m4inbrain's reasonably priced RMX 2.5

[m4inbrain]

6 hours ago, Lone-wolf said:

My wife does some rc stuff, has 2 rigs of her own the brushless outlaw and the carisma coyote, she used to beat the cr@p out of the outlaw but she has got a lot better these days and now prefers the crawler

 

Yeah so does mine, as long as the weather plays ball. 😄

 

[m4inbrain]

For reference: shell and exhaust arrived, so here they are. 😄

 

 

 

Love that exhaust thing, so cute. Actual metal too. I mean, i could've cobbled that together myself, so a tenner seems quite steep for that - but what the hey. Still waiting on everything else. 

[Stormbringer]

Yeh you could have cobbled it up but would it look as good tho 

[m4inbrain]

22 minutes ago, Stormbringer said:

Yeh you could have cobbled it up but would it look as good tho 

 

I don't see why not, it's just two small pipes pushed into each other, soldered to a metal popsicle stick. Only issue would probably been the heat treatment to get the exhaust tip uniformly discoloured, but that can be figured out. 

 

I actually think i'll try next time, probably gonna be fun - and might be able to make an extra buck at the drift club lol. 

[Kpowell911]

14 hours ago, m4inbrain said:

 

Cheers - yeah got lucky on that one. 

 

Expensive tho, for some reason her RCs last one or two sessions, then they're either bent or otherwise broken. 😄

 

My Mrs first go with my XRT before spares were available 🙃🙃

 

 

 

 

 

[m4inbrain]

Of course, it was her. 😉 😛

 

[m4inbrain]

Small update.

 

The stuff that i "require" to get the shell done slowly rains in.

 

 

That's the LED backfire kit from Amain, arrived quite quickly. Looks like an LED kit i'll be honest, so there's not much to show/tell here.

 

There's also this:

 

 

I foolishly decided that, after seeing someone building a rollcage from scratch in a facebook group, that this is easy enough and i'll knock one out in a few minutes too. Because obviously. Gonna be interesting, never played with styrene, never done a rollcage, nor anything "scratchbuilt" really. 

 

In regards to the plans for the shell, i'll explain what's going to happen (a few things that i've never done) once everything's arrived, and then, well.. Probably maybe going to build it potentially. 

[m4inbrain]

And today, the rest arrived.

 

Paint, mask, marker for.. marking, brush for brushing:

 

 

Colours are PS-41 Bright Silver the backing coat, PS-45 Translucent Purple main coat, PS-5 Black as the protective coat/trim, PS-31 Smoke for the windows, PS-55 flat clear for trim pieces (window rubber and plastic door handles ain't shiny). I haven't actually checked whether or not the shell has a protective film (it really should, but not certain) - if it doesn't, the flat clear won't work. The idea is to cut the window trim (as an example) out of the protective/overspray film on the outside, and flat clear that part only. 

 

Two or three coats purple, two coats silver, two coats black and then however much PS-31 it takes for me to be happy with the window tint. Never sprayed it, so.. nyeh. 

 

Further:

 

 

The exhaust tip was lonely, so i got a choice of side mirrors (wasn't sure what i wanted), radiator and oil cooler for it. The radiator isn't the  greatest (seen much better from sideways RC), but it's the one that modelsport had in their repertoire, so.. it'll do. The bittydesign knife is widely recommended as the tool of choice if you want to score/snap the shell rather than cutting it out with scissors due to it's short blade, it doesn't wander as much. Hence going for cheap scissors, they're basically only required for relief cuts while scoring the shell. 

 

Now i just need to find time and courage to tackle that project, going to be a world of hurt lol.

[Stormbringer]

Think im gonna like that purple when its done mate 

[Kpowell911]

1 hour ago, Stormbringer said:

Think im gonna like that purple when its done mate 

I had it on a truck shell years ago. It really pops backed with silver. 

[m4inbrain]

1 hour ago, Stormbringer said:

Think im gonna like that purple when its done mate 

 

Well, here's hoping lol. Should properly pop with bright silver, just trying to make my mind up whether or not all purple or two tone with black bonnet/roof/trunk, think i'd like both.

 

46 minutes ago, Kpowell911 said:

I had it on a truck shell years ago. It really pops backed with silver. 

 

Good to hear. 😄

[m4inbrain]

So.. I started doing some stuff to the shell. Marking, rough cutting, little bit of fitting. Nowhere near done, i'm only at the cutting out stage (maybe 30% done) - but did now enough to give an impression of the scoring method and general thoughts. Let me get the general thoughts out of the way straight away by "pointing out a line on the shell with my finger". 

 

 

I forgot how not fun cutting a shell is. 

 

So. Here's where i started.

 

 

That's already roughly cut out (it was basically on a sheet with all the other pieces, seven in total). Did mark the cutting line (again, roughly - everything is "that'll do"), and started chipping away. 

 

 

More marking while resting hands from scoring with the blade - don't mind the scraggeliness, i'll clean that up. It's just to give me an idea as to what i'm looking at, what i want to paint, what i want to cut out etc. 

 

For those of us that use scissors to cut the shell, i will say, the wheel arches came out much better by scoring than i ever managed with scissors. Works like this:

 

 

Score around the outside, then cut reliefs (can't really break off around too much an angle) and start folding away. 

 

 

It's quite satisfying, that part. 

 

Scoring is quite nerve wrecking though, one slip of the knife means that there's irreparable damage to the shell. So far, knock on wood, no damage - i will have to do lots of cleaning up with a dremel (around edges etc), and where i was too scared to go all the way to the line with the knife, but that's intentional. First time with this method, so i'm working with margins here - better to clean something up than cutting too far and looking stupid. Anyway, here's the result so far - the shell is rough cut, as well as the front bumper. 

 

 

Without front bumper,

 

 

With front bumper (just leaned against it). The marked parts are either cut out or in case of the scraggely lines, will become matte black. 

 

That's 2 hours worth of faffing about, ran out of time today - but there's no reason to rush it either. It's certainly not easy to score the shell, but it actually is better/cleaner than cutting with scissors. I think it also could be faster, the main issue here is me being very slow and deliberate, trying to find "my" method (i'm using too much pressure still etc). Will come with time, still stupid amount of stuff to cut out (rear bumper, roof spoiler, rear spoiler, light buckets etc) and with that, opportunity to learn. 

 

I am very glad though that i didn't go for the expensive shell straight away, that's for certain lol.

[Stormbringer]

Theres no rush so take your time mate 

[m4inbrain]

Yeah, better be safe than sorry.