Cruising for a Bruising!

**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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Some time ago now I posted a distorted picture of a Vintage Tamiya that I would soon be acquiring and I had some response from the usual suspects, in retrospect I should have disguised the picture some more cos everyone got it right, still it was just a bit of fun, now I have the vehicle I can reveal its true identity…

It is of course a Tamiya Bruiser, and its one those cars that when you were a kid you always wanted one but never got one cos it was far too expensive to buy even for some of the more well off families, prices of these vehicles today are still as prohibitively high especially for the better examples, and you need to re-mortgage your house to get a MIB, but I was lucky and managed to get this truck for reasonable price thanks largely to my fellow collecting friend Richard Brooker.

A few months ago I purchased one of those MIB Tomy Adonis kits, after seeing it Richard was just a little jealous cos not only does he collect RC cars, he also collects other kinds of vintage toys and like to collect all manner of Tomy stuff but had never seen one of there RC car kits before, but because he’s not on the Internet, he couldn’t go onto Ebay and buy one for himself, so when I said I could probably get another one for him, he put to me idea of doing a deal for his Bruiser that he had involving me getting another kit and swapping it plus £150 cash for the Bruiser, I thought he was joking at first but soon I realised he wasn’t and I had to set about locating another Adonis kit to make the deal work.

Now fortunately for me the Ebay seller I got the Adonis kit from has a few more kits for sale, and after each item ended they would wait a few days and then put up the next one, I got the last one for the minimum price of $89.99 and with the shipping it call to just over £100, so I assumed that I could get another kit for the same price and that would mean that in money terms the Bruiser deal would be costing me £250 in total, after waiting for the beginning of month credit card direct debit to pass I set about buying a second Adonis kit, one came up, I bid the minimum amount and all seemed set for me to win the auction on price and on schedule.

Unfortunately someone bid against me and pushed the price up to over $100, when I checked the other bidders feedback I found that in the month of December he had made a number of very big RC purchases most over $100-$150 so I was worried about losing the auction, I increased my bid to $120 and hoped for the best as the auction ended at 3am local time I would be in bed and unable to baby-sit the auction when it ended.

But fortunately the other seller didn’t increase their bid and I won the auction, but the increase in price with shipping included had pushed the kits value up to £107, but I could swallow that excess no sweat, so it was just a case of waiting for the parcel to arrive the following week… then, DISASTER it got a customs hit of £36.65 :o I was furious, with the last Adonis kit I had asked them to declare the contents value and insurance at $40 to avoid it getting stopped by customs, I assumed they would do the same with this parcel, but they declared it at cost and as a result it got stopped, to top it all I have to drive over to Coventry to collect the parcel for the Parcel Force depot.

This excess pushed the overall price of the kit to £143, I couldn’t make that loss disappear, I phoned Richard with the bad news, but he was very sympathetic and offered to throw into the deal a big bag of Falcon and Fox parts that I was planning to buy from him for £40 anyway, so that evened things out nicely and I went over to Modelcraft in Coventry this Saturday to do the deal and now I’m the proud owner of a Tamiya Bruiser, bringing my 3 Speed total up to 3, with only the Mounty left to complete the set ; )

A few weeks before I had seen the Bruiser in the flesh and that’s when I took the picture that I used for the teaser competition, but now that I’ve got it home I could look it over properly at my leisure, it’ general condition is pretty good although its obvious that its been run quite a bit, there are a number of parts missing, the mirror, driver figure, radio box lower cover, both headlamps, gear change linkage and one of the rear lamps is broken, the body hasn’t been painted except for a few bits of black trim and the bumper bars the decals were just applied straight ontop of the unpainted shell and they used all the decals including the extra ones, the tires are good and are still showing their mould lines down the center line of the tread, there is a two channe; radio fitted but it didn’t come with a transmitter, so when I tried to get it running I had to re-adjust the throw of the servo horns.

There was also a minor wiring to do, the motor wires were tidied up by securing them with zip-ties to the chassis rail and the original Heavy duty 6v battery connector had been long removed and bullet connectors fitted inplace with a standard 7.2v connecter with uneven length wires spliced into place, so I removed the connector, cut the wires to even length and fitted new femail bullet connectors and reconnected it to the speedo wires, as with most 3 Speeds the trasmission plugs were missing and the rubber mounts at the back had worn through making the G/box rock under load, so I had to remove it, revers the mounting rubbers and refit it, the battery tray is set up to accept Racing packs and the original black rubber band had perished so I replaced it with two standard bands for now, that pretty much made the Truck mobile so I took it out into the street for a quick trial run.

The first think that surprised me about the Bruiser was how much more flexable it is compared with the earlier 3 speeds, the springs are a lot softer than the rock hard semi-ellipitacls on the Hi-lux and Blazer, and the pressed steel chassis has far more twist than the solid aluminium Hi-lux rails ever do, but that said the running of the Bruiser is fairly similar to the others, the Body rattles around on its mounts as per usual and with the oversized Blacklfoot wheels its wobbles and bounces around more than the others, bump steer is also a big problem and as mine was stuck in 2nd gear it was drifting all over the shop, but then the steering wasn’t quite set up correctly, it did seem quite stable though as I was doing handbrake skids with it and it didn’t topple over, must be due to the wider track of the Monster tires.

On getting it back inside I took advantage of some photo opportunitys with my other 3 Speeds which can be seen elsewhere, the truck did come with the original manual but I havent studied it yet to see what parts I need to make my Bruiser complete, as will all the top ranking Vintage Tamiyas, restoring it will be a slow and expensive process, I did intend to make it complete, ans hopefully get some new decals and repaint it in the original colours but that’s a long way in the future, for now Im just glad to finally be the owner of a Running Bruiser :)

UPDATE: I've finally got around to painting the body :) and with the application of a set of Netsmiths super-duper repro decals it really does look the biz now ;) however it's not perfect :S although I'd stripped off the old decals and throughly washed the body, when I spreyed the blue paint on some grease spots came through and no matter how hard I tried I could not paint over them :( the mirror, front headlights, front and one rear indicator lenses are missing, some of these bits I have bodged like painted perspex lenses in the headlamp appertures and front indicarors, a bit of plastic lense was also sustituted for the rear, it's a bit rough around the edges on closer inspection but at a distence it do look the part now :)

This car was specially prepared for the Model Activ 04 show at the Warwickshire Exhibition center 20th-21st March 2004 were it was displayed along with a number of other cars from my collection :)