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Ben_Drinking_Coffee

Ben_Drinking_Coffee's Return to RC

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My son was born in January of 2019.  

One of the things they don't tell you is that if you're lucky enough to have a healthy baby, the first few months are actually filled with many hours of boredom.  One sleepless night at 3AM, I was poking around the internet and found this site.

I remembered fondly the Falcon I had when I was 10 and the Blackfoot my parents bought me as a follow up two years later.  I remembered the glossy Tamiya catalogs and how I memorized every page.

A few days later, a new NovaFox arrived to our house along with the daily deliveries of diapers, wipes and wine.  

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One morning, early, I laid everything out on the edge of the dining room table my wife said I could have (since being in the garage and out of earshot was out of the question).

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The build began and I realized that this was the only area in my life where I was able to be as precise as this.  

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It felt good to just have clear directions with immediate results - the opposite of taking care of a newborn.

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As my wife and I (and son) got into a groove, I was able to work on the Fox for about 30 minutes at a time early in the mornings.  I really looked forward to these moments.

With my Falcon, I remember the shocks to be a source of stress.  Having since spent a bunch of years racing motorcycles, they don't seem so complicated anymore.  Those c clips are small though and they travel real far when your pliers slip.

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When I was a kid and my parents were buying me my Falcon, I remember being told that the Fox / Hotshot models were probably too complicated a build for a child - and that I'd get bored with a Hornet - thus the Falcon.  That might have been true.  And it makes this build a bit more satisfying.  

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The kit came with most of the bearings but I had bought a set anyway.  When I was little, I remember bearing kits being like $40 and something I never had.  Now that they're $10, I had to make sure the car was spinning freely.  

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I god oddly excited that the mold for the body still has a copyright notice from the original.

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As this build came to an end, I was sad.  I was going to miss these mornings and my quiet time of being in control (an increasingly rare commodity as a parent).  I soldered on a Dean's plug and forgot how much harder good soldering is than TIG welding.  :D   

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The color choice was inspired by a member here one of the long nights I spend sitting by a sort-of-sleeping baby surfing the internet.   I love it.

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It didn't stay clean for long.

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I hated the idea of completing the Fox so much that before I was done, I had already started collecting parts for another build.  

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User AlexKyriak's TT02B Build became my true North.  As a kid, I had swooned over all the hop up parts that one could waste money on.  Alas, my Falcon remained stock and I was never able to enjoy the indulgent consumerism of bags and bags of shiny optional parts.  

As an adult, I was free to go nuts on the internet, however.  

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I had spent enough hours on this site to learn useless things like kit locations and part numbers for metal gears in the TT02 diffs and (thanks Alex) that you need to file the drive shaft pinion down to fit the TT02b.

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You all know what a TT02b build looks like, so I'll spare you the rest.  

For the body, I wanted something unique.  I bought a few bug bodies and just started cutting until I thought it looked cool.  I took away WAY more material than I had planned but the result is this:

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Hah kids have a lot to answer for don't they? Including internet addiction. First there's the scrolling. Then there's the buying. Rinse, repeat. 

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16 hours ago, Ben_Drinking_Coffee said:

For the body, I wanted something unique

That's awesome. Inspired.

*eyes monster beetle body with hacksaw in hand.. 😉 

  • Haha 1

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