TOPIC:

Edou wrote:

It does look a lot more suitable for off roading with those side panels...
Great details to hide the holes in the body. For the purpose of realism you might wanna strap them down though...
They could cause quite the headache when humping around or suddenly breaking.

Hahaha it would be a terrible tragedy if you knocked over your cooler box and all the beer fell out... hahaha

Louisbaby wrote:

Very nice JR, I noticed however you use black styrene. I there a difference between the white and black? As far as I know, we only get the white styrene here in South Africa.

I think the main difference is that the black is more difficult to cut because 1/2 of the time you can't tell what's a shadow & what's styrene... and it also takes more primer. I tend to buy styrene sheets in bulk & black was a lot cheaper that time - but TBH I wouldn't buy it again.

Louisbaby wrote:

Found this link the other day, thought of you.

tamiyaclub.com/...7&id=14925

I saw that too ... I don't think he can claim that as an original idea though - my DT-02 based Grasshopper arrived with side panels like that, I just made them shiny ( www.tamiyabase....id=78#4444 )

Edou wrote:

It does look a lot more suitable for off roading with those side panels...
Great details to hide the holes in the body. For the purpose of realism you might wanna strap them down though...
They could cause quite the headache when humping around or suddenly breaking.

I'll think of somthing ... but only after painting the shell

Bit more hole flling ... a plug & a bit of support for the underside:



Smoothed in with Milliput:




A bit of filling/smoothing/reinforcing under the "luggage":




Also needed to do something with the holes right at the front (which were used for screwing on the front body mount - 30 years ago ), so I dremmelled off the sticky out bits on the underside, patched the holes & gave it a first fill with Milliput:








...

Also tackled those awful triangular holes on the front ... got to say I'm not overly happy with the result (although they will blend in a bit more with more filler & paint) - if Tamiya had done it properly to start with, these "power bulges" could have been 1/2 the height & 1/2 the surface area... and talking halves, overall I can even say they did a half-arsed job of mating the Sand Rover shell to the DT chassis - it's nowhere near that good - it's a lash up

Anyway, building up the core for the bulges in 1.5mm styrene sheet:










From the underside:



... lots of Milliput:



... wet sanded & balanced on:




Despite all the work so far, I'm not happy with these so I'm going to see if I can reduce the height by careful dremelling of the insides, and taking off the bottom layer of styrene.

Well that went better than I'd feared it might - they still look like padded bra inserts, but at least they look like smaller padded bra inserts

Looks great. Reminds me a bit of a snake or a gator...

Edit - it's a Cobra of course with his neck all stuck out!

Looks great JR, you should ask Full Throttle about his mod for the front shocks that are exposed. He made a metal plate that fits in the hole. Looked great.

Very nice job!!