The Striker virus spreads

[Maelstrom 439]

While reading the inspiring threads by kontemax and jason1145 a slightly used Striker came up on ebay and I had to bag it.

"In need of a little love" it said in the description. 

Loved the home made skid guard.

And the inventive way of holding the tyres on the wheels!

As almost all the black plastic was badly scratched I opted to replace most of it and was lucky to find some very cheap replacements 

I stripped and cleaned everything, all the while searching for futher spares.

Then the fever gripped me and I ended up with another 1 1/2 Strikers in bits...

...and another one...

Yes, that IS a brushless motor!

Finally the amazing €23 Sonic fighter

So far I'm just about finished with the first one...

... pics to follow!

[Maelstrom 439]

Filled the worst scratches with milliput, sanded, based and painted white. The spoiler was badly scratched, so after repairs it was based and painted blue, I also sprayed the nose blue instead of using the sticker.

 

The wheels were unsaveable and were replaced with the rere Grasshopper 2 ones. The "cyan blue" on the repro stickers turned out light blue.

Started in the next one. Blue with white and silver decals is what I have in mind. What do you think?

[Fuijo 880]

What a great job you've done on that. A great looking car!

I want one. But not if they breed like rabbits.

 

[Grastens 2795]

Good, good... let it spread 

Looking forward to seeing them done-up!

[VagabondStarJXF 350]

Very nice. Well done!

[Jason1145 3986]

Love it... so jealous of that €23 Sonic Fighter and the Striker with the purple shocks.. had to double take when I saw 3 motor wires on it!!!!!!! Crazy lol.

The one you have finished looks Ace, how did you do the letter writing on the tyres it  comes out really nice!

The next one sounds good, deep blue maybe with white and silver decals, nice to see creative colours... I'd leave that SF the way it is!

[Maelstrom 439]

Used this paint pen for the tyre lettering:

 

[Maelstrom 439]

They're available in all sorts of colours and with different size tips. Got mine off amazon.

I'd love to add some alloy front dampers to my next Striker build. Does anyone have spare Sonic Fighter F parts to sell? -not easy to find on ebay 

[Tamiyabigstuff 832]

3 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Does anyone have spare Sonic Fighter F parts to sell? -not easy to find on ebay 

Yep - I have 1 S-F F parts left.

Lots of other Sonic Fighter & Striker parts too.

[Maelstrom 439]

If anyone happens to be seriously considering brushless power in their Striker, please note:

1. You won't be able to steer

2. If you can't steer, driving in a narrow street is not a good idea

3. The front of a Striker was not designed with high speed contact with a wall in mind

Ouch. Silly me.

[VagabondStarJXF 350]

16 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

If anyone happens to be seriously considering brushless power in their Striker, please note:

1. You won't be able to steer

2. If you can't steer, driving in a narrow street is not a good idea

3. The front of a Striker was not designed with high speed contact with a wall in mind

Ouch. Silly me.

Dude!?!?! Now that's some serious crash damage.  

[Jason1145 3986]

''Tis but a scratch, come on, battery back in and get out there!

My Sonic Fighter had a crack in the lower chassis just where yours looks to be, not all the way across but nearly... Some JB Weld will get that back together in under 24 hours.

Note taken - no brushless motors in Striker

[Jonathon Gillham 4606]

What brushless motor was in that? Did Jason tell you they can handle a 'mild' brushless just fine? That is some serious damage, I doubt my 13.5T would make it go fast enough to do that

[Jason1145 3986]

4 hours ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

What brushless motor was in that? Did Jason tell you they can handle a 'mild' brushless just fine? That is some serious damage, I doubt my 13.5T would make it go fast enough to do that

 I was told many moons ago that most Tamiya's can handle mild brushless thanks to their wide gears being pretty robust... to be fair this Striker could handle the brushless set up it was the walls fault!

You're gonna have to up that 13.5t then if you're to get on the Speed lists ;p

@Maelstrom are you already fixing the broken chassis?

[Maelstrom 439]

14 hours ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

What brushless motor was in that? Did Jason tell you they can handle a 'mild' brushless just fine? That is some serious damage, I doubt my 13.5T would make it go fast enough to do that

It was a 12 T motor. Im pretty sure that the Striker would have been fine in a nice open space, with maybe a little weight at the front. As it was, I actually hit the wall at a slight angle with only about a three metre run up from a dead stop. The Tamiya Striker probably can handle mild brushless. It can't handle walls.

Or daft drivers 😐

@Jason1145 unfortunately too  much work at the moment to even think about repairs - I did get round to ordering some JB Weld though.

[Jonathon Gillham 4606]

I was surprised to see that much damage from hitting a wall, the car looks pretty fragile. I doubt my TT02B would suffer that much damage in the same crash, but won't try it out just to see...

Yes @Jason1145 i definitely need to up my game for the speed runs. Then again with my current efforts I could just put my gps in any car and that would be an improvement!

[markbt73 5316]

...And there, precisely, is the reason for the Striker's reputation as being fragile. That area of the chassis nose is too narrow and thin, and the bumper provides no protection, and in fact might make it worse.

The one kid with a Striker in my neighborhood growing up went through 3 or 4 chassis before he made a skidplate out of an old "no parking" sign to reinforce it. This also added a ton of weight to the front, which also helps with the understeer a bit.

One of these days I'm going to take a vintage car and drive it like I stole it, and pretend I'm 13 years old and penniless again, and see if I can engineer better freebie fixes than we managed back then. I don't have a Striker, but I do have an FX10... hmm....

[Jason1145 3986]

On 11/09/2017 at 10:52 PM, Maelstrom said:

It was a 12 T motor. Im pretty sure that the Striker would have been fine in a nice open space, with maybe a little weight at the front. As it was, I actually hit the wall at a slight angle with only about a three metre run up from a dead stop. The Tamiya Striker probably can handle mild brushless. It can't handle walls.

Or daft drivers 😐

@Jason1145 unfortunately too  much work at the moment to even think about repairs - I did get round to ordering some JB Weld though.

I used JB Weld on my cracked Sonic Fighter chassis in that same area, I smeared it all over to make a good 2mm covering so hopefully it acts as a reinforcement over the original chassis too.

Then I drilled and mounted the FX10 front bumper in place of the stock one!

Im curious if you can use JB Weld for strengthening a known weak area on a chassis, say around exposed screw holes like on the Thundershot chassis where both front and rear ends bolt on to the chassis.

[VagabondStarJXF 350]

On ‎11‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 10:52 PM, Maelstrom said:

too  much work at the moment to even think about repairs

If you decide against repairing, e.g. if you manage to find a new body set for yourself, I might be interested in taking your broken chassis & body off your hands. Being a fresh break with no repairs attempted makes it an ideal candidate for a Striker related experiment I've been thinking of trying.

[Maelstrom 439]

Time for a small update:

The damage to the Striker was actually even more grevious than I thought:

It had obviously been repaired before!

 

Got to work with JB Weld.  Have never used this before and I must say that the repaired areas now seem to be pretty stable

 

 

Tough to sand down though

[Maelstrom 439]

Striker Nr. 2 is coming along nicely. Paint job isn't finished yet, but here is a sneek peek:

And the decals from Canada have arrived!

 

[Pintopower 1456]

Oh I like this build! I will start on mine after my Frog is done. Im going to go hardcore on the F1 theme and throwing out those front arms all together. 

[Maelstrom 439]

OK, this has taken quite a bit since the last update. I wasn't happy initially with the white decals on Striker No. 2 - just not white enough on the blue background - so I sort of lost interest and moved on to other projects. Got round to finishing it now though

No. 1 and 2 side by side:

 

[Jason1145 3986]

Looks great to me, in fact, seeing all the colour options you can go for with the advent of custom decals, the original Striker in White has zero appeal in comparison... like a missed opportunity! 

Calm down before anyone flames me for calling the preceived ugly duckling.. ugly... I love the Striker but just not in white

Saying that, it’s nice to have one in the stable as a comparison, Tamiya heritage and all that.

Your new blue one came out very nice and the Driver figure looks ace,  how many parts went into this whole restoration of the blue Striker?

Edit: I can see what you mean about the white decals not being white enough.. they look fine on the decal sheet but they are too thin and let the blue through once stuck on... I noticed this with some MCI decals too ( red decals on a Black Cosworth shell).

The only way to avoid it is...... not sure actually?!

[Maelstrom 439]

Thanks for the compliment!

Probably the only way to avoid the darker base colour shining through would be to mask out the area the decals are going to be placed and re-base that in white. Frankly too much effort for me though.

Striker No. 2 was created by mixing the least worn parts I had from my initial shopping binge. No extra costs there!