Not such a Rough Rider now.

**PLEASE READ THIS** for anyone looking at this model displayed in my showroom and wondering if I will sell it? PLEASE DON’T ASK!!! I get numerous requests from TC members wanting to buy cars displayed in my Tamiyaclub showroom, and to be honest I get very annoyed when people ask to buy something that is clearly NOT FOR SALE!! This car is part of MY COLLECTION and as such I want to KEEP IT!! So please don’t Email on the off chance that I might sell it to you, if I want to sell any of my cars I will put them up for sale in my TRADE ROOM, so look there to see what cars I am prepared to sell otherwise don’t bother asking cos the only answer you will get is NO!!! thanks for reading this disclaimer. Regards wldnas.

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One of my past ventures has been to make a Rough Rider from whatever resources I can pull together on my 'Modest' budget! Truth be know about the beginning of this project, you need to look at some of my other showroom entries, most notably... Restored – “Back in the good old Ranger blue' and Misc. – “Yet another Vintage Tamiya lot' you see, this car came with the vintage car lot disguised initially as a Sand Scorcher, but I quickly realised it was in fact a modified Ranger chassis, there were two Rangers in the Lot both had Good and Bad bits, so I made one good one out of the two, But what I was left with was about 70-75% of a Tamiya Special Racing Buggy chassis, and upon noticing the fact that I had also inherited a pair of Rough Rider front wheels and had spare Ranger tires literally to burn, so a plan started to form in my head.

I considered turning it into a Sand Scorcher for while mainly cos I’ve now got 3 Scorcher Bodies : ) but I wanted to do something different with it so I plumped for the Rough Rider Option, This did present me with the problem of getting hold of one of the most elusive Bodies ever fitted to a Tamiya Car, so I posted some wanted ads on Roby’s board and Tamiyaclub forum and lucky for me Stulec came to the rescue (and not for the first time ; ) He Offered me at a very reasonable price one of his spare bodies, which to be honest was a right scrotter but then I was well prepared to get a knackered shell for the purposes of fixing up and NO-WAY was I going to pay the ridiculous prices that half tidy or MIB bodies go for on Ebay, with the Body is on its way I could think about getting together the other bits that I needed to make the chassis, upon stripping down the remnants of the spare Ranger chassis I found that I was short of a great number of items, but a spares haul on Ebay saw me acquire enough parts to start construction.

I was still making the best of a bad lot (as I always do ;) most of the so called 'good' parts that I have are what any self respecting perfectionist would consider as junk but after a couple of hours work I managed to make something that sorta looked like a car again, I had to bodge the replacement right rear suspension arm, the swing stop had been shaved off and the rear hole for the locating pivot pin had been enlarged (not that I had a proper pin to put in it anyway ;) so I had to drill a small hole in the front pivot sleeve and tap into it a small screw using superglue as threadlock, then grind off the edges of the screw head to the same profile as the pivot stop, with the rear pivot I used 2 copper sleeves of different sizes and ran a machine screw through the middle, another bodge at the time was using the Ranger roll bar as a substitute for the correct Rider/Scorcher/Champ bar which I’m was hoping to get sometime soon, but its was risky putting the delicate body on with this bar cos its sticks out more than the original profile of the Scorcher bar at the top and pushes out the side of the body putting major strain on the cracks in the back corners and they were just looking for an excuse to bust open.

The body is a total wreck to put it mildly but I’m still very grateful to Stulec for supplying it, but you know me, I love a challenge even though my expertise is more for things mechanical than bodywork! I stated to strip off the paint of which appeared to be many layers, Nail Polish remover was doing the business if you can put up with the evil fumes it gives off, but just under the silver hammerite there is a strange black rubbery textured finish that seems defying all attempts at removal, The finish on it was pretty good so I didn’t bother trying to strip it off instead I just glossed right over the top of it with about 8 layers of PC paint, it did decide to run and react a little but I was hoping that when the decals were fitted no-one would notice, but before I could paint it I had to repair all the cracks, replace some broken sections and scratch build an entirely new roof section, without going into too much detail the roof was made from a plasticard piece with the front bars made from plastic tubing bent round to form the hoop and then glued into place, the back of the roof was formed so as to fill in for the missing section and was shored up underneath and glued into place, all cracks and gaps were then filled and the painting could finally begin.

I was still missing many parts, and a number of the bits used to make my car what it is at the moment really needed to be replaced, the list of Parts that are missing are always the expensive ones :S Receiver Box, Roll Bar, Front Bumper (Black?), Antenna, Steering servo push rod, Cam lock set and speed control resistor, Parts the need replacement are, Radio Box Top and Tub, Motor and Gear covers, Rear gearbox guard bars, bearing set, steering rods and that Right rear suspension arm, This was always going to be a very slow and expensive restoration but when it came to the Stoneleigh show I wanted to do something more with it, and in order to effect a quick and easy cosmetic upgrade I had to rob a load of the missing parts off my mostly complete Sand Scorcher and fit them to the Rough Rider, so I ended up swapping the complete radio box, and front bumper and after re-application of a few replica decals and spare Frog Headlamps the car was all ready to go (see picture 1)

So the car got displayed at the NAC toy Fair and looked great, but its far from finished, I imagine I will be wanting the reclaim the stolen parts for SS at some point so I will need to keep a look out for those oh so elusive and expensive parts, I finally managed finish the body off by touching up a few bits of paint and putting the correct decals on the hood, this was done specially for the Model Active show at the Warwickshire exhibition centre on the 20th & 21st of March 2004 where it was displayed along side my other 3 SRB buggies :)

UPDATE: All that work I did on my Rough Rider chassis seems to have been for naught :S the main reason being is that I have now bought a 2nd Rough Rider and the chassis on that car is all but mint and in pretty much original condition complete with fitted radio gear, now the story behind this find is quite interesting… this car has in fact come from another local RC collector (non-TC member) who more recently got into collecting a few RC cars and I helped him out with this by selling him one of my own cars… the Mudblaster? Anyway he had acquired this mint Rough Rider chassis from a guy at his works for only £30 when I say it I was amazed at how tidy it was? It came with the fitted Futaba radio and a very clean looking Humpback battery pack, but it was missing the body and there was no box or manual with it, so you can’t whinge at £30, a bit later I managed to get one of those Lexan replica body shells for him and sold it to him for a nominal fee along with some decals, anyway I did not see much of him after that, months past by and then just before Christmas 04 I got a call from him saying that he needed to sell up the majority of his collection and would I help him… well who was I to refuse ;) the reason for him needing to sell up is quite interesting in itself actually.

You see Dean is a bit of an part time amateur DJ on the side… anyway the story goes that he had been offered a job as a DJ on a Cruise ship, now this meant that he would have to spend months away from home at a time, he had moved into a flat but had no room for his cars there and they were left in his parents attic, now his Dad who is a bit of a major Boat modeller did not want this stuff cluttering up his attic so he had threatened to take the stuff down the tip unless Dean got it shifted, so with the departure for his new Cruising job fast approaching he needed to shift his cars quick and ideally get back as much of the money as he originally spent on the cars in the first place? The stuff he was selling was a Boxed FROG, Porsche 959, Super Hornet, my Old MudBlaster and the Rough Rider…. Well I managed to get the cars sold off to both Richard and my cousin Darren (Trabbidaz) but I had eyes for the Rough Rider myself, I had offered him £70 for it but after I’d managed to sell the other cars for him he let me have it for £50 which was nice ;) but no sooner as I got it then I was already planning keep it and get my other old RR sold off?

This required a bit of work on my part? There were a few chassis bits that needed top be swapped over (mostly with my Ranger Chassis) these were the front bumper and gear cover, there was also a faulty rear suspension arm on my old chassis that needed to be swapped over as it was broken and I had to wire in the motor to the fitted speed controller, the finishing touch was the swapping of the rubber switch cover then all the chassis bits was done, the chassis I have bought came with the Futaba Radio, a clean looking (and as it happened reconditioned with new Hi-capacity cells) Humpback battery, a load of spare decals to use on the body, and the repro lexan body shell itself which was in a bit of a mess :S as Deans Dad had tried to paint it with some of that horrible runny Tamiya polycarbonate spray paint… and made a right pigs ear of it :( so I had to strip it all off completely and repaint it before I could fit it to my old chassis ready for sale :S and that paint was a real paint in the backside to remove :(

I had told Richard about this Rough Rider I was preparing for sale and he said he know a guy who was after one, now it took some time for me to finally get around to finishing off the stripping and painting of the body over the Christmas period and every time I saw Richard he was always badgering me about when the Rough Rider would be ready :S anyway eventually I got it done and repainted the shell, now I did not have the correct type of Tamiya PC light blue brush paint to hand so I went up a local art shop and bought a pot of mid blue acrylic paint which after I’d painted it on I realised that it was too dark a shade :S still no point in changing it now, I applied the decals but again was a few short, so the finished car was a bit less than perfect? But fortunately Richard said that he had a few extra things that could do to if before he passed the car onto its new owner and I got my asking price of £80 for the completed car which was pretty good going for me ;)

In any case I’m now left with a near perfect runner of a Rough Rider :) I fidder my original restored body to it and apart from the missing steering rod it all complete and intact, the car is good to go as its fitted with radio gear but I have as yet to try it out, still that’s one less car to worry about now ;)