Ferruz 11702 Posted March 14, 2021 Took a few walks with the Boss while pondering these last few days. There's a lot of melting snow and you can smell the Spring in the air. We also found a couple of joyful, four-legged buddies to play with and we all had a great timeI can't wait to be able to finally get a dog myself. The "Badlands" are particularly great for running once the snow starts melting, as it gets pretty compact in the process 16 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Boomstick 156 Posted March 15, 2021 Adding to the stable.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nel33 870 Posted March 15, 2021 @Ferruz so did the 4 legged friend catch his prey? im never sure if they are happy to simply chase it or actually catch/bite/overturn the RC. @berman it never hurts to have +10 copies of the same movie in different formats LOL. id be full if i only had 2 of each chassis type. even 4 possible kits are stretching my space, 3 is a comfy max for me. choosing from 3 options for RC is hard enough for me. i got around to sorting things out on the Jconcept sandslash body. i didnt like look of the very thin edges on the rear body and how they ride so high. the black line is around the area the high line is supposed to be cut and the green masking tape is where i plan to cut it. its an extra 8mm overhang that tapers to 5mm mid arch on the down slope to flush at the bottom of the door panel. im also planning an interesting window design for the side windows to mimic a car i like but there is no such custom body. i think the extra rear body overhang will look much better aesthetically, more truck like or small hints of it. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
berman 5315 Posted March 15, 2021 5 hours ago, nel33 said: @berman it never hurts to have +10 copies of the same movie in different formats LOL. id be full if i only had 2 of each chassis type. even 4 possible kits are stretching my space, 3 is a comfy max for me. choosing from 3 options for RC is hard enough for me. That's how I'm doing it, 2 of each chassis type! If you look at the pic, the top two are doubles of the ones below, so that means all the subsequent chassis' I can buy another of... ...And that is the reasoning we give our WIVES... 🤣🤣🤣🤣 In all honesty, I had a room wall to wall full of cars, I don't have that space anymore, or the time to spend on them. My other half wants her linen cupboard back now too... so these will have to go somewhere else 😕 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BeetlaJuice 9 Posted March 15, 2021 Father and son project....Finished off the TT02B Baja Bug over the weekend. Just waiting for the lexan cover for the electrics to stop rubbish going inside. Discovered the thin plastic coating on the shells, great for getting nice stripes, with a bit of scalpel work. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gordb 121 Posted March 15, 2021 After years of trying to get my kids into Tamiya, I figured the hobby is more important than my brand loyalty, and got one of my sons the Traxxas he needed. He now wakes up, charges the cars, and pulls me out of bed to head to the local bike track ... 8 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nel33 870 Posted March 15, 2021 8 hours ago, berman said: That's how I'm doing it, 2 of each chassis type! If you look at the pic, the top two are doubles of the ones below, so that means all the subsequent chassis' I can buy another of... ...And that is the reasoning we give our WIVES... 🤣🤣🤣🤣 In all honesty, I had a room wall to wall full of cars, I don't have that space anymore, or the time to spend on them. My other half wants her linen cupboard back now too... so these will have to go somewhere else 😕 Sorry I did look a bit closer at the pic, a bit later and they were a big different chassis type. I wonder how you choose to run which chassis at a given time, I would be able to manage that. My Gundam collection is 27 kits so far but I keep them static. If i didnt collect so many of them is probably get another RC of 2... though I still have no regrets there. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
simalarion 2196 Posted March 15, 2021 Finally got some screws so i could attach 3 Fans where i did solder 3 fans into one jst contact, also made it very short to avoid more cables to hide. I also bought a Fan controll but it will only work with 1 fan, so i did not install it. It should be ready for the hot Summerweather now Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Badcrumble 4203 Posted March 15, 2021 Big day with the JK today. Fitted new Axial rear body mounts and 3D printed front inner fenders. Found that my existing 75mm rear dampers were a direct fit to keep the existing ride height so didn’t open the new 90mm ones.Fabbed a styrene mount to capture the chassis against the front of the body. Fitted a rear crossmember and then made up and screwed a styrene battery tray to it. Made a basic template to fill in the rear inner arches. Realised that the body will need more mods to allow fitment of the electronics. Tested the electrics, found I had a dodgy Deans/Tamiya adapter so couldn’t use my new 1080 so switched in a 1060 for a test run in the garden. Think the pinion mesh needs adjustment- very noisy. El kid was home from school so he took it round the garden. He loved the winch! Back together minus electrics. Looks I’ve done nothing at all! 3 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
chuckjaywalk 89 Posted March 15, 2021 Started my first build, a TT-02. After an afternoon, I have a rolling chassis. Next, I need to find a good first transmitter, paint the body, and finish her up. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nel33 870 Posted March 15, 2021 3.5hrs later and im still not done. tried the score and snap method to remove 80% of unneeded lexan. still a very tricky method to master. small curved scissors, dremel, file metal/sanded later i end up with this. the front wheel wells are yet to be cut out and i spent enough time with a dremel tool and tape measure for the day trying to get a even overhang on the back of the body. the green tape is one way i measured/referenced which areas were satisfactory. the front wheel wells will be along the prescribed lines. im also faced with a question with the side bumper guards with my slash. with the actual slash body the bumper guards make the sides look fat due to the extra thickness from reinforcement to make a medium high spot but the actual side guards get in the way of the body im currently working on. i have to press down on the top shell to get the sides to get over the guards. are the bumper guards that needed or is an extra safety? im tempted to remove it for the new body but keep it for the traxxas body. im not sure if the stock 2wd HCG tray is the reason why it looks like this or if a LCG or the 4x4 tray (for those with 4x4 slash) would accommodate this body better with side guards. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lsear2905 1279 Posted March 16, 2021 3 hours ago, nel33 said: im also faced with a question with the side bumper guards with my slash. with the actual slash body the bumper guards make the sides look fat due to the extra thickness from reinforcement to make a medium high spot but the actual side guards get in the way of the body im currently working on. i have to press down on the top shell to get the sides to get over the guards. are the bumper guards that needed or is an extra safety? im tempted to remove it for the new body but keep it for the traxxas body. im not sure if the stock 2wd HCG tray is the reason why it looks like this or if a LCG or the 4x4 tray (for those with 4x4 slash) would accommodate this body better with side guards. I think it's because of the HCG chassis, but I would remove them. Looks good so far. I haven't Tamiya'd in the last few days, but the Bandit, Mini Z 4x4 and some boats have all been run. I finally got the 2 heatsinks for the Trail King last night and they'd been misshaped in transit, so they were bent back into shape and fitted. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Killajb 1546 Posted March 16, 2021 6 hours ago, simalarion said: Finally got some screws so i could attach 3 Fans where i did solder 3 fans into one jst contact, also made it very short to avoid more cables to hide. I also bought a Fan controll but it will only work with 1 fan, so i did not install it. It should be ready for the hot Summerweather now I'm using the same esc and receiver on my Agrios as well as the esc fan (plugged into the esc power out port) with two additional fans and a full light set plugged into a 3-into-1 male-to female jst cable I made. Plenty of amps to power it all and I haven't experienced any "brown outs" or issues otherwise. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nel33 870 Posted March 16, 2021 7 minutes ago, lsear2905 said: I think it's because of the HCG chassis, but I would remove them. Looks good so far. I haven't Tamiya'd in the last few days, but the Bandit, Mini Z 4x4 and some boats have all been run. I finally got the 2 heatsinks for the Trail King last night and they'd been misshaped in transit, so they were bent back into shape and fitted. thank you for the reply. i have to remove the side guards anyway to set the 4 mounting holes. i guess i wont lose too much durability if the side guards are removed. the first thing the new and current body hits is those side guards to begin with though the traxxas body curls around it just fine. i dont mind the Traxxas body but its a coffee table of a shell... the new body im working on is nice also though its too bad i cant have a slight overhang on the front. the rear over hang is 7mm or so and it looks just right . im looking forward to tamiya my TT02 in the park tomorrow, still gonna be -4?? but the area im looking at is smooth enough to drift safely. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nowinaminute 2815 Posted March 16, 2021 Today I have been playing with my cheap new cordless airbrush and even cheaper acrylic paints! I got the airbrush from Aliexpress after being surprised by the decent reviews. I only intended to use it to apply weathering to stuff at first but the more youtube videos I watched, the more I fell into a rabbit hole lol. I was surprised to learn that some of the cheap "craft acrylic" will actually work really nice with airbrushes if you find some of the good stuff. So far I've tried Apple Barrel and Folkart as they were two that I have seen on youtube and which can be had fairly cheaply in the UK. I also tried some Daler rowney "simply acrylic" but it was just useless and actually works out more expensive by volume! I also learned of a magical potion known as Pledge revive it floor gloss (formally known as klear and future among other things) not only can it be used as a gloss top coat to finish models off with but you can mix it with 50% distilled water and also use it as a thinner for the cheap acrylic paint and it also works as a flow enhancer and leveller. A lot of modellers swear by the stuff! I had a first tentative try at spraying with some of this cheap paint tonight. I thinned it using the aforementioned pledge/water mix and tried to get it the same consistency as milk as everyone seems to suggest. I went with the grape jam colour as I thought it would be one of the more challenging ones because it was bound to be less dense. I think I didn't quite thin it enough for my modestly powerful airbrush at first because it didn't exactly fly out of the thing but that's ok because I was spraying onto a bare plastic Kamtec body I was just using as a test mule so I only wanted a light coat at first to give subsequent coats something to stick to. When I filled the cup on the airbrush again, I added a little more thinner first and must have hit the magic consistency as it came out much easier this time. I ended up applying probably 20 coats which sounds a lot but I used a hairdryer in between coats which would dry it off in a matter of seconds so it only took about 20 minutes all in. Certainly it was no worse than the Tamiya flouro orange I put on my Tamiya 2cv rally! I need to experiment with how heavily I can lay the paint on as the floor gloss seems to endow it with a magical ability to level out even when put it on quite thick so I probably could have gotten away with heavier but fewer coats. For a first try I was quite pleased considering it's cheap paint, cheap thinner and I didn't even prime or sand the body! The finish is quite smooth and the matt paint has a slight satin effect as a result of being thinned with the gloss. It's not a flawless finish by any means but I'm a noob, my house is pretty damp and I hurried the drying etc. I think it's a perfectly adequate result for the cost and circumstances. The biggest issue with the finish I had was bit's of dust landing on it which has more to do with my dusty home and using an hair dryer than anything. It's definitely not a very durable finish when left naked but a quick coat of halfords clear or similar would make it about as good as anything and touching up would be cheap and easy. I'm sure you could do some top coats and then sand and polish to get a mirror finish too if you were that way inclined. I tend not to get to carried away with stuff I intended to run but sometimes put the graft in for shelf stuff. Pretty pleased overall for the amount of money invested and considering anything besides being able to spray on dusty weathering effects was a bonus. This cheap paint works on lexan too! Helps to back it with something but the paint itself is flexible enough for the job and will stick to lexan pretty well. It's more vulnerable to being rubbed off than peeling/cracking. Seen some nice results on a few RC forums, even people using it to hand brush art on the inside of shells before the main colour. Not sure how much I'll use it in the scheme of things but I'll probably find myself making excuses to use it for stuff now. Not just RC but crafts and decorative stuff with the kid, maybe get a few scale models etc. The bottle of paint cost £1. The pledge floor gloss was a bit pricey at £12 because it's imported but you get 750ml and mix it 50/50 with water so you get 1500ml of thinner/leveller/flow enhancer for £12. The distilled water was something daft like £1.50 for 2.5 litres. I reckon I could have painted that entire van for less 10p or less of materials. And the best thing is, even if somehow I didn't get on with these paints, you can airbrush stuff like Revell aqua colour and Tamiya x acrylic easily too and although you don't get as much for your money, it's still a matter of £1-2 per bottle so still cheap as chips. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nel33 870 Posted March 16, 2021 so dam the prescribed lines on the front fenders... the symmetry isnt 100% but very close and its hard to measure the curves easily. its all by eye and im fairly happy with it. i removed the side bumpers on the slash and will need to line up the body posts, its not a 100% perfect fit for suggested spots but i will center it. i think i kept it looking like a truck just enough while keeping it nice and sleek. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Willsls1 342 Posted March 16, 2021 Applying decals to this one is proving to be ... challenging. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
berman 5315 Posted March 16, 2021 16 hours ago, nel33 said: I wonder how you choose to run which chassis at a given time, I would be able to manage that. I usually dust them all at the same time 😉 sometimes in chronological order, if I'm feeling frisky. I was off work today, so I took a car load of recycling to the tip, and it just so happens, my LHS is on the way... 😁 1 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BeetlaJuice 9 Posted March 16, 2021 Decal day today, used the leftover ones from Neo Scorcher to give the TT02Baja a little more character. what did you do today? 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BeetlaJuice 9 Posted March 16, 2021 Finished off the Neo Scorcher as Tamiya/Nature intended! I think I prefer the TT02Baja Bug, but still had fun doing the box art for this shell. Next project Blitzer Beetle/Lexan Stadium Blitzer. what did you do today? 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nel33 870 Posted March 16, 2021 That dam dremel battery decided to go low charge on me a while ago. I liked the slash body up and the front were perfect. Took my time to get them to fit the post. The rear suggested areas weren't parallel, one was further ahead but perfect alignment. Set the 3rd hole fine and got 4th hole done with very low battery. The antenna hole had to sacrifice a kebab skewer to get a mock up. I set it a few MM too far ahead but it was only a pilot hole. Made a small pilot hole just behind it and to each side it will suffice. The battery at this point is dead and needs a charge, it will be better and ready to finish after I tamiya in the park soon. so what i sensed did happen the hole i reamed for the antenna on the slash was a few mm ahead and to the left of where it should've been. it has a very mild bend on it but compared to the traxxas body its slightly bent forward than backward with the bigger body. its a mild annoyance but i reamed the hole back a bit to reduce the bend a bit without making it look too elongated. gonna have to live with that. i ran the GTR33/TT02 in tha park road, the area i was looking at was not available. the parking area was being occupied with worker vehicles so drifting there was a no go. settled for the pedestrian area/road. there was a fair amount of road rocks to make it a bit bumpy (though i have 500SCT oil in the dampers) for my liking but i got in some decent drifting and it showed on the tires but i got way too many tires for the TT02 so i need to burn through them somehow. i do have soft rubber tires on aluminum rims i can try and see the difference next time. im going to keep the R33 as a display body or when i go to a proper area to try drifting and leave that m2 coupe body as an outdoor basher. i hope they will do a sweep of the park roads to remove the grit sometime in the future... 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ferruz 11702 Posted March 16, 2021 Working on a Hornet is particularly rewarding to me, wonder why, it's always a great feeling of completion, somehow. Here it is, its old soul on a new chassis, ready to rock and roll! I just have to choose a shell, but the usual infamous black one is still on top of the list -maybe after some love, for the occasion. Loving this 1060 Hobbywing esc! Tidy and neat, hopefully it will also work well. 13 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
moffman 5752 Posted March 16, 2021 Finished working on my blackfoot all the electrics in and just waiting for good dry weekend weather so I can see what it can do with an mip diff in it? 17 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fabia130vRS 2098 Posted March 17, 2021 Apparently found a new body for the Tamiya QD touring car chassis. I shall call it the Tamiya Hydroboat QD Amphibian Touring Speed boat a dual esc should work, right? tight fit 3 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Badcrumble 4203 Posted March 17, 2021 I’ve made enough progress with the JK recently that I can start thinking about fun stuff. Like the load cover 7 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
