Sunday, April 26, 2009

Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA (M04-M)

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Tamiya Item #58307 I bought already built on Ebay, the first thing I did was download the exploded view pdf from Tamiya and rebuild it. This thing had been sitting on someones shelf for a loooong time. The tires where getting cracked and this thing was clearly never driven as the body mounting posts had been cut off too low. It also didn’t come with the polyurethane bumper, so I got that from ebay as well. The bumper fits very snugly under the front bodywork, not sure if I’m supposed to trim it back or not (I haven’t yet).

The M04 is (at least to me) HARD to drive, it wants to swap ends all the time. I added some 3Racing adjustable dampers to it, which kept it from flipping over all the time when changing direction (the stock setup was very soft).

The car didn’t come with any electronics so I used a standard S3004 Futaba servo, the Spektrum SR3000 reciever, LRP AI+Reverse Speed controller (this ESC has no on/off button, very annoying!) and I chose the Peak Racing RS24 Hellfire Stock motor.

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As you can see in the pictures above, I lost both side mirrors real quick!

 

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I like the sound of the peak hellfire rs24 stock motor, compared to my reedy 27t stockstar it’s very quiet. The guy at ultimate that recommended me told me to oil it frequently, so we’ll see how reliability is.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Toyota bB / Scion xB

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Tamiya kit #58265 is the Toyota bB or as they’re called in the US Scion xB. My wife has one of these so I decided to make a little mini version of it.

These kits were never sold in the US due to licensing issues and they are quite rare to find on ebay as well. I had to pay quite a bit for mine from a seller in Hong Kong.

The Tamiya recommended paint scheme is black with really cheesy flame stickers…. nooooooo thank you! My wife’s car is “black cherry”, so I went to a couple of Toyota dealerships and bought some touch up paint. 3P2 was their color code and the tiny bottles come with a nail polish style brush. So I applied some to a spare piece of lexan I had, wanted to make sure it didn’t crack or peel as soon as the lexan was bent. It worked!

I had to do a few coats of it and I did a back coat of flat black, otherwise depending on angle and light you can see through the body. The Tamiya flat black doesn’t bind well to the car paint and the car paint won’t flex nicely so this car is DNC – Do not crash!

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The Tamiy Toyota bB/Scion xB sits on top of the M03-L chassis, I used the suspension from my M03-R instead of the stock dampers. I also added heaps of electronics. I added the TLU-01 and TLU-02 light units, which around my house cause a tremendous amount of interference. Around this time I ended up buying the Spektrum DX3S radio system, which comes with a free SR300 reciever. As you can see in the photo below there plenty inside.

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As for LEDs I have:

Two sets of 5mm white for headlights and reverse lights.

One set of 5mm red for tail/break lights.

Two sets of 3mm orange led for signal/hazards.

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