The RC building front has continued very peaceably, usually by means of a bit of quiet pottering after the rest of each days' tasks were done. One of the good things about the place we've been constructing the trikes at is that this has been in a small outbuilding-cum-workshop on a local farm.
And this farm has got a fairly large concrete yard - perfect for a bit of RC bashing around :-)
So the red/yellow TL has had a fair bit of use this summer with a variety of motors fitted - mostly either 19 or 21 turn 540s. I recently bought an incomplete Ansmann 1/10 chassis (for a tenner) as well - this has now also been brought up to running condition - although it isn't completely finished as it doesn't have a body fitted yet. (More on this in another post.) 'Army' truck has also spent some time at the farm - getting toned down just a bit with now-refurbished matt black wheels and an overcoat of Tamiya PS-55 flat clear.
The main project of the year has been to acquire another somewhat superior TL chassis - the downside to this was that I wanted a new (or as new as possible) one to start with - and Tamiya doesn't make them as complete kits any more.
So I built one from scratch. Over the years of owning TLs I've collected a fair few spares - a lot of them new and unused. So naturally the best way to go was to buy a new 'A' sprue chassis set - Tamiya #50735 (@ £7.65) - and start from there. I already had a nearly complete set of gearbox internals, the suspension arms, wheel drive shafts and shocks and virtually all the other plastic and metal parts. So all I needed was all the hop-ups I could afford along with nice wheels and tyres just to finish it off.
In there are:
24 rubber shielded bearings (£5.89)
A black aluminium main drive shaft (£5.87)
An aluminium spur gear (already owned but without a home)
Hollow carbon gear shafts (£5.29)
Proper CVD front steering joints (£7.38)
Stainless suspension pivot shafts with 'e' rings (£2.70)
An upper arm adjustable camber set (already owned - as above)
Light-weight king pins (£2.45)
Aluminium wheel hexs (£4.18)
A new set of body mounts (£2.85)
A Power HD1501MG 17Kg servo (£18.00)
A (temporary) new Clod 'J' motor (already owned)
Tamiya Street Rover tyres (only two fitted at present) (£12.27 for all four)
Tamiya Stadium Blitzer wheels (Well. This is a bit of a story. I did order four. Two lots of two from two different suppliers because that's all they had. Unfortunately one of the pairs went missing on the way here from Hong Kong. It never arrived. Hence the chassis has a pair of old Stadium Raider wheels and tyres on one side just to hold it level. As soon as some more become available, and they should because the SB is now a re-release - I'll get another pair.) (£4.65 + £4.94)
A set of new black nylock wheel nuts (£1.99 (x 10))
And a whole bunch of black-finished screws - in fact all I had bar two!
Total new spend came to £86.11 plus the postage - which was fairly reasonable considering that just about all this stuff came from the Far East in a couple of job lots. It just amazes me that Royal Mail charge so much now - anything over an inch thick is a minimum of £2.80 even if it only travels ten miles - whereas I can get a far larger parcel sent half way around the planet to me (from Hong Kong or China for example) for about 6 USD.
..............
So back to the Nikko. Nothing else has been done to the body - pending a choice of colour (or something like that!). But it does fit on the new TL fairly well.
The idea with the TL is to fit velcro body mounts. I've used various TL standard mounts and arranged them so that they can support the wired-on plastic bracketry for the velcro to be stuck to. I've also bought a Proline '66 Ford F-100 body - so this is another potential mating candidate - although it sits just a little bit high in order to get full wheel turning clearances.
Meantime the rest of the Nikko was just hanging around, I'd taken it out once and it ran just fine. So I tidied it up, put a Deans connector on it, painted the shocks and wheels matt green and then just recently placed the Ford body on it. Out of the two chassis I think it probably looks best on this one!
