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ewant81

Rebuilding my Tamiya Escort Cosworth

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On 2/12/2021 at 2:33 PM, ewant81 said:

That is a good looking paint job! The repsol scheme is nice.

Can you still get Tamiya tiger stripe shells and decals? Or is this another case of finding someone who has one hidden away?

Thanks 

There are some bodies out there that are OK, not tamiya standard but still fairly good, certainly alright for using👍

Hidden away for a reason 😉

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It took a whole lot longer than I expected to strip and clean the front and rear gearboxes! The level of crud and dried up grease was impressive, but with some Gunk, toothbrushes, and some warm soapy water managed to get rid of most of it. The end result...

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Also, didn't know that the gear differential was fitted with metal gears on this kit. Don't remember upgrading it so guess it must've been? However I do seem to have a spare gear differential case. Bit of a mystery...

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1 hour ago, ewant81 said:

It took a whole lot longer than I expected to strip and clean the front and rear gearboxes! The level of crud and dried up grease was impressive, but with some Gunk, toothbrushes, and some warm soapy water managed to get rid of most of it. The end result...

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Also, didn't know that the gear differential was fitted with metal gears on this kit. Don't remember upgrading it so guess it must've been? However I do seem to have a spare gear differential case. Bit of a mystery...

The metal(aluminium) gears are not a upgrade, infact best of swapping for the plastic gears from the ta02. 

The aluminium wears and when mixers with the grease creates a abrasive paste which accelerates the wear. 

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19 minutes ago, svenb said:

The metal(aluminium) gears are not a upgrade, infact best of swapping for the plastic gears from the ta02. 

The aluminium wears and when mixers with the grease creates a abrasive paste which accelerates the wear. 

Ah, I will probably leave them alone for now. If the diff internals wear out I will replace, but the front gearbox was surprisingly clean inside. 

The rear gearbox was full of the silver paste, which I guess is the pinion gear wearing down into the grease. 

Overall, the gears look ok but there is clear wear on the teeth.

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Does anyone know the easiest way to remove bearings from the uprights?

Mine seem to be well stuck in and the front uprights are getting replaced, so the bearings need to come out. 

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New rear gearbox turned up today, only needed the suspension mount but I suppose the spares are handy!

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Quite impressed that it comes with the necessary screws and nuts. Will save me trying to pull the sunken nuts out the old suspension mount. 

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No updates on this as I'm waiting for the new front uprights to arrive. I really need to do something to keep the momentum going, so if I have some time I plan to strip, clean and rebuild the CVA units and make use of the new damper oil I have.

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Spoke to Time Tunnel who I have the order in for the uprights and they didn’t get the shipment they expected from the importers. Will just have to wait it out for now. Reckon I can get on with the rebuild anyway, as the uprights aren’t so hard to swap over. 

In the interim have stripped and cleaned the damper units. They didn’t seem to have much return action, despite them being full of oil and it being fairly clean. Maybe on this rebuild I can get them working as they should. 

Funnily, when I was cleaning the dampers I had all the parts soaking in hot water in my garage. As I was gently cleaning one of the black o-rings it pinged away. Spent ages looking but couldn’t find it, so gave up and took all the cleaned parts back to my office to see the following on my desk.

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Sooo, seems the missing o-ring wasn’t missing! Just hadn’t taken it down with me. No idea how I managed this, but at least I didn’t lose it 😂

Also got all the bearings out the uprights, had to soak them in hot water for them to release. Cleaned the bearings in IPA and now they are soaking in oil.

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Looking forward to rebuilding the kit, will be able to start from scratch in the manual!

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Found a spare half hour and decided to rebuild the suspension units. Went together well and used a trick I use when working with brake fluid. Basically fill a syringe with damper oil, and use negative pressure effect to pull out all the air in the fluid. Works pretty well, no idea if I will ever notice any effect!

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Had some fun over the weekend and managed to make some progress on the build. Decided that as I had a new rear gearbox case I might as well use it. Was fun to cut the parts off the sprue, it has been a long time since this kit was built!

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Excuse the red parts on a red background, I'm using an old chopping board as a craft mat!

After some fun building the front and rear diffs, assembled the gearboxes as far as I  can at the moment.,

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I'm still waiting on the front uprights to arrive, so I think I'm just going to re-assemble with the damaged uprights for the moment. My thinking is that I can at least get the kit back together, and swapping over the front uprights later is relatively easy to do with only a few bolts.

I'm enjoying myself far more than I though I would with this rebuild, so I've taken the plunge and bought another well-used electric RC car. I had originally intended on getting an XV01 kit but they are quite pricey and hard to come by at the moment. (Not ruling out an XV01, but am now in the market for a good deal only!). When I get this kit together I'll start another thread, but it'll have to be buried in the non-Tamiya section :(

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Decided to plough on with the build, so now have the front/rear gearboxes fully built up with hubs and suspension. Of course I forgot to take a picture of this, so you will have to use your imagination.

Next step in the manual is sorting out the servo's, and as I have an ESC only need to sort out the steering servo. As I mentioned at the start of this build, my steering servo had a lot of slop that I realised was due to the servo-saver splines being heavily worn. My original plan was to switch out the servo with another that I seemed to have acquired at some point that was brand new.

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Before installing the servo, I though it would be a good idea to strip it down and clean/regrease the gears. God know how long it had been sitting around for!

For amusement I stripped down both servos and found something a bit surprising. It seems that the 'newer' Acoms AS-15 servo uses solid plastic bushes internally and the older AS-11 at least had a brass bushing.

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So the decision was made. Even if the difference is tiny between the bushing, the older servo looked to be in perfect condition internally and just needed a good clean and regrease.

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I've replaced the original servo saver with a Tamiya Hi-Torque hop-up and it does seem a whole lot more rigid. Also has the advantage of having decent splines.

Hopefully this will mean that I have better steering than I had before, it really didn't self-centre properly and driving in a straight line would've been a proper challenge.

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Bit of a jump in progress, but have the chassis fully built now. Receiver hasn’t been stuck down yet, and I can’t test as the front uprights are broke!

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Otherwise, the final bits came together easily enough. I really like the Yeah Racing alloy motor mount, its a much neater fit and might actually seal the gearbox. The original plastic one didn’t close the gap well so dirt would always find its way into the rear gearbox.

And yes, I did put the plastic bushes in the front uprights as it’ll make my life easier when the new uprights eventually arrive.

Last stage is to sort out the body shell and driver interior. I should strip the paint off the shell and respray. The interior I painted with some help of my dad and I really want to preserve it as it stands. However the paint has started flaking, so need to find a solution.

I’m in two minds to leave it all as it is because of the memories, and that the shell shows my enjoyment with the car. 

Will give the shell a good wash and make a decision then. 

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