TOPIC:

We continue ...

I've printed out draft versions of the decals sheets I made yesterday & cut a few bits out to check size; everything needs to be a smaller size than I expected, so it's a good job I made lots of variations... apart from the number plates. Took me fractions of a second to realised the reason they looked wrong was because I'd made them 1/10 scale, not 1/12

The clearcoat is still very soft, but I felt fairly safe in making up some card templates to work out the window vinyl sizes, I scanned them against a black background, then in Paint Shop Pro changed the image to grey scale, made a negative image & then mirrored it, so I can glue a printout to the back of a self adhesive vinyl sheet & cut out, once I work out what colour the windows should be ...

Fasteners & hex drivers have arrived, so I'm going to start on the chassis

Finished off the windows - I went through about a dozen possible colour choices, dark blue was a very close second, but the winner was a dark metallic grey ...

Dude, those window decals are very professional. Top notch work buddy.

Well, the chassis was a pig - I had to use the XR311 manual & try and remember the differences from my disassembly, as the Cheetah one is pretty much unreadable, and translate fasteners into the couple of dozen little baggies I had in front of me ... I think it took aroud 6 hours in total - 2 hours assembly, 2 hours finding the right fasteners, and a further 2 hours disassembling and reassembling errors the poor instructions and boneheaded component design had caused. The way the manual steps are divided up make little sense - sometimes you're juggling 18 different components that all have to line up, Other times you're putting two screws in or one bit bit of servo tape Other tham that, the build went really well

Step 1, "chassis"


Step 2, "Front Uprights"


Step 3, "Front wishbone"


Step 4, "Front bulkhead"


Step 5, "Front Suspension"


Step 6, "Steering Ring"


Step 7, "Fixing of front suspension"


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Louisbaby wrote:

Dude, those window decals are very professional. Top notch work buddy.

Thanks ... though it does help that there's only two curves between all 4 windows

I think the chassis looks totally awesome. The hex bolts are most certainly a winner.

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Step 8, "Rear Upright"


Step 9, "Rear Wishbone"


Step 10, "Gear Mount"


Step 11, "Gear Case"


Step 12, "Rear Suspension"


Step 12, "Rear Suspension" (still -c'mon Tamiya, you were afraid you were going to run out of numbers or something?)


Step 13, "Motor"


Step 14, "Change Gear"


Step 15, "Fixing of Rear Suspension"


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Is that a brand new motor? Mabuchi or Johnson?

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Steps 16, "Wheels" and 17, "Fixing of Wheels"


Step 18, "Front underguard" ... but doesn' this look like the face of one of the sharks in Finding Nemo?


Steps 19 -23


Steps 24 -25



Finally, test fitting of the body ... and I haven't turned the photo black & white this time ...


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... I turned it sepia

I've never wanted a Tamiya Cheetah, But that's changing very quickly... Thanks JR, How am I going to explain that to my wife?