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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67791

Wesmade on Youtube has recently built a Thing truck in styrene 
Not up on his channel yet, but he has posted pictures of it on FB, wellow too 


Found a pic of it in bare styrene on FB, and very small/poor quality ones in paint on Scale Builders Guild ... not sure what chassis it's for, I assume something a lot more capable than an SRB ;) 

The paint looks more Mini Volcanic Orange than yellow there too. TBH I was a bit underwhelmed by it ...



 

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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67792

Another step ... I bought this total snotter of an SRB chassis on eBay. 

Financially* it barely made sense (even bearing in mind what I intend to do with it, the bits I already have, and that I won't be precious about mixing and matching parts), but I kind of felt sorry for it :D

It looks to be a real mixed bag of Mk.1, Mk.2, and bodged parts, and is very incomplete.

* a bit more than half the cost of a new re-re SRB kit - much better than I thought :)



I have a re-re mechanism box & all the bits that fit/stick out of it, front bumper, ther various fasteners I'll need, the brass balljoints & plastic fittings, and any bearing I might need, and the antenna & base fitting.


Assuming that four of the tyres are servicable, it looks like there are three 8-spoke rear wheels (F-150 Ranger, Brat or Pajero Wheelie), one Rough Rider rear, and one shallow dish 8-spoke (Brat, Pajero Wheelie) front, so potentially the only other thing I'll need from the spares box** is the single re-re Brat front wheel.  
If not, I have a full set of (repainted) shallow dish 8-spoke wheels from a vintage Pajero wheelie c/w Sand Blaster 815 tyres, a pair of deep dish front wheels from a vintage F-150 Ranger (stained but otherwise very usuable), and a pair of re-re Brat rears, so I'm well coverted.



** This is getting less and less true ... "heap" might be more accurate :whistle:




Other things I have on order are a pair of vintage front uprights/knuckles; a re-re rear plastic cage, and I can make a pair of the straight steering rods. 


The only thing standing between me and replacing the missing rear damper body & top was money, as full damper sets (both re-re and vintage) are freely available.
After ruminating on what I think of people who post saying they want something, then after a reply with a link say "no, that's too much" (well, they didn't really want one then did they?) I have just bought a slightly tired vintage set.


I'm not sure how broken the motor cover is as it's been "artfully obfuscated" ;) in the pics, but I don't want to buy a replacement just yet, at least not until I know exactly what I need to fit.

:)  

 
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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67793

Nice find Jonny. I love it
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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67817

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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67824

Chassis arrived today, well packed & no nasty surprises, but as expected the motor cover, while not completely useless, is missing one of the bits where a machine screw should pass through. The 8 spoke front wheel looks more deep dish than not, so is from an F-150 Ranger rather than the Brat/Pajero Wheelie. If anything it's cleaner than expected - I thought I'd need gloves to unpack it but it's fairly dirt free & no errant oil/grease.

3 of the 4 front arms are the skinny "mk.1"/early variety, the gearbox halves both appear to be "mk.1", ditto both front towers and one rear arm. I think the chassis plate is "mk.2"/late, as is one front arm & one rear arm. Patina looks to be reasonably consistent across all the parts, so I think what I have is more the remains of a mk.1 or early transitional chassis that had some replacement parts BITD, and less a random assortment of parts thrown together to make it look more than it is. Although judging by the variations in screw types/ages, there's probably an element of that going on ;) 

TBH it really doesn't matter that much, given how many parts from other sources (old, and re-re) - and the DIY body - that are going to go on it. There may be so potential for parts swappery with my "mule" chassis as that doesn't have a whole lot of provenance either :)



The front uprights have also arrived, but not the dampers (yet).

:)    

 
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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67825

I would like to build a rough rider runner I still have some spares but still not able to see differences between different versions. And the fantastic french post sent back a lot of parts from erich. The parcel took 15 monthes to be back to him. I am disgusted.

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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67827

That is one great looking truck there with Brat body and Super Champ chassi, Jonny.
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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67833

Really nice build Johnny! I have been looking at my kits and notice I have a rere of both the Super Champ and the Brat so I am thinking about giving this a try. I love the alternate blue paint scheme on the original spare body kit. The Brat was my first RC back in 82 or 3.
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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67837

The idea of leaving the chassis for a rainy day didn't last very long :whistle:


The front end came apart without too much hassle, although there’s a possibility I may have stripped the thread in the tope right arm, and of course all the shock grommets were rotten. 


The back end was more problematic - not quite a 17-movement puzzle box, but the left rear arm wouldn't come off because the torsion bar insert was locked in place due to dirt & corrosion at one end, and a grubscrew at the other – which couldn’t be loosened because the motor was in the way. 

The motor wouldn’t come out due to rust, and internal gearbox alloy corrosion, couldn’t be pushed in due to the other side of the gearbox being in the way, and couldn’t be rotated to break the rust/corrosion grip, due to the internal pips that hold it in place. 

The gearbox halves couldn’t be separated, as two of the machine screws were hidden by the rear arm. 


In the end I decided that the torsion bar & brass insert were expendable as I has a pair – at which point the insert decided it didn’t like the sound of that, and allowed itself to be punched out with only moderate force. 

The gearbox halves were a bit reluctant to come apart, I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so much corrosion inside an SRB gearbox, I can only assume years of trapped moisture. 

The motor (even after scraping & wire brushing off as much of the rust as possible) needed a lot of persuasion to come out, both backwards, forwards and rotational. Unfortunately I persuaded it a bit too hard at out point, crushing the pointy end & popping out the pressed in bearing/support. I have a spare “correct” black plastic endbell Mabuchi, but I’m not happy to have destroyed the one in the car :( 

I also had to grind out most of the two bronze bearings that support the final drive spool – the heat melted the threadlock they’d been fixed in with, and allowed some space to prise out the remains. Never had to do that before either. 

The few NIP spares are nice to have, but with the exception of the antenna base which is often missing from vintage SRBs (it gets lost when the rear cage breaks I guess) and the front springs (which can occasionally break, or lose their springiness), they’re not a whole lot of use as they’re rarely missing or broken – which is probably why they’ve survived unused. Note the 1980ish prices though 😊










 
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The Other SRBs: Bel Ray Bullet, Super Brat, Kubelwagen, VW Thing/Trekker 2 years 7 months ago #67839

A drop of oil and it'll be like new!

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