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acprc

Tamiya TGS XBG Nitro restoration

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Hi all,

As most of you know my collecting has mainly been Tamiya Nitro for some time. I have just picked up another car to restore and I thought it might be good to do a restoration thread. This will show how I select a car to restore, how I analyse what I need, restoration tips etc.

So,

I have just picked up this auction lot from Ebay UK. These are the auction pictures.

TGS1.jpg

I paid £42 for the car and £8 so £50 all in. Now that may seem a lot to some if you go by the pictures however I will explain why I think that's a fair price. On first glance the car appears to be whats left of 43512 the Ford Focus WRC XBG TGS kit. The body certainly would suggest that. It does however have a lot of ball bearings on show, that might suggest a TGS-R chassis as they were ballraced. So what else can we go by? The dampers are friction shocks so that would fit. The engine could either be an FS-12SS found in the TGS range or an FS-12SW found in the TGR-S range. The two engines are actually identical apart from the carb throttle linkage and idle screw. Lets have a look at that then.

TGS6.jpg

OK, so that is the early throttle arm and so its an FS-12SS engine and confirms the kit is probably 43512 and its been ballraced retrospectively. Obviously lots more could of been changed but for now i'm happy.

So my thoughts on the pictures.

The engine has its recoil starter and its not broken. These are now nearly £30 to buy if you can find one

The fuel tank hasn't got its pump snapped or the fuel connection broken. Another £14 to replace

All the Tamiya radio gear is still there.(untested but a fair cost for two servos and an RX).

Body is scrap but it will be cut up for paint removal practice and the wing mirrors and rear spoiler removed, cleaned and stored.

The rest of the car is pretty complete.

Par for the course on TGS restorations is a centre tub replacement and the underguards. The rest I will attempt to restore. The only other issue with these is the shock mounts snap on the front and rear gearbox casing. No way to tell yet but I already have new ones.

So there you are, the start of the project, more to come when I get the car but here are some more auction pictures.

TGS2.jpg

 

TGS3.jpg

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18 hours ago, KEV THE REV said:

A nice score , I especially like the custom pins at the front of the chassis ;)

Yes, a modification that wont be staying!

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Just finished this XBG TGS-R Porsche Carrera GT. This is what I hope to achive with the restoration. I haven't yet decided on what kit I will make this restoration into. More on that to come.

IMG-5685.jpg

IMG-5689.jpg

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That chassis really suits the Carrera GT shell. 

Will be watching this with interest, i love Tamiya Nitros 

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So I have been thinking about what car to build the TGS into. There are 11 in the range and I still need 4. Two TGS and two TGS-R. As always bodies can be an issue but I have decided this one will be kit no 43509 the Nissan Skyline GT-R R32. Now this is a very rare kit. When you google 43509 and Tamiya there is only one picture of the actual car and its on a picture of the kit box.

download.jpg

All I have is that picture and a picture in the Perfect Album books to go on. Firstly it looks dark blue or almost purple/blue and has silver chrome 5 spoke wheels. The wheels will be identified later but for now I picked up a Tamiya bodyset for the Skyline

i-img400x300-153075442646sgf940594.jpg

I also managed to get the original H parts (the mirrors and rear wing) from Ebay. I just need to choose a colour now, get the body painted and identify the wheels. I think the wheels may be the ones fitted to the 57703 Mustang Cobra R, they have the same look.

a4aa04e88a3506b294c14a11811a6cf0.jpg

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20 minutes ago, Kevin_Mc said:

That’s going to look great 👍🏻 

Yes it should look good. I have settled on the Tamiya PS 89925 Dark Blue. It was a toss up between Dark Blue and Dark Metallic Blue but going for the Dark without Metallic.

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So the car has arrived. Bubble wrapped this was all that was in the box.IMG-5730.jpg

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

Body is certainly knackered!

IMG-5731.jpg

IMG-5732.jpg

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

IMG-5733.jpg

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.

IMG-5735.jpg

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.

IMG-5734.jpg

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.

IMG-5736.jpg

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.

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Whereabouts in Germany are you off to? I’m sitting reading this thread whilst sitting in Dusseldorf Airport 

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35 minutes ago, Kevin_Mc said:

Whereabouts in Germany are you off to? I’m sitting reading this thread whilst sitting in Dusseldorf Airport 

I have an assignment in Germany for a year. Flying back and fore from Heathrow to Frankfurt every Friday/Monday. During the week I have an apartment in Ludwigshafen and I work in Edenkoben.

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I did read on here that you had a place in Edenkoben actually. 

I flew into Frankfurt on Friday night and was meant to catch a connecting flight but we were late leaving Edinburgh so i had to get an ICE train up to Dusseldorf. Despite being 35 mins late leaving Edinburgh i was only 15 mins late into Dusseldorf and was staying next to the Hauptbahnhof anyway so it worked out well and i got to experience a 190mph train ride. 

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1 hour ago, Kevin_Mc said:

I did read on here that you had a place in Edenkoben actually. 

I flew into Frankfurt on Friday night and was meant to catch a connecting flight but we were late leaving Edinburgh so i had to get an ICE train up to Dusseldorf. Despite being 35 mins late leaving Edinburgh i was only 15 mins late into Dusseldorf and was staying next to the Hauptbahnhof anyway so it worked out well and i got to experience a 190mph train ride. 

I have the autobahn to enjoy every day, good hire car pending that is. My German address however has opened up all the Ebay sellers that wont ship to the UK or take paypal.

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18 hours ago, acprc said:

I have an assignment in Germany for a year. Flying back and fore from Heathrow to Frankfurt every Friday/Monday. During the week I have an apartment in Ludwigshafen and I work in Edenkoben.

are you working for walker gillet / tenneco in edenkoben ?

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23 hours ago, a.w.k. said:

are you working for walker gillet / tenneco in edenkoben ?

I am working at the Tenneco site but I don't work for Tenneco

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A friend of mine lives in Edesheim next to Edenkoben, so i know that countryside pretty well. 

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So to keep you all updated.

The car is with me here in Germany and I have started work on it. I can't upload pictures here but will get them done on Friday when I return. Probably one of the hardest cars I have had in a long time to clean but so far I have:

Stripped it to component pieces

Washed and degreased everything

Washed it all again! 

The fuel tank went through a dishwasher cycle with the lid removed and then using a small pot of boiling water the prime pump was straightened. If you do this gently and cycle it with boiling and then cold water it works quite well.

Inspected everything

Cleaned all the hardware, screws, nuts, pins etc and discarded any with deformed heads/damage

Cleaned up all the working RC gear, switch and battery box, steering servo, RX. I have a new throttle servo ready to go in but I will still document my examination of the old throttle servo here.

Found out that one of the diffs has a missing tooth. New one ordered.

Found out the Throttle stop for the servo saver is missing. This is really frustrating as its on the upper deck parts and I don't (yet) want to buy a whole upper deck for the tiny part. I still may have one in the UK so will investigate on Friday. Fingers crossed.

Cleaned the outside of all the ball bearings. They will now go in a bearing cleaner to be blasted with brake cleaner and then reoiled using light machine oil.

I have started contacting Tamiya to try and ascertain the correct body colour. TamiyaUSA has said that it was never imported officially into the USA and couldn't help. Tamiya Korea are looking for me. If that fails it will need to be Tamiya Japan but it's actually quite hard to contact them!

More to come soon.

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20 minutes ago, acprc said:

I have started contacting Tamiya to ...

HI acprc, great to read about your restoring knowledge, I can still learn about. One question about Tamiya, how do you contact them and do they still give informations about old models? I do have a case here and would need confirmation about some parts from TR-15T. 

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2 minutes ago, Collin said:

HI acprc, great to read about your restoring knowledge, I can still learn about. One question about Tamiya, how do you contact them and do they still give informations about old models? I do have a case here and would need confirmation about some parts from TR-15T. 

Tamiya USA and Tamiya Korea via Facebook messenger. Tamiya Japan has a contact form that needs a Japanese address etc.

What info do you need on the TR-15t, maybe I can help?

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15 hours ago, acprc said:

So to keep you all updated.

The car is with me here in Germany and I have started work on it. I can't upload pictures here but will get them done on Friday when I return. Probably one of the hardest cars I have had in a long time to clean but so far I have:

Stripped it to component pieces

Washed and degreased everything

Washed it all again! 

The fuel tank went through a dishwasher cycle with the lid removed and then using a small pot of boiling water the prime pump was straightened. If you do this gently and cycle it with boiling and then cold water it works quite well.

Inspected everything

Cleaned all the hardware, screws, nuts, pins etc and discarded any with deformed heads/damage

Cleaned up all the working RC gear, switch and battery box, steering servo, RX. I have a new throttle servo ready to go in but I will still document my examination of the old throttle servo here.

Found out that one of the diffs has a missing tooth. New one ordered.

Found out the Throttle stop for the servo saver is missing. This is really frustrating as its on the upper deck parts and I don't (yet) want to buy a whole upper deck for the tiny part. I still may have one in the UK so will investigate on Friday. Fingers crossed.

Cleaned the outside of all the ball bearings. They will now go in a bearing cleaner to be blasted with brake cleaner and then reoiled using light machine oil.

I have started contacting Tamiya to try and ascertain the correct body colour. TamiyaUSA has said that it was never imported officially into the USA and couldn't help. Tamiya Korea are looking for me. If that fails it will need to be Tamiya Japan but it's actually quite hard to contact them!

More to come soon.

I take it you live yourself when you’re away all week? That’s the only way i’d get anything done 😂

what a great way to pass the time and keep yourself busy if you’re away from the family 

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7 hours ago, Kevin_Mc said:

I take it you live yourself when you’re away all week? That’s the only way i’d get anything done 😂

what a great way to pass the time and keep yourself busy if you’re away from the family 

Exactly, I have been bringing a chassis to Germany with me and restoring them in the evenings. Passes the time and I can at least do the cleaning etc if not any testing. Managed to get 4 or 5 done so far and here I can use the dishwasher!

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