Motul Autech GT-R Build

[Alamo Oly 40]

This is my first build. A TT-02 seems appropriate.

[Alamo Oly 40]

Drivetrain less the diffs. It's interesting how much telescoping play is allowed in the components.. Particularly the main shaft.

 

[Alamo Oly 40]

After applying so much grease from the ever-dwindling, tiny quantity Tamiya supplied I've come to believe it's not necessary. Apparently many people run no grease, very light grease, or grease alternatives!

 

[Alamo Oly 40]

These guys! Pretty much immediately after I started putting this together I realized I didn't have the proper drivers. I have a LOT of drivers. None of them seemed to fit properly, and nowhere was that more apparent than the diff screws :| I've since discovered this is because I did not have JIS drivers, which I do now. I had an "okay" fitting driver for the larger and these screws, but I was having to apply quite a bit of pressure to keep the driver from jumping out and was stressed about stripping the heads the whole time haha.

 

[Alamo Oly 40]

Muh grease! Was actually able to snap these ball joints together by just pressing them in with a screwdriver butt. Thought I was clever, but this method failed me later.

 

Motor and with LOTS of GREASE!!! So much grease.

 

 

Ready for some electronics??

The grease is long gone now. After reaming the tube with a screw driver(and yes, puncturing it) to try to get it all, throwing it out, retrieving it back from the trash for a few micrograms more, and then reading about people not even using it I have finally moved on to stage 5; acceptance. There is no grease.

[Alamo Oly 40]

Decided to go a bit off-piste at this point and figure out the electronics. A bit of a learning curve to figure out ESC setup, the receiver setup, and then the servo travel to keep this COMPLETELY OVERKILL servo from tearing up the whole car.

[Alamo Oly 40]

Gotta get the body prepped for paint. This is the first time I've ever cut a lexan body.. After a lot of research I decided to try the score and snap/tear method. IMHO, this went really well for a first go and the technique definitively worked well for me. First go at a wheel hole was a bit middling though:

 

Got my X-Acto "pull" refined a bit though and I think the subsequent bits went better:

[Alamo Oly 40]

I used a similar knife technique for the masks. Pretty happy with how they came out overall. After broad strokes pulling the X-Acto I hit the tighter curved corners with the lexan scissors. Tried to be very strategic with where I started the and ended the cuts, as well as how I held the blade and my arm, in order to not pull or crumple the masks.. These are child's play I suppose but trying to figure this stuff out so I can do a good job on the more classic/iconic Tamiya cars I have that I need to level up for first

Less impressed with my application of the masks.. It's way trickier than I imagined. I'm wondering if I would get along with liquid mask better.. I really munged up the holes.. Lesson learned on jumping bit sizes too fast on inappropriate drill bits; the larger sizes will snatch up the plastic and wreck it real quick. Hoping the worst of it is just the tore up protective coating :|

[Nwc100 462]

Looks good so far, what colour is the GTR going to be? I did one recently loosely fashioned on the Katsura orange colour that is available now, it was supposed to be the same colour as Usain Bolt's gold one!

It might be worth getting a reamer for the body post holes as well, I've found it way easier than drilling as well! Available pretty cheaply from Amazon etc.

Looking forward to seeing it finished.

Nick

[Alamo Oly 40]

I'm planning on just sticking to the plan color of gunmetal. There is so much to learn as it is and I'm trying to reign myself in on stuff. For instance, I would hit up some of the body lines with finishing grit paper/drum if this were a more classic model.

Can't help myself though some I'm going to push it a tad and mask off and spray flat clear on the front bumper/grill and perhaps the mirrors and etc to get that more statin, textured plastic look. IMHO pure poly gloss is a bit overused and some deliberate use(or even excessive!) of flat clear could add some much needed nuance to a lot of cars.. I'm particular interested in its use with metallic to produce an anodized look; perhaps for my Avante

I'm also new to driving RC and this will be my first "daily driver", so probably best to not get too precious about it haha

[Nwc100 462]

I've swapped over to a few bit of matt as well, mostly on the mirrors and spoilers just to try and break it up a bit, it's a good choice I think, but I'm no expert just wing it a lot, and have a few disasters along the way for sure 🤣

I'm planning on a Matt Evo X at the moment but getting a decent day to get it sprayed is hard at the moment, I plan to cut the outside protector and then give it a blast, it'll be blue of some description I think!

These are the ones we've done so far,just gone with colours after a bit of testing and hoped for the best.

Going to take the Yaris out for a bit of off roading this morning so swapped over to the rally wheels on it for a while!

[Busdriver 6209]

If you are going to spray matt on the outside of the body what you can do is get a sharp scalpel and remove the overspray film on the areas that you wand to do then spray with PS paint followed but flat or satin coat. Works really well. Saves all the masking up with tapes.

[Busdriver 6209]

5 hours ago, Alamo Oly said:

This is my first build. A TT-02 seems appropriate.

Not getting any pictures, don’t know why. I’ll have look on the pc as sometimes I phones have issues with some photos?

[Superluminal 3750]

Im seeing the same. Like the matrix.

[TurnipJF 9192]

Same here - no pics just little grey "no entry" signs. Same on Android phone, Chromebook and Windows laptop.

[Alamo Oly 40]

8 hours ago, Busdriver said:

If you are going to spray matt on the outside of the body what you can do is get a sharp scalpel and remove the overspray film on the areas that you wand to do then spray with PS paint followed but flat or satin coat. Works really well. Saves all the masking up with tapes.

This is an awesome idea. I have a question about cutting it like that which probably pertains to liquid mask as well.. What's the technique for cutting the film without cutting the body? Just pressure and practice??

@Nwc100 Those are pretty sweet! Yeah, I'm super keen on the satin look. Have a Dual and Dancing rider coming in and plan to do the Dual with an anodized/metalized look to make it a bit more futuristo.

 

The water in San Antonio is quite hard. It's over 10 grain at my place. This will leave water spots on a freshly clean surface. Unfortunately the soft water will also leave residue. It's sodium, so it cleans very easy, but it's still there without rinse aids. I drilled some small holes in a water bottle, filled it with distilled water, and did a "spot free" rinse of the body after washing it.. Ain't got not time for Tamiya's instructions to use all my masking tape on the rest of the inside(?!):

 

Not sure what to say about the photos.. I'm actually uploading them through the forum, not posting links to them. They are a bit large at ~1Mb or so each so maybe that is causing issues on certain devices/connections?

Edit: Strange.. It looks like it was pasting the link to my photo and not the actual photo. I've made the photos accessible to anyone with the link and that may have fixed it :|

[Superluminal 3750]

I can see them now - looking good!

[Busdriver 6209]

Light pressure is the key and a fresh blade. To clean a shell wash first, dry and then clean with  rubbing alcohol or similar. That way you should avoid limescale marks.

pictures came back but the one in this post hasn’t?

[Alamo Oly 40]

Well darn. I learned an important lesson on thin coats. Got too aggressive trying to hit these edges, that I may not have cleaned well enough, where the light was coming through. Too much paint and it ran under the masks. Most of the bleed is in areas where stickers go but I may have to try something on one or two spots. I reckon I needed to do up to 10 thin coats to get all the grill detail without causing runs :|

 

 

[TurnipJF 9192]

16 hours ago, Alamo Oly said:

It's interesting how much telescoping play is allowed in the components.. Particularly the main shaft

Indeed. Tamiya used to build cars with no telescoping in the main shaft, but it was found that the drivetrain would bind as the chassis flexed. The TB-02 was a prime example of this. However with a relatively sloppy fit at each end of the propshaft, the drivetrain can accommodate considerable chassis flex without any binding.

16 hours ago, Alamo Oly said:

After applying so much grease from the ever-dwindling, tiny quantity Tamiya supplied I've come to believe it's not necessary.

And right you are! That is a shedload of grease you have there. After the first run, a lot of it will have been flung off the gears and will be coating the inside of your diff covers and spur gear cover. Once this has happened, you'll see the thin layer of grease remaining on your gears. This is all that you need to apply in future builds.

15 hours ago, Alamo Oly said:

I really munged up the holes.

Getting clean holes with drill bits is very difficult even with incremental stepping. As @Nwc100 said, you might want to invest in a body reamer? With a bit of care, you can usually clean up roughly-drilled holes with them as well as make nice clean new ones.

 

[Alamo Oly 40]

@TurnipJF Cheers! Yes, I have a reamer picked out now haha.

 

I'm having trouble determining how much coverage is enough. It seems to take forever to build up enough coats to block out the light while trying to avoid runs.

 

At some point is it good enough?

 

At some point these veins in the window masks developed. I will have to live with some over-spray from them :/

[TurnipJF 9192]

8 minutes ago, Alamo Oly said:

I'm having trouble determining how much coverage is enough. It seems to take forever to build up enough coats to block out the light while trying to avoid runs.

This is why we back colours with black, silver or white depending on the main colour. If the gunmetal colour looks solid enough when viewed against a dark background, it will also look fine when you back it with black, and this will stop the light shining through it too.

[nel33 870]

20 hours ago, Alamo Oly said:

These guys! Pretty much immediately after I started putting this together I realized I didn't have the proper drivers. I have a LOT of drivers. None of them seemed to fit properly, and nowhere was that more apparent than the diff screws :| I've since discovered this is because I did not have JIS drivers, which I do now. I had an "okay" fitting driver for the larger and these screws, but I was having to apply quite a bit of pressure to keep the driver from jumping out and was stressed about stripping the heads the whole time haha.

 

welcome to the club. i had to take the screws off 2x on one diff myself with insufficient driver head. i dont know how many years of life i lost to stress those 15 minutes. i got the JIS tools now but i still stress with those diffs...

[Alamo Oly 40]

Applied about 5-6 layers of "smoke" to the windows. That stuff is no joke and "smoke" is what fills the room when applying it, even with the garage open and a fan exhausting :/ I need an N95 or a respirator next time I use it. Also managed to do an okay job of cutting away the protective film to expose the bumper for the flat clear:

[Alamo Oly 40]

3 minutes ago, nel33 said:

i had to take the screws off 2x on one diff myself with insufficient driver head

Ooof. Was not looking forward to that. It crossed my mind as to if people just tossed them and bought new if it went sideways with the screws haha.