TOPIC:

Yes she got the last one, the wife scored bigtime this birthday.




All sold out first day it came online.
Now to decide on colors. Will be installing LEDs and maybe a warnlight on the rear cabinbox

Happy birthday Sander. Nice score.

I made my hilux runner body. It miss decals but looks nice.

Alan I was jealous about your grass I repainted my body in Renault methyl blue

Very nice Flo,i did think of blue for mine but decided that electric orange is better of course haha

Thanks pal.

Hey Waterbok,
I am looking forward to your comments on the Dancing Rider kit. When I saw the previews for it I thought Tamiya had finally lost their minds It is just sort of a novelty item but then again so was Wild Willy and look how we are still talking about that one!!
So my mind is not made up on it yet........

OK,
So back to project Astute.....don't you hate it when life gets in the way of your Tamiya's?
You know how it is, work, bad weather, shop boiler quit! you know..... life.....

Well then here it is fresh out of the decal shop!....




And now naked for all the world to see..........OMG! its a Super Astute!



I like the Super Astute as a racing machine, it's just better, the Astute was a bit delicate and over engineered ( hello, Avante??) I was told by the seller it was a former club racer in Japan back in the day, it was already nicely modded with the hi-cap shocks and alloy steering parts so I did not really need to do a lot to better it...... except....REPLACE THAT UGLY BODY!!



I admit the purple is a nice color but its those nasty early 90's splash graphics I can't stand , I never could, even in the 90's I hated that look, it was a sad time for custom cars in general...
I had really moved away from RC at this point anyway and Tamiya and others were mostly just cranking out shapeless blob cars so I did not pay much attention. The Astute came out just before that trend so I thought it looked better, same body shell but more tasteful graphics, so this one is a bit of a "sleeper" you could say. It will be a runner, not serious, but I will be racing it in a gentleman's way. I think it should do well



The other thing I wanted to mention was how to find a pinion for this car....Tamiya was nice when they did the Dyna Storm and included to 2 different pitch spur gears but not so with the Super. It is a odd ball metric pitch of .5 mod. Tamiya gears are hard to come by and I wanted to keep it small as I will be on a short track, the manual says there was a 18 tooth available but good luck finding it ( OK it did not say the last part ) I found this gear on spendbay and I think it is for an RC helicopter or something. The 19 tooth count will work fine I think but the shaft size is wrong.....one metric drill bit and lathe later and it is a perfect fit!
They were not kidding about the hardened part, was a bit of a chore to drill and hard on the bit, but it will work, I thought this might be useful for others with the same problem.
As for the motor, that might not be the one going in it now, I am having second thoughts..... It is a nice vintage piece but it is a bit of a monster too and the old gears might not be up to the challenge, if I can add a speed control with some soft start I might just go for it, or I might put in a 01R it is a bit tamer....but the snow will be here for a while so perhaps I should just get back to building........

Awesome surprise Willy. That's a good 2018 beginning

Notging to do on it. Can you make a topic on this car please? The astute ask my mind.