TOPIC:

It's time to tackle my two vintage Egress and give them e deserved restoration.
I'm so lucky that I have two Egress in good condition, so I decided to do a twin restoration, doing both at the same time.

I have taken both apart into atoms and cleaned the parts thoroughly using ultrasonic cleaner and normal dish washing technique.
The plan is to build one Egress as good as I can, using the parts I have and adding new, vintage parts as much as possible.

These are the two Egress I started with and some of the parts:



And some additional parts aquired from Ebay:






So, let's get started!

BTW: I plan to do this build thread "live", meaning whatever I do gets reported here the same day. And, of course, if the build halts, so will this tread...

larbut wrote:

BTW: I plan to do this build thread "live", meaning whatever I do gets reported here the same day. And, of course, if the build halts, so will this tread...

Almost thought you were going to stream

andyaus wrote:

larbut wrote:

BTW: I plan to do this build thread "live", meaning whatever I do gets reported here the same day. And, of course, if the build halts, so will this tread...

Almost thought you were going to stream

He he, no, that will not happen

So the first task is to rebuild the diffs.

I always clean internal gear box parts separately from the other parts to keep them away from dirt. The graphite grease is as usual hard to get off, but luckily only one of the models had used it.

Building the diffs were so exciting I forgot to take pictures, but here they are all done and smooth.



Next, chassis plates:
Both plates are good, but one with slightly less scratches from the battery.
I polished both plates with Autosol (slightly abrasive) and it helped a little:

Before:




After:




The chassis stays needed cleaning, so the drill and steel wool was rought out. The steel wool gives a nice finish, me thinks..

Before


During:


After:

I forgot to mention:
I will do one chassis using the best parts, including new parts where I can. This chassis will always be on the right of the "twin pictures", or presented first if separate pictures.
The second chassis will get the best used parts I have left over. (which is not bad at all )

Next is mounting the hardware to the chassis.

Body stays and reinforcing plates ready with necessary screws.
I chose not to glue the reinforcing plates, as they were not glued before, and that was handy doing this restore.



Mounted on the best chassis


And mounted to chassis 2:


Next are the rear gear boxes:
The motor mounting plates needed some care, so the steel wool was used again:


Ready for assembly, using new plastic parts for chassis 1 (right):


Assembled and gears ready for assembly/mounting:




Gears mounted inside, and new gear box cover ready for chassis 1:

Rear gear boxes assembled and ready for the chassis:


The hexagonal spacers needed the same treatment as the chassis stays:





Ready for mounting (chassis 1):


Using titanium screws is ok, but when they are countersunk you really have to be careful.
There is so little area left for the screw head to attach to the threaded part, and I managed to pull one screw off, leaving the threads inside one of the hexagonal spacers...
Cutting a groove with the Dremel solved it.




And this is as far as I got, both chassis with the rear gear box mounted:

Nice,did a similar thing with three TF evolution. Forgot to make such nice pictures

Are they the reinforcement plates on the Avante?

stingray-63 wrote:

Are they the reinforcement plates on the Avante?

No, there is not. Tamiya probably learned something on the Avante and made the modifications on the Egress

The chassis is skinny to on the avante.