So, What Have You Done Today?

[Busdriver 6209]

Made a conscious decision to complete one project before starting another🤔🤣🤣🤣🤣

[BuggyDad 4475]

6 minutes ago, Busdriver said:

Made a conscious decision to complete one project before starting another🤔🤣🤣🤣🤣

I think you should go and sit on the stairs and think about what you've just said. 

[Badcrumble 4204]

Yesterday, I went to create some masks for a monster truck body. Couldn't find my Tamiya sheets, despite having used some to create window masks a while back. 

Today, I ordered some more. 

Tomorrow, I will likely find the missing sheets 

[jonboy1 2943]

I bought this a little while ago on a whim - I'd completed my Durga and TRF201, had a few bits waiting to be printed on the AstuDF and a need of some sun to paint a couple of remaining bodies - so I fancied something to tinker with in the meantime. 

Having enjoyed my TA02 build I thought I'd have a go at another road chassis. I nearly pulled the trigger on a FF but I just don't think I'm ready for something that futuristic yet!  RWD I can cope with, 4WD I've recently accepted - FWD in an RC???? Hmmmm. So a nice 4WD chassis it was, and as this had a nice selection of blue alloy bits on it I thought I'd give it a go.

BTW, I'm not putting this in the builds section as @Juhunio has already done a far more comprehensive and lovely build on this chassis, and he has also been a great source of help - so, thank you!  👍

As it turned out I got super lucky, as not only did it have all the blue alloy hop up kit, it also had titanium screws throughout, tamiya bearings, titanium turnbuckles and... an ESC 2002!! That said, it wasn't perfect. The chassis was pretty scuffed, the shocks were tired and made up of tamiya and non-tamiya parts, the springs and stabilizer bars were tired and flaky and some of the screws were scuffed. After stripping it all down some more issues arose - there had been a very heavy impact at some point, as both suspension shafts were resembling non-EU bananas, as was the front, rear suspension mount. Further digging showed up that the front one way pinion was mullered and I was missing a retaining clip on the rear axle shaft.

So, doing what I do best, I decided the best thing to do was throw money at it and replace everything needed and annoy kind people on the forum by asking them to help me buy stuff  So here I must say a big thank you to @Frog Jumper for his invaluable help in getting some key parts.

Never one to rest on my laurels of a good find, I figured there must be some more hopups available, so I managed to find a set of rear alloy uprights to accompany the new chassis plate, rear mount, new titanium screws, fluorine ball mounts and ball ends. I also got an alloy servo arm and screws, new stabilisers (and ends) and springs. The damage to the front concerned me, the last thing I wanted was this chassis falling apart at an important moment on a shelf. So I decided the only sensible course of action was to upgrade the suspension arms with titanium coated ones, and followed the same course with the damper shafts. The dampers themselves I put together using the Tamiya parts that were correct and a hop up set for another chassis that had the smooth caps rather than the ribbed ones.

The rear diff is still a work in progress - I couldn't find a new hardened version anywhere, so I bought a TRF419 version which looked to be identical except for the screw going through from the other side (and being for a pulley rather than a gear) - plus it also had the benefit of having s*******y blue clips for the drive cups!  Unfortunately I just cannot get it to fit - the screw doesn't seem to go through far enough, which is odd as the balls are the same diameter. Anyway, I've transferred the clips to the old one which I've cleaned up and uprated the balls to ceramic versions.

I think it looks spankingly good now. Body is purchased, stickers are on their way, so in another year I might have this finished 👍 I'll probably add more details and pics in a showroom entry.

Here's a before pic:

And after:

 

[Busdriver 6209]

5 hours ago, BuggyDad said:

I think you should go and sit on the stairs and think about what you've just said. 

Oh the naughty step!!!

[Ray_ve 1043]

Cane across shocks that I think will look much better on the Jugger, resisted temptation for 10 hours before pressing the 'buy it now' button.

[TurnipJF 9192]

This evening I made a start on my F104 Pro II:

 

[BuggyDad 4475]

I got a little further on my Fake Falkon.

I've test fitted DT-03 arms and toed in rear uprights. I'm not 100% certain it'll all hang together right but it's progress. They also move the rear wheels back a bit which should help weight balance. Also a promising body mounting solution and its first real proper bit of Falcon Yellow 😁

So my Blitzer's fate is seald... 

[Willy iine 18806]

@TurnipJF  awesome!  I should build mine too.  I got a 3rd party CF lower deck from Japan and Tamiya's upper CF deck to do dual CF decks.  

 

For me, painted the letter on these tires..  I'm waiting on my alloy wheels, but for now, these will do.  They look great on the car too.. however will not post anything until the wheels arrive as I am still getting over 100 likes a day on IG for the other Beetles I recently posted.   If anyone new is interested, #pretendrcshop

[Willy iine 18806]

6 hours ago, Ray_ve said:

Cane across shocks that I think will look much better on the Jugger, resisted temptation for 10 hours before pressing the 'buy it now' button.

We only live once, so you definitely did the right thing!      Now very curious what these dampers will look like on your car!

[Kowalski86 3034]

I put the Grasshopper back into action after a while, surprisingly the frames still holding together with just a bit of hot glue.

I also took the "Red Fox" for a spin (don't hate me!), it could use some new shock oil but it drives well for what it is.

[Willy iine 18806]

For me, cleaned my pretendRCshop floor this am as I routinely do on Tuesdays.      Decided I need more space as I need to place my 8 cars that are usually displayed on the floor on my work desk before I can do the dry mopping..

Which is perfect timing as the pretendRCshop expansion is starting this week.     It's not a big room but that is all I got.. will place my EVA tiles so that I can drive my Mini-Z, comicals, and do test runs of my m-chassis and other cars.   I plan to install about 10 floating shelves in the room to display mostly Tamiya cars.  Kyosho cars will mostly stay in my current space.  I also plan to display empty boxes on the walls..   I've not put much thought into it yet as I need to first figure out how much space I actually got after placing everything. .. wish me hope..

[BuggyDad 4475]

Painted my Falcon shell. Body should be passable, fingers crossed, but on the wing my attempts to get paint into the sides led to the red pooling up, I thought it was dry enough to back but it wasn't, so now silver and red are mixed. And wet. Impatience strikes again. Very annoying but at least this is my runner shell and it was already cut somewhat experimentally. I have another. And these wing sides are actually quite doable with patience. 

[Busdriver 6209]

1 hour ago, BuggyDad said:

Painted my Falcon shell. Body should be passable, fingers crossed, but on the wing my attempts to get paint into the sides led to the red pooling up, I thought it was dry enough to back but it wasn't, so now silver and red are mixed. And wet. Impatience strikes again. Very annoying but at least this is my runner shell and it was already cut somewhat experimentally. I have another. And these wing sides are actually quite doable with patience. 

Do you have an airbrush. I don’t use mine for RC work but due to the lower pressure they work at you might avoid the pooling and because of the low amount of paint they use it dries quicker.

[BuggyDad 4475]

42 minutes ago, Busdriver said:

Do you have an airbrush. I don’t use mine for RC work but due to the lower pressure they work at you might avoid the pooling and because of the low amount of paint they use it dries quicker.

I was using one. It's not so much that I was doing something difficult, rather that I just cocked it up! In fact, it's quite likely I had achieved half decent coverage in the hard to reach wing sides, but I then went too far. 

My silver backing coat I did straight from the can, thinking it wasn't worth the decanting, cleaning etc of an airbrush coat. That then turned the above relatively minor error into a mess. 

[TurnipJF 9192]

Tonight saw a bit more progress on my F104 Pro II build:

Like others before me, I elected to swap out the plain steel nuts at the back of the top deck and on the lower right of the bottom deck for some nice blue anodized aluminium flanged nyloc ones. The plain steel nut at the base of the friction damper mount has also been swapped out, for a non-flanged black one in this case as the blue flanged nylocks were too tall to fit in this location.

Something I noted when fitting the low profile servo was that the instruction to remove its mounting lugs is unnecessary. I built my F104V2 Pro with a low profile servo that did not need the lugs removed, and it turns out that the same is true of the F104 Pro 2. (As one might expect, since the front ends on the two cars are virtually identical.)

[technics 2616]

Made some neat lighting for the Toyota  with some simple materials and off the shelf parts. I’m very pleased with the result! They’re three way controlled. Center lamps on, outer lamps on or all on / off. It will make some nice variation for photos during use out in the wild.

[Sogogi 3217]

Nothing much other than browsing rc stuff. Saw this and thought @Willy iine maybe interested

[Pylon80 2629]

1 hour ago, TurnipJF said:

Something I noted when fitting the low profile servo was that the instruction to remove its mounting lugs is unnecessary.

I did the same on my Ver.II. The unused lugs look a bit strange but I can't bring myself to ruin a perfectly good servo case just for that, so I left them intact

[BuggyDad 4475]

Painted and stickered my Falcon shell, except the wing which I messed up, so am saving the stickers for another option. 

No steering yet. I hope to make a bellcrank system work in this but await various parts and some luck and creative tinkering before I know whether that'll be a goer. 

[Willy iine 18806]

51 minutes ago, Sogogi said:

Nothing much other than browsing rc stuff. Saw this and thought @Willy iine maybe interested

Yeah, actually I am going to get me that body when available!  Thanks.    

[Willy iine 18806]

2 hours ago, TurnipJF said:

Tonight saw a bit more progress on my F104 Pro II build: 

Like others before me, I elected to swap out the plain steel nuts at the back of the top deck and on the lower right of the bottom deck for some nice blue anodized aluminium flanged nyloc ones. The plain steel nut at the base of the friction damper mount has also been swapped out, for a non-flanged black one in this case as the blue flanged nylocks were too tall to fit in this location.

Something I noted when fitting the low profile servo was that the instruction to remove its mounting lugs is unnecessary. I built my F104V2 Pro with a low profile servo that did not need the lugs removed, and it turns out that the same is true of the F104 Pro 2. (As one might expect, since the front ends on the two cars are virtually identical.)

Awesome info, thanks!   I was scratching my head why I would need to cut those off my 1252MG..  I will be sure to mount it as-is so that just in case I don't like the F104, I can run that servo on another car.   

 

For me, got back from my money making gig at the office.  It was a long afternoon as I do not like being around people in general.  However, got a lot done as far as presenting myself as a valuable asset for the company.. aka bunch of colorfully decorated BS.        

Helped my son setup a few of his furniture when I got home and watered the fresh sod.. and now just relaxing in my pretendRCshop

[GeeWings 2830]

So, after another flare up with my old man back (leading to it totally seizing) today I went to hospital to have an epidural cortisone injection. Not the most enjoyable way to spend a day but the good news is that I should now be pain free for a few months.

The better news is that I can’t do any heavy chores or DIY for a while so I’m hoping I can finally get some time to continue some RC projects. 😏 

[Badcrumble 4204]

1 hour ago, GeeWings said:

So, after another flare up with my old man back (leading to it totally seizing) today I went to hospital to have an epidural cortisone injection. Not the most enjoyable way to spend a day but the good news is that I should now be pain free for a few months.

The better news is that I can’t do any heavy chores or DIY for a while so I’m hoping I can finally get some time to continue some RC projects. 😏 

Not sure whether to use the sad face emoji or the thumb up?!

My back pain has never been as bad as that (but bad enough!) so I wish you a strong recovery and a decent chore holiday.  

[GeeWings 2830]

@BadcrumbleI just told my wife about the “chore holiday”. She was amused. I think