Well, can you beleive it, I am going to post a Hotshot build!

[Crash Cramer]

Well Tamfolks, after 12 years on TamiyaClub, I am going to finally post a forum build of a NEW BUILD Hotshot.

I guess the best place to start is from the source of all the parts. I have been hoarding/collecting most things Hotshot over the last 12 or so years since Al Gore invented the internet AND Global Warming. I have sold some parts off, traded, donated, given parts to all sorts of folks to all corners of the globe and I have enjoyed it and still enjoy getting parts to folks that are in need of them if I have them. Recently I found myself slightly disabled with back pain paying me another visit and with visitors over the holidays, I had to pack all my 'toys' as the wife calls them, into the garage. Thankfullly the temps in there haven't hovered over 100 yet, so I feel the parts and cars are safe, for now.

Doing all that moving around and having some time on my hands, well I started to see if I had all the necessary parts to build another Hotshot, wouldn't you know it, I did, save a couple screws and I expect those will arrive any day now really.

Have a look at how I laid it out in the guest room before it had to be packed into the garage.

Those are my new screw boxes on the bottom of the photo

Then it was transport the parts to the garage in a manner that I could focus on a build when time permitted

That is my cobbled together MK1 Hotshot over there on the left on the old '80s "Headchair" remember those??

Here is what my new screw boxes look like when you open them up, LOTS of goodies in there

Next time, see how I build this up, starting from step one page one.

[taffer]

on one of my tshot entries in my showroom you posted that you should really have a 'backup' hotshot, good to see it's happening

[Wez-li]

Watching with interest

[Wandy]

Looking forward to this Chris. Can't believe that, after all the help you have given to other people with parts, you still have this many left, lol. The initial pile of parts must have been mountain sized.

[matman]

Where on earth did you get them parts/screw box's ? . I need to find them now .

Great too see you are going to build one & WE get too see it .

Enjoy the moment , as i'm sure we will & thanks .

[Terz1]

Looking forward to seeing this crash. I recently built a hornet out of bits I had and second parts. It's really satisfying seeing it come together. Even more than a kit I felt. Building something from things you've got lying around and creating something is a fantastic.

And I love your screw and nut boxes. I wish mine were like that.

[Nitomor]

About time

Now that is some serious organisation! I wish I could be as organised as that, probably my weakest skill set when it comes to this hobby!

Look forward ti this progressing

[Crash Cramer]

on one of my tshot entries in my showroom you posted that you should really have a 'backup' hotshot, good to see it's happening

HA, a backup HS, well, I guess that is a better description than I had come up with so far.

Looking forward to this Chris. Can't believe that, after all the help you have given to other people with parts, you still have this many left, lol. The initial pile of parts must have been mountain sized.

You bet the pile was a good sized, but it never seemed to be totally out of control, like the rest of my garage seems to be.

Where on earth did you get them parts/screw box's ? . I need to find them now .

Great too see you are going to build one & WE get too see it .

Enjoy the moment , as i'm sure we will & thanks .

The screw/spares boxes were originally sent to Hobby shops alone it seems in the 80's. I was fortunate enough or unfortunate enough to be present the last few weeks of one of the shops I spent a good amount of time in as a teen when it closed. They allowed me to buy these boxes from them, they had been drained of screws by that time, but I had a few laying about and I bought screw bags to fill them up when I found them on eBay. There is a newer version, don't like it as much as it is a fancy fishing tackle box and you have to label all the pockets yourself. I realize that helps with customization, but it isn't as cool.

About time

Now that is some serious organisation! I wish I could be as organised as that, probably my weakest skill set when it comes to this hobby!

Look forward ti this progressing

HA, I love it, you guys think I am organized. I think you ought to have a look at the garage area SURROUNDING the build parts and reassess that opinion.

Did you see the "project" Hotshot on the floor?? More on that in the near future I hope, still awaiting parts on that one.

The "shelf" wall, it still can use more neat and tidiness.

More updates later today as I want to share this with you as best I can and I have already taken all the photos necessary to nearly complete the Hotshot, of course, as you know....SPOILER ALERT, I don't paint all that much.

[mongoose1983]

[...]

Here is what my new screw boxes look like when you open them up, LOTS of goodies in there

Next time, see how I build this up, starting from step one page one.

Oh, wow. Now that'll sure get things done there, Chris!

[Wez-li]

HA, I love it, you guys think I am organized. I think you ought to have a look at the garage area SURROUNDING the build parts and reassess that opinion.

And the award for the member with the most understanding wife goes to...

[Tamiya Era]

Waiting for step 1 :-)

[Crash Cramer]

Well I wouldn't want to keep you waiting, so here goes, but know this, I am getting pretty hungry, so lunch is going to interrupt this a little bit.

STEP ONE, find gearbag, open and trim and sort.

Now we need to get a half a gearbox out and the grease. This may be a little redundant as I have mentioned it in the past, but I like to be cheap and effective and efficient when I think of the projects I still have to do, so with that in mind, I tend to buy metal shielded bearings in little lots of 10 or so, especially when they go on sale at some ebay sellers and I like Tamiya's greases and such, but they are not all that cheap, so the auto store to the rescue, I have had so much success over the years with simple geared cars and White Lithium Grease as well as Dielectric grease for cars with a "sealed" gear diff, alal Manta Ray, M chassis cars, so that is how I work my differential builds. I also use the WLG on the gear's teeth as well as the pinion, no more blackish moly grease for me, thank you. Even though this car is likely a shelfer or even perhaps a car to put for sale somewhere in the distant future, it is going to be built like it were to be run casually, so here is how I work the gearboxes up.

So here is the amount of WLG I like to put on the metal bevel gears so it isn't flinging around all over the insides

You can tell I got a little more liberal with this side of the bevel, but not too crazy, note the teeth are greased up on the plastic diff gear

The red bits are installed and just about ready to seal up the rear gearbox. Hunger pangs are taking over, so until after lunch, I leave you.

[Effigy3]

Like the Frog, the HotShot was one car I never got my hands on back in the day. It'll be great fun to see one go together!

[Crash Cramer]

Like the Frog, the HotShot was one car I never got my hands on back in the day. It'll be great fun to see one go together!

Uh oh, don't say that, you might get bitten by the Hotshot bug. Since you are just up the road a bit, I might have to bring one over to get around on that track you are talking about sometimes.

Lunch is over and the wife is done on the computer for now, but now dinner is ready, OKAY, back to this, sorry folks, it was a long Sunday, hope the wait was worth it, plugging along with the build.

Well, we left off with a fully greasy rear gearbox, time to add the motor, found a nice vintage one laying around sans wires. This one looks vintage to me as it is stamped JAPAN on the endbell, I chose a 13T pinon to throw on it.

And then here it is all nice and tidy installed in the gearbox.

You might note that I haven't used the Tamiya rubber balloon, well, I do have one, not to brag, but they do not weather very well here in the humid state of Houston Texas. I don't know if I will ever wire this up, but it is nice to see it installed instead of some vacant hole.

I have the front gearbox all greased up similarly

Red bit added and on this photo I wanted to point out the ONE machine thread screw(screwdriver point is nearly touching it) as it is important I have learned over the years to NOT over tighten this one as it strips easily because it is being seated into the gearbox half plastic. Trust me on this, liquid threadlocker is nice, but when the entire car is being held together with it, well, it ain't that great. Since this is a new build and likely not to run, I have been tighting these screws to the point of just closing the gaps in the parts assembled and calling it done. Hope that helps out someone out there so they don't find their cars full of stripped screws.

We have made it to STEP 10, the rear amrs, got this tree all laid out and the bits too, nice new black axle cups there and went with bearings in all the rotating spaces on this car.

All put together here

Adding the "wings" to the rear gearbox

Now onto the rest of the R parts attached to the rear gearbox.

Here I wanted to point out just how little AW grease one needs to apply to these dogbone ends. You don't really want to attrach dust to the sockets, so just a small layer applied to the ends will do. I like Tamiya's AW grease as it comes in a small pot that is nearly perfect to "dip" the dogbones into and this pot has lasted me for several builds. NOTE, only one ball end has any AW grease on it.

Now up to lucky number 13 on the steps, front upright construction, you have to be steady handed to get these threads tapped straight.

In order to do the tapping, you might notice a 4x12mm screw next to the brass ball end, that is for specifically tapping these uprights, the instruction manual states to use the silver wheel axle to do this, along with an allen wrench, I find that a little too difficult and since I had this screw provided by Tamiya when selling just the Upright in a package, well, I went with the easy way.

All stuck together now

And added to the front F parts, note, these are vintage parts, but they are vintage Mk2.5 parts, parts that would have been sold as replacements, but originally molded for the HotShot2 as they don't have the "triangles" that need trimming off the lower arms if installed on a SuperShot and they don't have the 4 triangle shapes cut out of them, rather they have 3 triangles and the simple 3mm hole for mounting the HP Suspension set.

All the bits laid out for completing step 15

And here is step 15 completed

Well, sorry for the extra big post, but now I am being requested to join the wife for watching Downton Abbey, so, until tomorrow. I am a bit sad and happy that it is the final season of DA, sad as I like a bit of the English countryside shown and happy as I don't have to be stuck on Sunday's watching the telly with subtitles on so I can figure out what they are saying. No offense intended, I am just losing my hearing and some of those accents are not too easy to cut through.

Good night all.

[mongoose1983]

Great stuff, Crash!

[jjj333]

Chris - This is so helpful and timely for me! As I am about to put my 1986 Supershot back together, viewing your photos helps not only with a good order to do things in, but also helps with respect to having visuals for amounts of greases. Thanks! Great thread!!!

[Crash Cramer]

Glad you both like it, Erich, you have been bugging me for ages to post more things and Jason, just remember there are some stages of the build for the Hotshot that are in a different order than the SuperShot, but, you are right, the internals are very much the same. Good luck with your rebuild and I can't wait to see your progress. Oh yea, I remember I have to get your brown dogbones in the mail since one of yours has failed. They will be going out Monday in the mail and perhaps in your hands by the end of the work week.

[Quandry]

Like the Frog, the HotShot was one car I never got my hands on back in the day. It'll be great fun to see one go together!

Hotshot is a great kit. Grab a ReRe you won't regret it.

and... nice thread Crash, looking forward to seeing this come together

[TeaMonster]

Love the hotshot, it is the one kit that I can remember, that as a child was well out of my pocket money range😀Now I have a re re hot shot and am looking at getting a super hotshot.

[Effigy3]

Uh oh, don't say that, you might get bitten by the Hotshot bug. Since you are just up the road a bit, I might have to bring one over to get around on that track you are talking about sometimes.

The Belton track is currently down for a rebuild. The RCPro series is going to be run there the first weekend of March. So... Once that's done we should have a brand new track to run on. Bring your Hot Shot up and I'll steal my daughters TT-02B and we'll make a day of running the snot out of them around the track!

[Crash Cramer]

Moving onto page 8 and step 16, Houston, we have a chassis, just no driver. I think he went to the loo. Actually I am undecided on if he will be painted or not, so I have ommited him for the moment while I ponder that idea.

Next step is relatively simple, get that rear suspension "elbow" made up. I remember snapping this on my original HS, but of course I had attempted to drive my HS from the roof of my real car, down the trunk lid and onto the pavement. It made it, but such a high load at impact snapped this bit, I was lucky I didn't destroy my whole chassis where the tube and screw pass through and mount this on.

The next step is a bit of a marriage of sorts

Now onto making this car 4WD, the front gearbox install and prop shaft install. All prepped up.

Then it is done, that is much better looking now

Preparing for the shock build, iconic monoshocks that is

Add in a few red parts for flavor

And the next thing you know it, we have some mono shocks done. That 3mm flange nut is always the real task to completing this step

All installed and added the sway bar on the front

Well, I gotta get to work, when I return I will see how much farther we will get, but we have gotten you up to page 10/step 22 for those of your keeping track.

[Crash Cramer]

The Belton track is currently down for a rebuild. The RCPro series is going to be run there the first weekend of March. So... Once that's done we should have a brand new track to run on. Bring your Hot Shot up and I'll steal my daughters TT-02B and we'll make a day of running the snot out of them around the track!

Well, by the time I do get some free time, I bet that track will be open again, I might have a spare car or two I can bring so your daughter can drive her own car.

[Effigy3]

Well, by the time I do get some free time, I bet that track will be open again, I might have a spare car or two I can bring so your daughter can drive her own car.

If she wants to run too I'll just use my TRF 201.

[Drivetrain]

First time I've seen a hotshot being built. I'm taken with how many parts tamiya re used between this and the boomerang.

[Sandster]

Hi Chris, great thread! My rc stuff has taken a back seat for a few weeks now but this thread is exactly what I needed to re-ignite the spark. You cant beat the look of shiny new plastic.