TOPIC:

Congrats HP

HI!... Cool, thanks guys.

HI!... Well the clear shrink tubing finally showed up. Took forever. Anyway I got a bunch of the receiver packs done. Still waiting on the battery pack end caps to get here so I can start building the dummy 7.2 packs.

HI!... Well the battery pack end caps came in so I made up 10 more dummy 7.2 packs. Turned out pretty good. Though next time I'll order 75mm blue shrink tubing instead of the 85mm. The 85MM seems a bit big. Next I'd like to make up a few hump packs and 3-4 8.4 volt dummy packs.

Looking good

re 8.4 packs, i've been looking at the Tamiya "Gold Power" Bigwig -era one ... I had a crack at a label (this would be printed on clear & placed on gold self adhesive vinyl to get the right colour - assuming you use black heatshrink).

The end battery is a bit of a problem, as it seems the Tamiya pack has some sort of plug on the end (see tamiyaclub.com/...5&id=34258). If that was me, I think I'd cheat & just wrap the fake end cell with blue SA vinyl ... you'd also need ends on that fake cell & some sort of fake conducting strips & round card covers ... before heatshrinking :)

Connectors - AFAIK the blue Tamiya 8.4v one is entirely proprietory, I don't know how else you'd get them

I've also been thinking about the hump packs ... the decals are doable, red & blue print on clear & stuck on silver for the undersides, the top one fot the hump is a difficult shape, but is fundamentally just black on clear, stuck on silver.

The difficultly is in embossing on the top - short of getting old NIB Tamiya batteries & mouldmaking/casting from them, I can't see any way of doing that ... apart from a CNC router/mill, and that's even less practical Although having thought about it, a decal of the edges in a slightly darker grey/brown than the plastic could look ok.

The physical shape of the hump is also a problem I'd tackle that by making 5 cell/6v boxes instead


As an aside, this is what I remember about the physical battery forms:

5 cell, 6V batteries: only available as Tamiya branded cased packs

6 cell, 7.2V humps: While they were cutting edge (early 80's), only available as plastic cased packs - not just Tamiya, but other suppliers too. The hump pack I had with my Grasshopper wasn't branded/embossed on the outside, and was in a slightly thinner greeny/brown plastic IIRC.

6 cell, 7.2V stick packs - everyone and their whippet made these.

7 cell, 8.4V stick packs - pretty sure these were only ever made in their original (Bigwig) era by Tamiya, as they wouldn't have been "legal" for racing

AFAIK, shrinkwrapped hump packs, 5 cell/6v packs, and non-Tamiya 8.4V packs are very much a modern invention ... well, 1990-1995 onwards anyway

I think a shrinkwrapped hump pack is even more difficuly to do "correctly" than a hard cased one too many layers of stuff need doing for clear heatshrink - unless you "cheat" by hiding everything under black/blue (or anything solid) heatshrink.

HI!... Well when I was talking hump packs I was just referring to the soft pack style. I agree that the hard case one's wouldn't be worth the trouble of making. Though I do have both 6V and 7.2 hump back hard style Tamiya batteries in my collection. I suppose if I really wanted to I go pull a mold off of them and make fake ones from some kind of liquid plastic or epoxy. Worst comes to worst I could buy old hard case ones that no longer work and carefully split the cases and remove the old batteries and C/A glue the case half's back together. J/R PM me with what you would want for the 8.4 volt decals. I would need maybe 5 of them at the most.

HI!... Well I got a few more "Dummy" packs done.