I keep breaking my Monster Beetle

This Ebay win finally arrived after a mix up with my details getting lost. It seems to be all there mechanically, needs a strip and rebuild though, and the servo saver is broken so will need to be replaced.
The bodywork's a different story, I think I will be getting a bucket of brake fluid ready for that :-) There's a couple of spotlamps missing from the front, but the leftovers from my Midnight Pumpkin lighting project will be coming into play to make some new spots complete with LEDs. And the sunroof is missing, seems to be fairly common with these cars.


The gold wheels are all in pretty good condition, but the tyres have lost their flexibility and the rears slip on the wheels quite badly, so will probably need to be replaced.


It also came complete with an Acoms receiver, which has a rubber cap on the crystal to keep the moisture out, they don't make them like that anymore! The aerial lead is snapped though, so a new one will need to be soldered on.
Looking forward to restoring this

Update: May 8th 2004 - I've started to strip the bodywork now, brake fluid seems to be working better than Modelstrip on this one though, perhaps the paints that were used weren't ones which Modelstrip can handle. Also last night I took a closer look to see if I could work out why the shell didn't fit all that well, and I found that the rear bodypost holder was mounted back to front. I've turned it round now and the shell fits perfectly :-)

Update - Jun 22nd 2004: The bodyshell is now stripped, ready for final rubbing down, and then painting. However, before painting, it's going to have about 100 holes drilled in it, ready for my next rather OTT lighting project. Sacriledge? yep, fun, yep ;-)


Late Summer 1994 I got a Parma shell for running, I ran a shell designed for the HPI MT2 at Kidderminster, and it worked fine but looked naff, so I went for the Parma VW Beetle (Parma Ref #10340) and that looks really good. From a distance it looks just like the original shell. With the addition of some repro decals it now looks pretty realistic when I'm bashing it.

Jan 2005 and the Monster Beetle has been running a while now, so it's time to update the showroom. Will add some better pics soon, but I seem to break a front wheel every time I take it out. I've managed to get yet another wheel (thanks Dazmeister, Biggus_Ditchus, Moosey, Scorcher_Daz for wheels!) and that's on it now, along with the tyres from a magazine that came out at Christmas. I've shimmed the front wheels with HPI Super Star Washers, which has elminated a lot of slop and hopefully will stop the wheel from shredding at the bearings.

Mar 2005 - The combination of the shimming and new wheel seems to have stopped the wheel problem :-). This Spring I will be taking all the LEDs off the proper shell, sanding it down and trying to do a better job of the paint, as it's a bit rough at the moment. I might also grind the LEDs flat for a nice flush effect, but that depends how much work it is, as I'll have to do 64 of them! I've revised the circuit now to fit on a smaller board, so it might finally be okay to run the car with the lights on, fingers crossed....

Update: October 2005 - well, it took a while (nearly 2 years) but I finally got this running with the computerised light show in place! After a less than perfect start, where the car had a range of about 4 metres and was steering itself and accelerating when I tried to slow it down, I decided it might be an idea to power all the lights from a separate battery pack instead of the receiver. That did the trick, range was up again and the car was driveable. The debut of the light show at night was at the lorry park next to the Eastern Bash site, I drove the little Beetle under and around the artics with it's light show blazing, to the amusement (or bemusement) of a few truckers who were trying to catch some sleep. It certainly is a head turner with the lightshow, pretty unique. Now that I know it works okay, I'm going to pull the LEDs back on the shell, and give it a rub down and respray, then the LEDs will be mounted properly using silicon, and I also have some design changes to the circuitry to make it a bit more compact. All in all I am well pleased with it, and the Monster Beetle is simply oozing with character..

Update - April 2006: The car was driven for all to see at the Tamiyaclub Spring Drive at Kidderminster. It got plenty of comments, my favourite one being 'What the hell was that??!!' when it passed someone sitting outside their tent in the dark.
I have now remade the circuit, cut down the size to about a quarter of the original so it will fit better into the body, and also managed to replace a load of resistors and transistors with a combination of a single extra chip and some changes to the computer code for the chip which does the lighting. Got some U bolts, so this Summer I will be giving it an overhaul, adding spotlamps to it, and probably lighting up the headlights, spotlamps and adding some underchassis lighting to it. I plan for it to be the most lit up and tasteless cheesy R/C car in history ;-)