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Hummer project

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It was a long time since I decided that I wanted to build a Hummer. I had more or less clear that I would like to enjoy with the challenge of building the project with parts from here and there and not from a NIB. After weeks of waiting the opportunity I found a TA01 bargain, alltough that choice gave me some problems that you will see later on.

Here the TA01 roller as I got it

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The roller was complete, extremely dirty but complete, so I could reuse many things and "enjoy" cleaning.

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Dissasembly started

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Damage evaluation:

  • ​Front a rear differentials are in good status
  • All plastic parts, including Shock towers, are in good status, allthough dirty
  • Some bearings need to be replaced
  • some screws and washers are rusty and need to be replaced
  • Servo works fine
  • Motor is useless
  • Motor holder is broken :angry::angry: .

Assesment

  • Bearings: I have in stock so I will replace all damaged bearings and plastic bushings with new sealed bearings.
  • Needed to buy:
    • 1 Motor
    • Parts B tree (includes Motor Holder and full gear box covers)
    • Body and body accessories
    • Parts D tree (basically for the mirrors and body holders). Normally it should require 2 sets, but I will get 1 and see if I can find other solution.

Next chapter, cleaning

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The plastic motor mount seems to break even if all you do is look at it funny. If the car is going to be seeing any running at all, might I suggest a metal one?

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Great job so far, I love seeing old cars brought back from the brink, I'm sure this'll be a really satisfying build.

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Do you want a Hummer body? I have a complete pre-finished one here I was thinking of selling off. obviously it would be coming from NZ, up to you.

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Might I suggest this somewhat simple motor and holder solution, for now

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/trades_model.asp?cid=119204

I would also recomend a GPM or similar metal/alloy motor mount as they don't last long with fast motors, but if you are going to go with say a High turn motor 55+ turns, you might pull it off with a plastic motor mount.

Let me know if there are parts you can put to use that are used, I have some TA01/2 bits here that need a home, too many to list and I might have taken photos of them long ago.

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The plastic motor mount seems to break even if all you do is look at it funny. If the car is going to be seeing any running at all, might I suggest a metal one?

I've been warned not to sneeze in the same room of a plastic motor mount :D:D

Great job so far, I love seeing old cars brought back from the brink, I'm sure this'll be a really satisfying build.

Thanks, I'm not a vintage freak, but I love to repair things. It might be the reason why I've spent all my life in the systems repair bussiness.

Do you want a Hummer body? I have a complete pre-finished one here I was thinking of selling off. obviously it would be coming from NZ, up to you.

Might I suggest this somewhat simple motor and holder solution, for now

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/trades_model.asp?cid=119204

I would also recomend a GPM or similar metal/alloy motor mount as they don't last long with fast motors, but if you are going to go with say a High turn motor 55+ turns, you might pull it off with a plastic motor mount.

Let me know if there are parts you can put to use that are used, I have some TA01/2 bits here that need a home, too many to list and I might have taken photos of them long ago.

Same here ,got heaps of bits and pieces, couple of new motor mounts too ,put up a list and im sure we can all help

Thanks a lot for your offers. By the time I published this post I have already received the needed parts from Germany. Fast and convenient, But I'm still considering to build a second unit with different camouflage, so...let's finish this one first, I already have too many projects running in parallel <_<

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wonder how that hummer body would look on my lunchbox.... or if it was big enough, on my clod....

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Well, as prommissed, cleaning is the next job.

Once stripped down I separated the parts in different groups: Front gear box, rear gear box, shocks, steering accesories, metal parts and screws, and finally chassis and accessories.

All metal parts required thorough cleaning, and i do not have ultrasonic tank at home....yet. So my solution was flooding them with WD40. Magic.

For plastic parts I used mostly elbow grease and then a round at the diswasher, alltough elbow grease was much more efficient. I'm affraid that all gunk and dirt was not from this millenium <_<

Let;s talk less and show more evidences.

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Shocks cleaned and working as expected. You could see in the 1st picture that two of the orange "O" rings are fatter than the others. For whatever reason they have something extra for breakfast and there was no way to get them in its corresponding place in the bottom part of the shock absorber. Then I replaced them with rings I got in stock from other projects.

There was something elese that I noticed as well. Comparing the size of the absorber with the one in the pdf manual I have from the Hummer, it seems that those shocks are longer. Hmmm, we will see.

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Front differential and gearbox seem to be in very good status after cleaning.

Next, rear diff

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Let's continue

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Now full front block

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Pretty happy with the results, however shocks are too long as I assumed. Let's wait until everything fits together.

That's my first TA01, but my overall impression is that it has a very robust construction, with the exception of the motor mount, which is ridiculously flimsy. Since my build would not have a tough life I decided to buy the full parts B tree, which includes the motor mount and the full rear gearbox assembly in black. It has the same price as the motor mount in alu, but include more parts.

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The motor is borrowed from a NIB kit that I have in the pipeline (Stadium Blitzer). Disregard the pinion gear, it has not the right pitch, it was used only for the photo. 16t 0.6 pitch on its way. That one was also funny. I have lots of pinion gears, but all of them in different pitch, or with the wrong number of teeth. The one I got with the TA01 roller is in good status but has 21t, and I don't want my Hummer flying low.

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Wow, you build quick. I can say this, expect to get the motor mount in alloy, GPM should still sell them and I have bought from Asiatees with great success. I only say that as all this work would be a pity if you didn't get to run this much. Overtorquing the screws IS a large part of the issue, but, as careful as you may be, they can still just get cracked from the torque the motor puts out on those two screws that hold it into the chassis.

Agree with chikin, need to use THICK grease in the ball diff. Myself, I use Dielectric grease from the auto shop, cheaper by the ounce and pretty thick. Been doing that 10+ years and no issues. I have also thrown it into my geared diffs for a bit of a thick and sticky gear diff train.

I have had the occasional ORANGE O ring puff up like breakfast cereal. It is a simple reaction to the cleaning chemical I have used. It could shrink back down to size, time will tell.

The only other advice I can offer is where else the chassis has cracks/breaks. I have found MANY a chassis tub with cracked screw studs where the mechanics deck mounts. Have found cracked gearbox covers where the thinner parts of the plastic gets again overtorqued screws and lastly the shock mounts can get cracked. It is obvious you have inspected yours while cleaning and found none of these places in disrepair, so you are very lucky and perhaps that archival dirt layers from the centuries had acted as a protector from damage of this sort.

Great looking build so far, making me want to get after mine, but I have to wait for a custom piece of FRP to be made.

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you may have some issues with that ball diff if you haven't used ball diff grease...they don't work so good without it.

I know, thanks. Off camera I cleaned again and applied the right ball diff grease. It arrived later.

Wow, you build quick.

Well, I must admit that most of these activities were done in the last weeks, I haven't finished yet publishing up to the point where I'm standing now, but it will come pretty soon.

Let's continue with the rear block

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And now my point. I was more and more convinced that the shocks are too long for the Hummer, too much travel. Let's see when we assemble everything together qith chassis and body. In order to get the real idea, we need to mount also the wheels.

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And now all parts together,

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I couldn't resist the temptation of setting the body on top of the roller. No body mounts yet, just a plastic box inside.

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And now the assesment:

  • Wheelbase is OK. 280 mm
  • Width...mmm I don't know what should be the right one but my overall impresiion is that I miss a few mm.
  • Height...mmm. I don't know yet, I need to use the body mounts, allthough I have a single set, because I bought only one tree. In fact I did it to get the mirrors, my original plan was to build the body mounts myself.

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This could be another shell for the MF-01. Hmmmm projects, projects

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On my TA02 I fitted longer dampers to get more ground clearance, to correct camber I got hop up turnbuckle top arms...you can just make them out in pic below, might be an option if you want to retain the height from your current dampers?

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Nobbi, I think the MF-01 is going to be too small to support this body.

I can still have a dig around for a spare body mount, do you need both a single front and a single rear???

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Nobbi, I think the MF-01 is going to be too small to support this body.

I can still have a dig around for a spare body mount, do you need both a single front and a single rear???

Thanks for the offer. I am still in dreaming land at the moment, this would be a far off project.

Great thread, I love watching model get mixed up and modified

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I can still have a dig around for a spare body mount, do you need both a single front and a single rear???

If you keep reading you will understand why I don need them anymore.

Guys, I've found something that clarifies many things.

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_model.asp?cid=48983&sid=2193

There, our colleague Bluefoot explained in deep the comonalities, and particularities of TA-01, TA-02 and Hummer

To make it short, Hummer has common chassis tub with TA01, shorter shocks, longer dogbones, and suspensin arms...

That explains why in Hummer manual the stering rods connect to the top of the upright and in the TA-01 connects to the bottom. In order to avoid the bump steer, the steering rod should be as parallel as possible to the suspension arms, and with longer shocks and shorter suspension arms, the angle is bigger.

Ok, lesson learned. I wish I read this one before, It would saved my time and some money. In the other hand I enjoyed a lot with my trial and error strategy.

Well, as I mentioned before, my publishing is still slightly differed from real building time (now only a couple of days). So problem is solved because Tuesday I ordered the following:

  • Another set of Parts D tree
  • shorter shocks
  • longer dogbones
  • 3 motors (one for this project and 2 for others)
  • 1 ESC
  • some other items for my other projects
Believe it ot not I received the this morning, TAMICO and Modellbau Seidel are becoming extremely efficient in terms of parts availability and order delivery. Less than 48 hrs. !!!
To satisfy those that love to watch photos of build process, I have some other points of view of the Hummer body on topt of the roller.
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It would be interesting to compare those two photos with the same points of view once I replaced the shocks and the suspension arms.

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Looking good there and I had forgotten that good ole Don "BlueFoot" Mclean had posted the differences he had come across. There are a LOT of old guys commented on that post and man, I miss hearing and seeing their stuff.

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Here we are again. After a weekend full of weather surprises, including polar morning, pedestrian-driver-killer freezing rain in the afternoon, rain and even sun, I managed to resume the activities with the Hummer and get some findings.

First, let's get some parts comparisons

Front suspension arms and dogbones. The shorter parts are the TA01 originals, the longer are specific for Hummer. Around 5mm longer

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The same applies for the rear

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After assemblying only one side each (front and rear) and setting the distance from chassis to ground at 35 mm I got the following measurements got from tip of the axle to ground

  • Hummer suspension arms + dogbones + shocks
    • Front axle
      • ​Standby: 40 mm
      • Shock maximum compresion: 19 mm
      • Distance axle to chassis center: 93 mm
    • Rear axle
      • ​Standby: 39 mm
      • Shock maximum compresion: 58 mm
      • Distance axle to chasis center: 92 mm
  • ​TA01 suspension arms + dogbones + shocks
    • Front axle
      • Standby: 44 mm
      • Shock maximum compresion: 67 mm
      • Distance axle to chasis center: 88 mm
    • Rear axle
      • Standby: 40 mm
      • Shock maximum compresion: 63 mm
      • Distance axle to chasis center; 87 mm

​By analyzing those measurements I got some conclusions, Please correct me if I'm wrong

  • Hummer suspension arms are wider and make the overall vehicle roller a bit wider, about 10 mm
  • Hummer shocks limit the maximum travel of the suspension to 19 mm, in comparison with the 23 mm of the TA01 standard configuration

Well, now my setting is more in accordance with original Hummer design, although is not dramatically different at short distance. It is true that with the limitation of travel of the shocks, now the wheels will not rub the body, and observing it from the rear and the front, it seems a bit more proportional in general.

Later on I will upload more photos.

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Nice progress. I've always liked the hummer but they rarely come up for sale at a price I'd be happy paying. The bodyshell is glorious, it would benefit massively from some Axial Light bucket treatment and some LEDs though...

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Photos, as promissed

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As you can see, with shocks to maximum compresion, there is a slight contact with the body, but marginal. I do not expect to reproduce this situation in real life.

Now, let's think about painting and possible weapon and accessories fitting. I'll ask you for advise.

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That is looking great. Where I haven't fitted one just yet, there was a Rambo toy .50 caliber machine gun with a stand from back in the 80's that to me, looked great in scale. I know there are some others, but they don't seem as cheap as the Rambo one. IT would need a little modification to get to mount it on the top of the turret area, but I doubt you will have problems with it.

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