Nobbi1977's Cars

[Nobbi1977 1793]

Yeah racing upper arm holder turned up today for my MF01.

Fit is a little tight and there is no room for the gear cover. Needs shorter upper arms or uprights with the screw holes on the top. So much extra travel though so a great mod

Before

After

 

‘Rex took a bit of damage last weekend after a couple of hill rolls.

Fittet the factory fender stickers, which are not great, to give a little protection. Also a bit of vinyl on roof while I learn to drive.

Lastly my “gates” turned up. They are a bit bigger than I thought but will do well. 30 for £10 should lay out some nice sections in the woods.

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

The Sport does not come with inner fenders. The Defender has them attached to the shell, they will not work, I tried a set.

The kit and Bronco have fenders attached to the chassis so I got a set from a kit splitter.

Stock front end

Fenders fitted

Rear fitted

 

The front has space for a battery to put weight over the front end

 

The Sport shell is not a great fit over the fenders but it does go over. 

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

Lots of playing today at a mountain bike course.

This was taken before many rolls and the new stickers taking a beating 

 

First coat of paint on the Blackfoot shell. A little flat due to the weather but it will flatted before coat two anyway. This is a VW colour I have left over from painting a BMX earlier in the year.

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

‘Rex took a beating on that last outing and the arch stickers are shredded. The ESC set to crawl did not help as the drag brake kept throwing the truck all over. 

I would have screamed at my son if he had done as much rolling as I did on that trip so I thought I best get a better tool for the job.

We can now take both cars and bash with this one and also crawl with it as well. It might not be 100% as good as the TRX but I am guessing not far off.

Disappointed that the servo horn hits the chassis at full compression. There is very little room for movement as the receiver box is close at the back as well.

I the good old days of Banzai doing reasonable priced HopUps I stocked up on random stuff to maximise postage weights, so I had this in stock.

Much better than plastic and with a thin spacer holds the servo so there is no contact

I used what was left of my bat tape to try and help the shell last a little longer

Hopefully tomorrow will be its first test run

 

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

So today is attack of the clones.

Clone is the correct word I think and I do not want to argue over ethics etc. 

I have to say I am impressed with the quality for the money. 

My plan is to strip it to parts and then rebuild it my way. The steering is so vague I could not live with it. I am going to look at a different way to do the gear change as well.

The body will get a nice, but not to nice, paint job because I want to run and roll this one with my Wraith and TRX-4. 

A couple of the nuts look like they could do with longer bolts but a full bolt kit is almost as much as I paid for the model.

The controller is not great but it has a 3 position third channel and is no worse quality than the stock controller that came with my Wraith. 

Not sure about that battery. Will charge it and see.

Quite a lot of side to side movement in the front suspension and so much turning slop. I feel shims and a front servo coming along.

Body looks like a good mould. The plastic feels different (harder?) than Tamiya bodies I have.

Tailgate fit in the bottom corners is not 100% but I think I am going to fibreglass it and the grill in place before paint.

couple of low spots in the Chrome. I don’t think I will use this, I prefer a long bed and roll bar.

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

So the MF-01x has gone off to a new home. I had lots of plans and ideas for it but it just never seemed to fit what I needed it to do.

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

Yesterday saw the start of the clone strip down. 

First I stuck a pack in it to give it a try. Disappointed to find no drive in middle gear. 

 

Steering is terrible, very little movement and no real control.

Not a great start and it gets worse

My plan was to get the wheels off and assess the job in hand. Three of the wheels had bolts that were cross threaded or had stripped heads.

Now I know you might think I am a rough sort who rounded the heads myself but I have been restoring bike for years so I make sure my tools are ok and I know how to use them. These bolts were totally rounded before I got a tool to them. They were so bad I had to try and drill them which damaged the wheels.

You can also see from the video above that the tyres have been glued on not straight.

[Nobbi1977 1793]

So wheels damaged but off. Look at the angle of tha screw

Electronics are not exactly cutting edge and you need to cut the switch off to remove the lid

The tape holding the RX down was stronger than the RX!

Servos look bargain basement but then they would for this price..

The servo savers are interesting 

And I found out where some of the steering slop cam from 

 

Normaly I just grab the links with a pair of smooth jaw pliers and pop them off, never has on split like this

Coming to remove the electrics box I come across another rounded fitting, this will become a recurring theme 

I was wondering about the packing oil all over the place. I thought it was maybe to keep it from rusting on the boat over, I later realised it was was all the oil out of all 4 shocks that had escaped.

Removing the front end one screw had stripped the threads in the chassis and one was not even in a hole at all, it just bent the plastic. Thinking maybe this was a 10 to 4 Friday build.

Not just chewed up hex’s, Philips as well

 

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

So axles are off and time to work on getting the gearbox out.

The axles we very loose and sloppy, nothing was done up correctly 

Gearbox mounts are so tight I round the hex trying. I then struggle with mole grips they are that tight

Luckily they just pull through the rubber mounts and it can get the heads in the vice outside

So I thought I had got over the worst of it

 

Look again at the gearbox picture about and tell me what you see...

[Nobbi1977 1793]

I had not noticed what I can now see in the previous post so I thought I would quickly strip and clean the gearbox

So far so good

This has to be some of the worst monkey metal casting I have ever seen

Bearings throughout 

Those little black cogs are very loose on the bearings to the point I would guess the bearings are doing nothing 

I had to drill out two more fittings. It was on the way to the garage I noticed the huge crack in the end plate. I am guessing something did not fit so they just tightened some more.

I have the rest of the box in bits now but I did not take any more pictures. 

I will just leave you with the bearing fit in the hub

At this point I do not feel this model is worth the asking price. It might look like a Bruiser but I am guessing if the real ones were made like this then Tamiya would have gone bust long ago. 

[Grastens 2795]

Yikes! This is exactly what I feared with the HG-P407 - maybe not all of them are like this (I hope), but this is quite bad.

[Nobbi1977 1793]

20 hours ago, Grastens said:

Yikes! This is exactly what I feared with the HG-P407 - maybe not all of them are like this (I hope), but this is quite bad.

I got £35 back from Banggood so it is about on value for me now. 

Not decided if I will try and rescue the gearbox now or try something else

[mikem65d 3]

This seems to be the case with the RTR.

The assemblers obviously are paid a bowl of rice to assemble a dozen or so an hour and have no clue on why screws are binding or even if they have the right screw in the right hole.

I like many others bought the kit and while it's true that fit and finish is not great, it's workable.

The wheel bearings are easily set with Loctite 680. The tranny definitely works fantastic once disassembled and greased.

The drive shafts are quality beyond what you expect from a clone so no complaint there. The Shocks however are a joke. At first i decided to just replace them with original rere Bruiser shocks, then decided that with the crappy springs supplied to go with Gmade RSD piggybacks so suspension tuning made sense.

Is this clone worthy?.....it really is.

Now with that said, i do have a rere Bruiser built and ready to run, and have another new kit just because, along with enough spare parts to probably build a whole re re.

I took almost every new part in my stash and swapped them with parts on the clone and they fit perfectly. Transmission gears on the lower shaft are exact match and will get used if the clone pops a tooth.

The upper shaft is definitely a good attempt to copy the re re, but where Tamiya used plastic gears on the 2 drive cogs, the clone uses sintered gears that are known to break. The guys that have broken these sintered gears are the guys that are trying to shift on the fly.....It's not a drag racer, so shifting on the fly is pointless. The sliders are different too, but the shaft,gears and sliders can be replaced with Tamiya. The tranny cases are almost identical which tells me that the clone was a good copy, or they used molds that were mold copies.

Case pieces are virtually interchangeable.

Like many others here, I will always want Tamiya kits in the original form, but i have to say, this clone kit makes for a good start for those who will never spend the money for the real deal.

And yes, i bought 2 of the clone kits just because I always have to have 2 of everything like this.

With the right tools for the hexes and phillips screws, I have not had anything stripped or cross threaded.

I wouldn't be too surprised to find that Tamiya may have even been behind the development of this clone. Get 'em to buy and enjoy the clone, and surely a few will want the real deal.

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

So after a long break I dug out the body and gave it a going over with 400 wet and dry. Would have used finer but 400 is the best I have in stock.

Will give it a final blast and then decided what to do with it. 
 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

So shell finished. Most of the WT-01 underneath is new from spares in my boxes. Wheels shocks from a Mavrick Scout.

Magnetic body mounts.

Was going for the Mud Bogging look. 
 

 

 

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

Lesson 1: never put a dodgy servo back in the box, hoping you were wrong about it.

Lesson 2: you can change a servo in a comical hornet without splitting the cases.

 

 

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

 

 

 

[Grumpy pants 4450]

Nice to you are still Tamiya tinkering. 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

1 hour ago, Grumpy pants said:

Nice to you are still Tamiya tinkering. 

Occasionally. I don’t have as much time as I did. Lockdown is actually more work and stress for me. 
 

Need to go through all my stuff and parts so I can see the wood from the trees again.