My baby
I got this for Christmas when I was about 11, originally it was painted in a humbrol metallic green and was used and abused on an almost daily basis until the day I felt I had outgrew it and it got consigned to the loft and was forgotten about.
When I returned to RC I was more interested in racing so it wasn't of any real interest to me and stayed in my parents loft gathering dust until one day when I was out in the town and seen the re-re Lunchbox and decided there and then to bring the old gal back to her former glory
When I brought it down I discovered that one of the steering knuckles had been broken and part of the steering linkage was missing, one of the dogbone drive shafts was missing and randomly found in a box of other stuff (I have no idea how it got there or why I had removed it in the first place)
Next step was to strip the car down and following this guide on the TC forum http://www.tamiyaclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=40416 I did every single mod listed in it installed a modern ESC compled to a Tamiya Torque Tuned motor to give it a bit more grunt that it used to have, added some wonderfully tasteless green neons to the chassis (to compliment its kamtec lexan shell for when I run it), mirror polished the gearbox casings, the frog bash plate and the motor can and wired in a spare cooling fan which has let me mount the ESC in where the original mechanical speed controller was located without having to worry about it overheating.
The bodyshell was in pretty good condition with only a few deep scratches and a couple of cracks in it the cracks were friction welded with old bits of sprue that I had kicking around and the scratches filled with Tamiya modelling putty. The entire shell was then sanded back to it's original white plastic, the join between the shell and nosecone was glued, filled and sanded then the whole shell was given several coats of white plastic primer with each coat wet sanded and wiped with panel wipe to keep it silky smooth.
The shell was painted in Tamiya x-7 Gloss Red airbrushed using an Iwata HP-CH airbrush with each coat wet sanded and polished to make sure that it was as flawless as I could manage. Once I was happy with the depth of colour it was sealed with a couple of coats of gloss lacquer and then repro decals found on eBay were added they aren't the best in the world but they look good enough (as long as you don't look too closely and spot the couple of spelling mistakes) Next up I had a moment of madness and decided to do all the 'chrome' trim in bare metal foil which really helps to give the car a much more scale appearance the decals and chromework were then sealed in under another 6 coats of gloss lacquer and given a final polishing. The result is a shine so deep you can almost shave in it.
The shell then received new headlight surrounds the original glass was still in pretty good condition so they were removed from the original headlights cleaned up and dipped in future floor polish (Johnstons Klear in the UK) to give them a lovely high gloss sheen and look brand new. The main glass was cracked under the B post and after giving it a bath in Klear the crack was superglued back together (klears amazing stuff it stops the superglue fumes from fogging clear plastic parts as well as making them seem thinner and shinier)
A new chrome VW badge was added and the headlight units were drilled to accept some LED 'angel eye' style headlights to give it a more modern look.
It's not perfect by a long shot and there's still some parts I'm looking for such as wiper blades and maybe some more C.R.A. parts such as their metal shock tower and metal swinging arm holders but other than that I'm happy with it, it handles brilliantly and is fast enough to hold it's own against some of the slower buggies at my club and decimate the mini's lol.
Let me know what you guys think
Comments
mtbkym01
Great job on an icon
Supercoolnothing
Thanks, it's not perfect by a long shot but I'm happy with it so far
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