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Saito2

Be glad they kept the molds...

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I was listening to a cool podcast today which featured a lengthy interview with Shawn Ireland, president of Associated Electrics. There was talk about the vintage guys and whether we'd see more rereleases from AE, like another run of the gold tub RC10. Much of AE's stuff is made overseas and some of the re-re RC10 was no different. It turns out, some of the overseas factories making the parts for AE went bankrupt. The problem being that much of the AE tooling and molds for certain cars, including the RC10 classic, were lost, makin the return of those vehicles much more problematic. It just made me thankful Tamiya kept many of theirs.

The rest of the podcast was pretty neat, recalling the glory days when there were skids and skids of RC10 boxes and various parts like graphite chassis stretching out in the warehouse. There was one story I've heard before about how AE placed orders for certain parts to outside vendors. Instead giving the vendor an order quantity, they literally told them "just keep making them (the parts in question) indefinitely until we say stop. They had a couple years backlog of orders for the RC10, it was that hot of a seller.

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Thats a little bit sad to hear.

Although with a big pinch of optimism the tooling set up for a press break on a sheet aluminium chassis is a lot more straightforward than the dies for extruded or moulded plastic parts so you never know it might appear again (look at the likes of what Pargu and RCChannel have been able to do)

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I have been thinking about this a lot lately. What about the blueprints for the molds? Where do they get stored and where do they go? Do they get lost and destroyed more often than the actual molds? I would think a large corporation like Tamiya would keep detailed records and drawings of each model, because if you have those engineering drawings, no matter the format, as long as they're to scale, you can make new molds from there. Given the mold issues I have heard with re-re parts, it seems to me that it would make more sense for Tamiya to forget about the old molds, and just make new ones based on the original drawings.

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48 minutes ago, tamiya_1971 said:

Is this the Radio Impound Podcast?

Yep, I love me some RIPcast.

 

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23 minutes ago, Superluminal said:

Thats a little bit sad to hear.

They didn't discount its return however and the subject comes up frequently at meetings.

23 minutes ago, El Gecko said:

and just make new ones

There was an old podcast I listened to about the RC10 re-re years ago and I believe many of the molds needed to be remade anyways. Kyosho basically went through the old cars and redesigned them from what I gather.  Tamiya seems to be the one company who retained much of their old molds.

Out of curiosity, I wonder if the original metal cars like the SRBs and 3 speeds had outsourced pot metal parts considering Tamiya's specialty is plastic. 

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Possibly - when you look at the continual failures of the cast alloy front hub/axle stubs on the rere Frogs/Brats etc. Something has gone amiss for there to be that issue that didnt occur on the originals - new tooling not to the original tolerances or the old tooling being reused even though its worn out?

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58 minutes ago, Saito2 said:

There was an old podcast I listened to about the RC10 re-re years ago and I believe many of the molds needed to be remade anyways. 

A few years ago I got my hands on a couple of the very late production black-plastic RC10CE kits. There was a LOT more flashing on those parts than I was used to. Yeah, those molds were just about done for.

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1 hour ago, Saito2 said:

Yep, I love me some RIPcast.

 

I’ll have to start listening to these. Thanks!

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1 minute ago, tamiya_1971 said:

I’ll have to start listening to these. Thanks!

No problem. Its usually the host, Gotti Jr (he worked for Trintiy BITD) and Jason Ruona of Jconcepts doing interviews and such. I loved listening to Joel Johnson, Cliff Lett, Ernie Provetti  and Brian Kinwald plus many others. Pure gold. Takes me back and its awesome to hear about all the stuff you didn't get to read about in the magazines from the people who were there.

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I would be perfectly happy for Team Associated to contract RC10 production to somebody like Jconcepts.  Allow them to do new molds, etc.  If Associated doesn't want to do it to satisfy the market then let someone else jump in.  Heck, Jconcepts are producing liscensed Associated bodies and plenty of hop-ups for the classic cars.  Not too far of a step.

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1 hour ago, Saito2 said:

No problem. Its usually the host, Gotti Jr (he worked for Trintiy BITD) and Jason Ruona of Jconcepts doing interviews and such. I loved listening to Joel Johnson, Cliff Lett, Ernie Provetti  and Brian Kinwald plus many others. Pure gold. Takes me back and its awesome to hear about all the stuff you didn't get to read about in the magazines from the people who were there.

I’m looking forward to listening while I work. Should be fun. Looks like they last quite awhile and I have a lot to catch up on!

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I'm glad tamiya did, and got the whole re re thing going!

I doubt others would have followed, if they didn't see the wave of sales / profit.

In one respect, with Kyosho not doing (Can't remember if it was a fire ?, or they just out sourced everything, so never actually owned any of the molds, got destroyed when they didn't renew a contract etc), imo  it made for a much better, more modern, resto mod - re release.

 

I've a big list of RC podcasts on my phone, it's downloaded automatically, it's just getting time to listen! 

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On 12/22/2020 at 11:58 PM, Saito2 said:

No problem. Its usually the host, Gotti Jr (he worked for Trintiy BITD) and Jason Ruona of Jconcepts doing interviews and such. I loved listening to Joel Johnson, Cliff Lett, Ernie Provetti  and Brian Kinwald plus many others. Pure gold. Takes me back and its awesome to hear about all the stuff you didn't get to read about in the magazines from the people who were there.

Brian Kinwald, that's a name I remember. I watched him win the 1993 worlds in Basildon Essex, UK. I was a helper and marshalled the practice sessions, manned the tent entrances and drivers rostrum, fabulous couple of days. The track didn't last long, now a bowling alley. I have a video of the event somewhere.

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