Tamiya TGS XBG Nitro restoration

[acprc 677]

So some pictures as promised from the clean up process.

Car was stripped so that the parts could be cleaned, it was quite a messy one this time

And then every part or assembly (like a shock) was washed in hot soapy water. The colour of the water gives away just how bad this one was.

Everything was then washed again and dried before individual work on parts that needed it like the diffs, shocks etc

The radio gear was cleaned individually

 

and what hardware I have that wasnt damaged

and a picture of the damaged diff gear.

 

More to come over the next few days as I start to rebuild her with new parts

[acprc 677]

So today I got some time to work on the TGS. The new Diff ring gear had arrived so both of the diff's were taken apart, re greased and the new gear fitted. 

The fuel tank lid was replaced after the tank had been cleaned, new foam in the air filter and a new urethane was fitted.

The metal engine mount had the brake arm and pad fitted, cleaned up quite well considering how bad it was.

The replacement throttle servo and the new servo saver were fitted to the top deck.

and then I started to put the car back together. Nice clean and working radio gear

and then the front and rear gearboxes were put on, when doing the axles I used new but original to the kit plastic bushes.

and it now looks like this. Top deck on next then the engine restoration.

Engine will be stripped and cleaned over the next few days. Stay tuned.

[acprc 677]

Managed to get a few more bits done in between Christmas jobs!

Top deck went on and nearly all the screws are in place to hold it down, the gear cover was fitted after the gears were greased up. Fuel tank fitted (one screw to add), metal engine mount plate, front and rear underguards and the brake arm. The access cover for the RC gear was also fitted.

As ever with these cars they use a few particular screws and I ran out of a few. I always use the correct Tamiya screws rather than any old screws from my collection. I usually trawl Ebay using a "Tamiya screw bag" search ordered from lowest to highest cost. Managed to get all of the screws I needed (plus more for the collection) in a few bags. 

Front shocks to be fitted, add the missing screws and the chassis minus wheels is complete. I usually leave body posts until I have the body. I have no reference for the Skyline body and which posts it will use so need to wait until its ready to fit.

[Kevin_Mc 355]

You’ve made good progress so far. 

I’m looking forward to the engine tear-down and re-build 

[acprc 677]

Ok,

Below is a picture of my basic tools for engine restoration. These are what I use as long as you think the engine is going to come apart with no issues. 

From left to right we have:

Compression tester

Piston stopper (screws into the glow plug hole to lock piston when removing the clutch, flywheel etc.

Glow plug wrench

Spanner to remove pilot shaft (used with piston stopper)

Tamiya screwdrivers (Large for the carb screws and small for the rest)

6mm Socket wrench for carb retainer nut (not used on this engine but shown for info)

Allen wrench for head screws

3 in 1 oil. (I use this for reassembly. some people use other light oils however this has been around for years, its reliable and I have never had any issues with it)

Baking Powder! (all will be revealed)

This is what I use to strip and assemble the engines.

Also in the picture are a complete set of screws (head, backplate and recoil) and a backplate gasket. I buy the 2.6mm screws in bulk a hundred at a time so no need to scrimp and use the old ones again.

Cleaning will be done Saturday and pictures to show the process. On top of these tools there are a few extra plastic dishes, boiling water, gloves and scrubbing brushes to go with the baking powder. I also use GT85 to stop surface rust while the engine dries.

[acprc 677]

Ok, so onto the engine strip down and clean.

Glow plug out

Compression checked

Piston stopper in

and clutch bell, clutch and bearings off

Spanner on pilot shaft, this works with the piston stopper to stop engine turning

and the rest of the front end comes off, pilot shaft and flywheel.

Recoil starter comes off. Only two screws and thats nearly always a bad sign!

 

Head off

Not forgetting there is a head gasket inside the recess

Backplate and starter shaft off. There was one stubborn screw that had been damaged but all are being replaced anyway

Remains of the backplate gasket. This is why you always need a new one.

Piston and liner removed

and crankshaft. There is one very small area of corrosion but otherwise very good condition. This is normally always caused by moisture after the engine cools down dripping off the underside of the piston. This is why after run oil always helps.

Hard to photograph but the engine inside was very very clean. Just some oil residue. No rust at all.

Carb off. You need good quality and good fitting screwdrivers to release the screws here as cheap ones will slip and damage the screw heads. These screws are always tight!

and that leaves me with two pots. Top will be cleaned up individually by hand. The bottom goes on to be cleaned using Baking Powder and boiling kettle water. Not much in the top pot, just recoil, clutch shoes and the bearings that need to be done. 

Cover with baking powder and into a sink

and pour on boiling water straight from a kettle. Instantly you can see the grease and dirt lift off as the baking powder reacts.

Then you need to scrub. I use rubber gloves and an assortment of brushes. Then I use a micromesh polishing stick to clean up the surfaces that need it. This is where the crank, piston liner etc get any marks removed. The stick has 4 surfaces and you work your way down through them.

Then the parts are washed in warm clean water, hand dried and then soaked in GT85. GT85 is a very effective water displacer and stops any corrosion whilst drying. It is not the final lubricant for assembly.

and then the parts look like this. The damp patches are the GT-85, not water.

at some point in its life the engine mount screws were drilled out. You can see the drill marks on the engine casing. Again, good quality screwdrivers are a must when working on these engines as it is easy to round off screws that are stuck.

Now all the parts are getting left to dry and then we will start the assembly in another post. Sorry for all the pictures.

[Pablo68 575]

Great work so far. Good thread.

[speedy_w_beans 3914]

Thanks for all the details around the engine teardown and cleaning.

[acprc 677]

26 minutes ago, speedy_w_beans said:

Thanks for all the details around the engine teardown and cleaning.

Thanks. Lots of ways to do this and differing people have differing methods. This one works for me and is usually quick and easy. I have however done a few now so i'm a bit quicker.

[acprc 677]

1 hour ago, Pablo68 said:

Great work so far. Good thread.

Thanks, slowly getting there.

[acprc 677]

So today I put the engine back together. I didn't take pictures of all the steps as it's basically the reverse of the disassembly, however a few things to note.

The crankcase bearings were blasted with brake cleaner and then re-oiled.

The screw holes were cleaned with a tap

All surfaces were oiled where needed

New backplate gasket and screws were used to reassemble and a new glow plug was fitted.

Engine looked liked this when finished

A big improvement on how it did look and I am happy with it. Compression is good as well

The exhaust was not pointing in the correct direction.

On the TGS it should point down so I took the TM-4 exhaust apart, cleaned the gasket surfaces, realigned it, fitted new gaskets and put it back together again.

The recoil starter and bearing were cleaned and refitted with new screws and the engine is finally done.

 

Fitted the engine into the chassis with new screws and washers, fitted the exhaust with new screws, washers and a gasket. Fitted the plastic guard onto the chassis, fuel tubing and the air filter. Air filter is ty-wrapped into position. The missing screws on the chassis were also fitted into place. That's the chassis almost complete.

On a side note I opened up the Tamiya servo that was dead. The case had a worrying bulge at the bottom!

Checked continuity of the three cables using a multimeter and they were all fine. Added a few drops of oil to the bottom of the motor and got some intermittent life. Stripped out the whole motor to have a look.

Couldn't get it to run reliably back and fore. I have one last option which will be to reheat the solder on the motor to discount a dry joint. After that it will be strip out a Futaba S3003 mechanism from a good servo and fit it into the Tamiya case. I'm sure its no surprise that a Tamiya TP-S3003 servo is actually just a Futaba S3003 with a Tamiya label!

[acprc 677]

So just to keep you all updated. The TGS restoration continues. The body is off getting painted in PS-59 Dark Mettalic Blue and I have been collecting some finishing parts. Managed to find one set of wheels

And the tyres

 

That’s pretty much all the parts I need apart from another set of wheels. They were hard to find last time I needed a set but will keep looking. In the mean time I will be starting another build thread as I start to restore a TNX 5.2r Champagne Gold Edition this weekend.

[Kevin_Mc 355]

Those wheels are very nice 😍

[acprc 677]

10 hours ago, Kevin_Mc said:

Those wheels are very nice 😍

And hard to find. They are the SVT wheels from the kits like the Mustang Cobra And Lightning. I needed a set for my Lexus TG10 and took ages to find them. I now need one more pair. TamiyaUSA probably has them but don’t ship to the U.K. This set came from Germany.

[dc-arena 73]

On 12/8/2018 at 1:50 PM, acprc said:

So the car has arrived. Bubble wrapped this was all that was in the box.

Unwrapped it, checked all was sent and then started to examine what I had to work with.

Body is certainly knackered!

However as previously mentioned I always remove, clean and bag useful parts for the future. In this case the mirrors and rear spoiler

The chassis was checked over to see whats what. The shock towers aren't broken so they will not need to be replaced. On the TGS like the TT-01 cars the mounts are built into the gearbox casing.

There doesn't appear to be any extra holes drilled anywhere, the diffs turn by hand (they will be stripped and cleaned anyway). There are ball bearings on most parts of the car and nothing appears to be missing.

The fuel tank has no cracks, damage and the prime pump is ok. It is a little bent but boiling water usually works to straighten them out.

Of course everything is dirty but thats not an issue.

Looking at the engine it is indeed an FS-12SS and the pull start works fine. I will test compression once I get to that part of the restoration.

Last thing I have done today is test the servos. These servo testers come from Ebay and cost around £4 delivered. Superb at checking any servo. Once connected you can move the servo manually, set neutral and also set the servo moving back and fore to full deflection both ways to test it.

The steering servo worked fine and was reset to neutral once tested. The throttle servo showed no sign of life. I have plenty of replacements but once clean I will take it apart and see whats what.

Car has now been packed to go to Germany with me on Monday. There it will be stripped and cleaned this week prior to my return to the UK for Christmas.

More to come soon.

 

Please could you tell us where did you get the battery holder and wire/connector from? I'd like a servo tester but I'd like one of those battery holders, handy!

[acprc 677]

14 minutes ago, dc-arena said:

 

Please could you tell us where did you get the battery holder and wire/connector from? I'd like a servo tester but I'd like one of those battery holders, handy!

Hi,

Its just a standard Acoms battery box, the ones that have a removable plug from the switch. It connects to the servo tester by simply pushing onto the pins. As I write this the switched ones are probably better as I have to keep removing the battery pack to switch it off.

The servo testers are superb value for money. As I write this on ebay.co.uk they can be had for £0.99 delivered. I'm sure I paid around £1.99 for mine and it has been working fine ever since. The battery box can be found by just searching for Acoms battery box, plenty there.

Hope that helps.

[dc-arena 73]

11 minutes ago, acprc said:

Hi,

Its just a standard Acoms battery box, the ones that have a removable plug from the switch. It connects to the servo tester by simply pushing onto the pins. As I write this the switched ones are probably better as I have to keep removing the battery pack to switch it off.

The servo testers are superb value for money. As I write this on ebay.co.uk they can be had for £0.99 delivered. I'm sure I paid around £1.99 for mine and it has been working fine ever since. The battery box can be found by just searching for Acoms battery box, plenty there.

Hope that helps.

 

Thank you! I've seen the testers themselves for about £5, so I'll track down a cheaper one like you said, and since the Acoms boxes are about £8 themselves that will be handy!

 

Thanks for your help, look forward to seeing the rest of this build!

 

[acprc 677]

Welcome,

Build is just pending body painting and another set of wheels to finish her. Look out for another build on a 49460 TNX 5.2r Champagne Gold restoration I will be listing on the weekend.

[ejtnt 5]

On 1/14/2019 at 8:44 PM, acprc said:

So just to keep you all updated. The TGS restoration continues. The body is off getting painted in PS-59 Dark Mettalic Blue and I have been collecting some finishing parts. Managed to find one set of wheels

And the tyres

 

That’s pretty much all the parts I need apart from another set of wheels. They were hard to find last time I needed a set but will keep looking. In the mean time I will be starting another build thread as I start to restore a TNX 5.2r Champagne Gold Edition this weekend.

I am sorry to be the one to break it to you, but those tires offer very poor traction. For a similar look but with a lot grip I would recomment Super slicks (tamiya partno. 53220) or M2 Slicks (tamiya 53224). The M2s are not as grippy but they offer a bit more life.Oh, and a heads up. You would have to get inserts for those. The tires do not come with them. My recommendation here would be Tamiya part No. 53156

[acprc 677]

18 hours ago, ejtnt said:

I am sorry to be the one to break it to you, but those tires offer very poor traction. For a similar look but with a lot grip I would recomment Super slicks (tamiya partno. 53220) or M2 Slicks (tamiya 53224). The M2s are not as grippy but they offer a bit more life.Oh, and a heads up. You would have to get inserts for those. The tires do not come with them. My recommendation here would be Tamiya part No. 53156

Thanks for breaking it too me gently. As long as they grip the shelf they will be fine.

[Superluminal 1544]

This has made my morning 

[Collin 889]

On 12/22/2018 at 1:04 PM, acprc said:

 

Wher did you get this? I really looking for one.

[acprc 677]

2 hours ago, Collin said:

 

Where did you get this? I really looking for one.

It came from Japan but they do come up on Ebay in the USA now and then. If you get one go for one with a pressure release button. Much better

[acprc 677]

I've been a bit busy with work so it has been difficult to get any time on the TGS this week. Good new though, I managed to find another set of the wheels in Germany so they are on the way.

Just the body to do now and one small plastic part on the chassis.

[Kevin_Mc 355]

Glad to see you’ve found abother set of wheels, that’s brilliant!