Quandry 378 Posted January 16, 2014 I only had a short bit of time to look at the ABS last night, however I have had a minor win. As you can see from this pic, the speed controller is very tight under the shell By moving the rx, moving the on/off switch and pushing the ESC more in towards the centre though I found I could get the shell mounted on the body. I will do a proper clean up of the wiring etc, but at least for now I know that I don't need to replace the ESC with a lower profile one which is good news. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kyosho1 86 Posted January 16, 2014 Will you be putting in the driver figure? The space behind the driver is tight too. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 16, 2014 Will you be putting in the driver figure? The space behind the driver is tight too. I definately want to. I will try fitting it tonight, that could be the definitive call on if this brushless setup will be used in the ABS or if I have to source another.... :/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 17, 2014 OK determined with the challenge of 'making it all fit', I shot home last night to crack out the ABS kit. Job one was to pull a few things out of the way and screw in the cockpit Putting the ESC back in to place and everything seems to fit ok and yes the body DOES fit on.. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 17, 2014 So I celebrated by putting together the wing assembly: I like the adjuster system that Tamiya supply. I would be really surprised if the extra downforce does anything but it does look cool They seem to have designed quite a lot of adjustability in to the system ranging from this: To this: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 17, 2014 I settled for somewhere in between the two and I quite like the aggressive yet slick stance here... Looks good but there are still some finishing touches to put on including the strut tower braces: And also a piece which seems to be both a bumper extension and reinforcing plate for the sway bar brackets: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Percymon 2184 Posted January 17, 2014 Not sure the 'air brake' will do much for the handlng, but you'll be surprised how much difference there is between the bottom setting and the upper middle one Glad you managed to get everything in, nice neat install in the end 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 17, 2014 I then installed an Orange RX back behind the drivers seat, although I may yet change this out for a Spektrum RX as I've not been that amazed by the range of the Orange RX (on the ground anyways). The RX is also extrememly close to the ESC which is never recommended.... Did a wheel alignment, put on the body shell and took her for a quick spin up and down the street! Next jobs then are to paint my smoked shell, finalise my 'custom' painted shell colours and paint that, paint the driver, and also fiddle around with the smaller pinions for a potential 3s setup. Lots of fun ahead!! 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tamiya Era 778 Posted January 17, 2014 Looks ace man!!!... 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
94eg! 834 Posted January 17, 2014 If you have clearance problems between the ESC & body, take the fan off. Just be sure to keep an eye on temps when running. If your motor is nowhere near the ESC limit, then you just might be okay. I run an 8.5T with a Novak GTB. I pulled the fan off so it would fit under the body and reduce the clutter. This setup doesn't hardly get warm. Even in the 110*+ Vegas summer. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Grastens 2795 Posted January 17, 2014 It looks great! Just be careful about the practice bumper - I lost a lot of screws when putting it to use... But between that and a wrecked Avante, I think we all know the better choice! 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
94eg! 834 Posted January 17, 2014 Stop hitting things and you won't need it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Grastens 2795 Posted January 17, 2014 Stop hitting things and you won't need it. Once I got used to the Avante's tendencies, that is... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 18, 2014 Well today I changed my pinion to 18 tooth from 22 and setup the ESC for 3s and the Avante is going great. I did a few squirts up and down the road nothing too crazy as I still dont have a body on it. I would like to have smoked the body today but unfortunately the weather has been nearly constant drizzle so no go. Unless it improves tomorrow it could be another week until I can paint Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 20, 2014 ... I would like to have smoked the body today but unfortunately the weather has been nearly constant drizzle so no go. Unless it improves tomorrow it could be another week until I can paint A couple of hours after I wrote this, the weather finally cleared so I figured I would do a backyard - night time spray job. It was just way to much to try and wait a whole week First job though was to wash and dry the shell and then mask the windscreen area. I have found Tamiya masking tape to be excellent with their own paints (no surprise there), so I took the approach of building up a mask made of strips all over the area I did not want to paint, and then using the exacto knife to carefully trim the mask to the desired shape. That worked well and within a half an hour I was ready to hit it with some Tamiya PS-31 smoke. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 20, 2014 I had not used the Tamiya smoke paint before, but I found it to be easy to apply just like their other PS sprays. It is relatively quick drying, just like their black paint, however I did use the advantage of heating the tin in warm water, and also warming the polycarb with a hair drier prior to spraying, and then drying with the hair drier straight after a light coat. This seems to be a very good technique in that you can really paint your whole car very fast. While the smoke paint seems to go on very lightly it is a translucient, here you can see the difference between unpainted, and painted with one coat: I gave the top body and the wing three coats, and stuck with only two on the bottom as it's not really very visible, and also backs a lot of black parts. At that stage the can was nearly empty, so for anyone who wants to achieve a 'thick smoke' colour without being translucient, you will need at least two cans. I like to peel the mask off while the paint is still fresh so as to avoid any tearing. When you see it come off like this you really appreciate the colour that the smoke adds to the polycarb 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 20, 2014 !!! ROOKIE DISASTER !!! Foolishly, while spraying the rear wing I was not holding it tight enough and it slipped out of my hands and landed in the wet grass. Typically, it did not land the agreeable side up and chose rather to spoil my nice paint work.... grrr*%^&%%&! I dried it as best I could and put extra coats on but unfortunatley it would not play ball. Thinking that I would probably have to strip the wing, I hit the sack about 1am exhausted from my midnight painting marathon ... < Next day > I love the way the human brain works. Think of a problem right before you go to sleep and probably you will have a solution the next day... what occured to me when I woke up was that I could give the wing some coats of Humbrol smoke paint. The Humbrol is not a translucient, but still has the smoke colour, because it goes behind the top coat, it should be impossible to see the imperfections. It was going to go one of two ways - really well or really badly... So I cracked out the Humbrol, shot two light coats and I have to say I am really happy with the result! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tamiya Era 778 Posted January 20, 2014 NIce smoke paint job mate! indeed, you can also control the level of color depth with smoke. Here is my vintage Avante 2001 with smoke paint. Did several coats to appear little dark: I love this paint were i thought at first it is not going to give good results.. cheers 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tamiya Era 778 Posted January 20, 2014 !!! ROOKIE DISASTER !!! Foolishly, while spraying the rear wing I was not holding it tight enough and it slipped out of my hands and landed in the wet grass. Typically, it did not land the agreeable side up and chose rather to spoil my nice paint work.... grrr*%^&%%&! I dried it as best I could and put extra coats on but unfortunatley it would not play ball. Thinking that I would probably have to strip the wing, I hit the sack about 1am exhausted from my midnight painting marathon ... < Next day > I love the way the human brain works. Think of a problem right before you go to sleep and probably you will have a solution the next day... what occured to me when I woke up was that I could give the wing some coats of Humbrol smoke paint. The Humbrol is not a translucient, but still has the smoke colour, because it goes behind the top coat, it should be impossible to see the imperfections. It was going to go one of two ways - really well or really badly... So I cracked out the Humbrol, shot two light coats and I have to say I am really happy with the result! you can avoid this quick. if it happened now, just grab polycarbonate cleaner and with tissue/cotton,,rub it then let it dry and spray again 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 20, 2014 Thanks for the comments and suggestions, I did not have the polycarb cleaner to hand, but by spraying Humbrol smoke over the top I still got a good result. So next step was working on the decals Comparison of the Avante Black Special vs 2011 ReRe decals In order to test that the decal sheet was water friendly I made our kitchen scissors in to Limited Edition Tamiya scissors But of course, first job was to unveil the Polycarb and see if my paintwork was as nice as I had hoped.. You can see the wing in this shot, managed to do a pretty good save on it I think Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 20, 2014 I started with the adjustment stickers for the wing mount, and then moved on to the wing itself. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 20, 2014 Moving on to the body then I started at the nose and worked my way back. There were a few challenges here, specifically to do with lining up very long stickers that should sit in the right place on a straight bit but still join around a corner somewhere. The usual stuff Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quandry 378 Posted January 20, 2014 Finishing the stickers I put it all together and I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out. I'm looking forward to next weekend to try and get some outdoors photos too. So next steps.... I need to paint the cockpit and Perry. I will do this in Box art, I might pickup another set of plastics to do a custom job in the future, we will see. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tamiya Era 778 Posted January 20, 2014 Congratulations and Thanks for this super Thread!.... Turned out so nice... 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Grastens 2795 Posted January 20, 2014 Hope to see it up and running soon! I like the look, too! 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
