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Harry's builds (Blitzer/Manta Ray/Bearhawk/Custom)

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So I'm idly working on a bitsy project while I wait for some slowboat china parts and I thought I'd write some of it down here for the fun of it!

Back in Febuary (the good old days before the world went completely to pot) I picked up a chassis that was not really recognisable or listed as anything more than VINTAGE RC 2WD BUGGY POSSIBLY SCHUMACHER TRAXXAS. There was very little interest and I picked it up for about twenty quid. Now there was no way under the sun this was Schumacher or even old Traxxas unfortunately (it did have some slight rustler vibes to be fair) and it came with 2.2 monster truck style wheels and tires. My love of stadium trucks and slightly odd, old chassis meant this was a very easy purchase. 


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I began stripping the lot down and instantly found some interesting stuff and I was able to identify the chassis - it's a Hobbyworld A07 and the only real mention of one I could find is on Tamiyaclub! https://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_model.asp?cid=34126&sid=37

Some rather neat Korean Mystery Meat RC here.

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Standard old school fare inside, although the MSC here made me appreciate the quality of Tamiya MSC's. Nearly cut my finger on the rough stamping on the fibre plate. Wire was a bit nicer though!

This one had some interesting parts, there were some 4wd hubs poorly fitted up front 

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Lovely stack of random bearings which fitted both inside the wheel and in the knuckle

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The steering setup was basically a glob of epoxy and aluminium so I took what I could salvage and began drawing it up. Wasn't too hard as its relatively geometry. Fitted some bearings in it, makes it just a little bit smoother. The stock parts were actually pretty good in terms of backlash and general wobble but were broken well beyond usefulness. The slow, old ACOMS servo will be going and just replaced with something more modern and with metal gears. I really like the servo saver though - it's one of the only bits that is actually fairly decent quality (must be from somewhere else!) 

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Also drew up some rear hubs. The stock ones had really weird sized bushings which I adapted to take standard 1150 ball bearings. There was a really awful amount of play with the bushings but they didn't seem to be that worn. The tolerance on the plastic parts was pretty poor also. Tightened up a lot with hubs and because its a custom part I can basically adjust it so it will need minimal shims. It will need a slightly thicker hex than normal, I'll probably end up printing that for the sake of cheapness. 

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I cracked open the gearbox to see what I'm working with. Bushings and slop everywhere else on the car was making me nervous!

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Wow, a whole world of hobby. That's quite a lot, not much must get done.

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Grey carcinogenic sludge aluminium gears and bushings. It's the unholy trinity of friction!

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"What do you mean bushings, those are clearly bearings!" From a distance or in a dim light they do look like ball bearings but hilariously they are plain bronze bearings that have been grooved then plated (dubious quality) to look like they have ball bearing races and seals, very funny!  Luckily they're sensible sizes so I could find proper ball bearing replacements for 66p ea.

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The gears, save the differential are sadly aluminium. The grade doesn't feel *too* bad but that's a very prickly profile the teeth have worn into. From basic measurement and a bit of guesswork i'm 99% sure they're 32 DP.  If anyone knows where to get imperial gear stock in the UK I'd appreciate it. My normal go to's are either expensive or don't have 19t (jumps from 16t to 20t)  Ideally delrin or nylon but I'd take steel in a pinch. For the use this buggy is going to see I'll just stick with the alu for the time being. 

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I managed to get a Mad Fighter body from ebay for £15 which is a pretty fair price (Bearhawk bodies seem to be reaching 40 at the moment!) It appears to have been dipped in a bucket of paint several times so stripping that back will be super fun. I'm not sure I can justify this sort of hardcore paint removal in the kitchen sink so I might just have to sand the lot off! I have something pretty cool in mind, inspired by an iconic Tamiya livery - I'll leave that to be revealed later! 
 

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Well the shell arrived this morning and it is a bit of a fixer upper,  however it does fit quite well on the chassis so that's a problem solved. The rear shock tower will need to be modified but it's very flexible mystery plastic so It would be better off being carbon fibre or maybe printed ABS. 

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The paint is a huge mess, its a dark yellow painted very thickly over...

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...Red glitter paint. Oh joy. That's going to be a pain to clean off and remove. Luckily its a bit of a blessing the paint is so thick because it means its fairly easy to get off. 

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The thickness of the paint is hiding more cracks than I realised, but it was £15. I'll roll with the punches.  So yellow on top, then a red/pink glitter, then I think I can see the hint of blue beneath that? 

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And under the blue is silver! and under the silver is a light coating of gold and then the bare orange of the plastic. Wow. Someone couldn't make their mind up! I am thinking with the damage to the shell and the multiple thick coats of paint I think this was a quick and dirty runner for someone's kid. The final yellow/orange coat might have been to "reset" it back to look like a mad fighter again :D It's a fairly interesting spectrum of colours and textures, the outer layer feels very soft and could be recent.

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I got lucky and most of it peeled off in thick chunks which was rather therapeutic, I sat outside on my porch with a beer and headphones and just went to town on the thing. There are some rather deep gouges and scratches in the plastic which were filled with all the paint and I added a few of them myself in the aggressive removal stage. I haven't even slightly touched the cage or the inside yet but I've got the worst of the paint off the main chassis and I can pick up the patches quite easily. I am predicting at least 2 rounds of fill/prime/sand before it comes up well but that's all part of the fun. 

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After all that it doesn't look a world different but it's about a quarter inch smaller and weighs half as much :D

There are about 6 cracks I need to fix before I go much further, paint was a structural member and since its removal it is worryingly more flexible, and I am yet to touch the wing!  As this body is ABS over the Bearhawk's HIPS I can solvent weld some bracing into with what I have "in stock" 

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Ball bearings arrived and fitted well so I could say goodbye to the strange plated bushings. It's really pretty neat how much a precision ground bit of steel helps to remove slop from a gearbox. 

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I got pretty lucky that there were bearings in the exact size to replace them, plus I managed not to loose any E clips. A historic first. 

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Ran much smoother with them in, I added some light grease and bolted it back up. Unless I get particularly bored or find some cheap gear stock I doubt I'll have to open this again - touch wood, er, plastic?

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Oh dear, that's a bit silly but it works quite well! I think I might have to at least entertain the notion of a monster buggy with some stadium truck tires. You can also see here why  I'll need to rebuild the shock towers and potentially chop the body around to get a nice fit. Not an insurmountable task but some fairly extensive surgery. The body in this picture is sat way too far back, but that's where it was most stable to balance the truck wheels and take a photo. 

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I found that a £6 esc fits remarkably well between the MSC servo mounts

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And I found a fan in amongst my spares so I thought it would be neat to incorporate that into the ESC mount 

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Super quick turnaround, from start to part was well under an hour, I'd say about 15m measuring and drawing in CAD and a 26 minute print job later I had a part which fit surprisingly well.

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I love living in the future :D The fan is 5v so will get tagged onto the BEC from the ESC. I don't know if it will actually help but it won't do any harm and its a neat feature so why not!

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So the Mad Fighter body fits really well at the rear, the chassis tub and the body shape line up almost perfectly And I think I can get it to sit even lower and look really sleek with a new rear shock mount. As you may be able to see I have been able to reuse the stock dampers at the rear, despite them being a little bit horrible with a little in the way of seals, I see no evidence of O rings and no way to change them, they hold oil (imagine my shock, pun genuinely not intended) I have some black Tamiya CVA dampers for the front, these are from a Blitzer Beetle. I am currently printing the new front shock tower which works better than the odd aluminium plate. 

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However, while it fits well at the back it is a nautical mile too short at the front. So it looks like its a chop job! Major Surgery and Colonel Filler will have to be called in. I am thinking of cutting along the dotted line and using ABS sheet to make an extender panel and then lots of sanding and excessive use of filler to get the shape.  I am thinking it would be strong enough with liberal applications of adhesive and enough bracing underneath - it might look a bit oddball but that's totally in keeping with the rest of the vehicle. 

To complete this project I need:
-14 awg wire 
- More printing filament 
- Primer 
- Tires (thinking some of the nice proline ones I have for my Futaba FXT) 
- Longer drive knuckles, like the ones found on the Blitzer/Aqroshot 

Hopefully a nice update soon with some shock towers and the front damper setup. 
 

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Looking forward to seeing how that turns out, sounds like the right move with the nose extension 

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So the printed tower and Tamiya CVA combo actually works surprisingly well at the front! This only took a few revisions on thickness too - quite happy. I need to adjust the pink parts which are old falcon parts but it works for the time being

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So instead of the intensive nose job, I found that I could get the body to sit lower and further forward with the removal of these two parts of the roll cage. This was not done lightly as this is a fairly delicate shell with cracks already and removing 2 of the precious few non cracked bars could really bite me in the rear. Eventually I just bit the bullet and did it because its less involved than cutting and extending the nose and I will be aiming to make another bar further along at a different angle.

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I'll also tweak the rear shock tower too. It needs to be a smidge thicker anyway.

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I got some nice goodies in the post today, Lunchbox axles and some ball joints. I was going to get blitzer shafts but these were £6 for the pair and are the right length, so that beats out £5 for a single blitzer part.

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They fit good, although the stock hobbyworld ball joints are absolutely woeful. I'm now dead set on changing the lot out. I was hoping to keep a few as it's not the cheapest thing in the world to keep buying joints but they're just too awful to be usable. I have since revised the pink falcon parts to give slightly better geometry for this car. 

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Proper mockup with blitzer wheels! I think I can dig it,  although I just have sort of gone the long way round to making a rubbish Mad bull :lol:

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Zero meaningful progress has been made with the Sad Bull/A07. I need to replace some parts on my printer and buy the right colour of filament to continue much further. Funny how all the little accessories like paint, sandpaper and time add up to way more than you think! 
 

I have been working away at my other, less neglected cars though. 

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Basically a year after starting the body I finally got around to getting the details, such as chrome and glass for it. I will not be bothering with wing mirrors although I may print some, or rather design a negative I can cast some relatively hard but still supple polyurethane into. Neat project but very messy and potentially a huge ball ache. 

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Still a ways to go but it is on the home stretch.

 You can see a little of my work on my Falcon here 

But since I have been working on it I will include it here too
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Pretty happy with how it's all coming together with the fake MSC servo being the steering servo via hidden bell crank linkage. The new front bulkhead which incorporates the steering setup is also working pretty well.  I've added some braces made out of threaded rod and some rose joints and quite honestly it has really made a surprising difference. I have also carefully solvent welded some abs strip around the bulkhead mounts on the chassis tub as it was showing it's age as well as me cutting out a worrying chunk for the steering rack to clear. 

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As I was taking the snaps of the Blitzer I plonked this up there as well and had this thought (copied from a FB post) 

"Is it just me or does the Falcon chassis work remarkably well as a budget Sand Scorcher type Baja beetle?

Now pure speculation based upon boredom but the classic Tamiya beetle shell fits very well with the Falcon's suspension, wheelbase and rear slung motor and cage. I wonder if they had plans to make another vehicle on the Falcon chassis but the feedback from the suspension and uprights was too poor so it was scrapped. It's not totally outside the realms of possibility as the Bearhawk rose from the ashes of the phoenix (sorry, I mean Falcon) which then later became the Blitzer beetle with slight adjustments.

Talking out of my ******* rather but it's a nice thought."

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Not too far off here, the width is fairly bang on!
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The back end is what sells it for me, it looks absolutely spot on with that motor and cage slung out the back! I might have to have an alt shell for my Falcon! One of the guys on the groups has requested some body mounts to plop a beetle on this chassis so I'll be drawing something up before too long!  I can see this being my way to vicarious Sand Scorcher ownership! 

 

Oh and progress on my truck body has stalled somewhat as there is only a certain rate myself and my partner can consume ice lollys for the bed decoration :lol:

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