, John Gordon said:

I'd say they are a halfway house between CVA and a higher end trf.

I like them because that's what was on the side of the box back in the day, so that's what younger me lusted for back then.

I have them on my M01.  Very era-appropriate dampers.  B)

IMG_May92021at22119PM.jpg.42aa7770bd345743714db51807bfb9b8.jpg

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4 hours ago, Willy iine said:

I have them on my M01.  Very era-appropriate dampers.  B)

IMG_May92021at22119PM.jpg.42aa7770bd345743714db51807bfb9b8.jpg

That actually looks nice! 

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6 hours ago, Thommo said:

 

Try a press nut first.  I'm pretty sure a press nut can be pulled into place.  

Thank you for your suggestion!

I'm a bit worried it won't work because the press nut is located at the front of the gearbox plate. So the screw is pulling the nut from the plate.

But will look for a press nut and give it a try. Would certainly be the most original and cheapest option. And that is the goal with this rebuild.

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Today I finally got around to restarting my hotshot/supershot project.

Many, many moons ago my brother had a hotshot. It started pretty standard but was hopped-up and customised endlessly and eventually my brother even made a custom chassis for it. We called it the megashot! 

So, when a very cheap, unused hotshot came my way a year ago I knew I had to grab it and make a bit of an homage to my brothers favourite project!

18E80171-6ED1-4DEB-8594-850D5E756443

I stripped it all down quite a while ago but it’s sat for months since my wife got sick.

Last year picked-up an MIP ball diff from a user here and decided I would also go brushless.

IMG_6396

I started the rebuild today.

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Also last year I purchased a NIB suspension hop-up kit

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But I was loathed to use as it as I was planning on dying it black (the megashot was almost totally black). So I ended up grabbing some used parts locally and dyed them today:

52696178920_6f3f0b97b4_b.jpg

Hoping to get more done tomorrow…

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6 hours ago, bavee said:

Thank you for your suggestion!

I'm a bit worried it won't work because the press nut is located at the front of the gearbox plate. So the screw is pulling the nut from the plate.

But will look for a press nut and give it a try. Would certainly be the most original and cheapest option. And that is the goal with this rebuild.

 

Yeah it's a bad design and the reason it pops out in the first place.  Once you've popped it into place just don't overtightenen.    You could also fit the press nut to the cover and then pop it back in.

 

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