TOPIC:

Build One - some steps and pics...


First it start by the battery retainer under the chassis


Then assemble the front dampers and knucles


Followed by the front suspension assembly


Back to the chassis and lower arms assembly


Front suspension is done...


And bumper mounted


Differential is built and inserted in the chassis. I replaced the oil-less bearings by ball bearings


Rear arms and under gearbox cover put in place...


Installing motor mount and idle gear (put an used idle shaft while the new one needs to be reworked and will be used for another build - the idle gear is mounted on ball bearings)


Motor and pinion in place, gear mesh set with a paper


Had to rework the sequence of operations to get to the next pictures
Gearbox closed and rear bumper mounted


Pivot and links of the rear suspension added


The next step was to add the rear shock and the roll bar. I apparently forgot to take the picture (it was late).
Next was to mount the tires. If you consider mounting a Hornet or Grasshopper rear tire is difficult, it is even more difficult with the Hunter as there is no way to lock the internal sleeve when you try to move it inside. The only solution which ease the mount is to put the tire in hot water before mounting it.


I still need to add rx, servo, esc in the car, but at least it looks like a Hunter now

An awesome work Marc. When you see the before and after... A pretty nice hunter back ro earth. Congrats

#1 Built and getting ready for #2  Looks super 

Well, Lee, I don't want to spoil the pleasure... Still need to finish this one...

Also considering installing the Sport Tuned in it instead of the 540 silver can... Or may be I'll keep it for the runner... But the Sport Tuned would make this one nice... I have servo, esc and RX ready to join the chassis... It could be nice with a Sport Tuned. And beside this, I suspect both the idle gear an motor pinion would not survive the Sport Tuned if on the runner. Which means it is probably better to put it on this one...

And there is the paint of the body still to be done. Weather is good today, it may be something I'll do this afternoon - Going for two tones paint, but the white will have to be replaced by some light blue, as there is remaining blue marks on the body and the wing that I did not succeed to remove.This body (which is a saved one) will get some dark blue / light blue theme. It won't be box art, as would not be perfectly white but aged white with blue marks...

I also noticed the shocks don't really work well. I need to find a proper way to deal with this (hole in the piston? softer oil?)

And I'll get it doing one pack of running for the sake of having it ran before it gets on the shelve (it needs some light marks of use on the tires :-D)...

And all of this is before I start #2. It maybe the Galaxy RS that go next. And then there would be #3: intention for this one is to do a runner. I'm not yet fully set on the motor (may go for a light brushless) and the wheels (I may go to Wild One wheels or even more modern wheels) and for the damper it may go for something different than the Marui one (although I have one I can use)...

Last comment : while I may document the Galaxy RS build, I may decide only to document the distinctive parts of the build #3 and #4... No reason to make that much pictures at it is essentially the same as the previous ones...

looking very good! Will you paint the body and if so what colour?

edit...
doh, missed the reply where you spell out how you will paint!

I'd be keen to see how it goes with a brushless setup, but wondering if that idler gear may not be up to the challenge. Maybe if that plastic hold down tab is replaced with a metal one, it may not jump around so much, just a thought anyway. When I ran mine as a teenager it was plenty fast with the stock motor.

yogi-bear wrote:

looking very good! Will you paint the body and if so what colour?

edit...
doh, missed the reply where you spell out how you will paint!

I'd be keen to see how it goes with a brushless setup, but wondering if that idler gear may not be up to the challenge. Maybe if that plastic hold down tab is replaced with a metal one, it may not jump around so much, just a thought anyway. When I ran mine as a teenager it was plenty fast with the stock motor.

The brushless is tempting question. I won't do for the one built already. But i'm eventually considering this for the next Hunter. I had a lot of thought about this. One of the reason the idle shaft moves is that the idle gear is not on gearing, and as a result, it wear both from the inside and the outside, increasing the play and the accelerating the outside wear... and when there is too much play, there is some vibration appearing, which would make the hold down tab getting wear.

MJF PA12 should be as good as the original component, and I believe the ball bearings will also reduce the inside wear... And it should be much better compared to the original component... I suspect it will survive a small 17.5T brushless for some time. That being said, those cars won't get abuse as it was when I was a teenager: I had 5 accu packs, and there was 3 chargers at home, and I had no other car (on the other hand, one accu run was about 5-7 minutes, not 40 as today).

Time will tell how long the idle gear will last...

On the paint, I'm still asking myself. I trimmed the body a bit to clean up the broken areas (it was initially cut way under the cutting line on the front and the side, so it is quite ok now, and it reduced as well the amount of blue shadows... I still intend to order from TBG when it will be possible... And looking at the body shell currently, I'm saying myself : why not keeping it this way, exposing the car internals? Tough question

I don't mind the clear body look, I did that with my Fox when I was a teenager. I would like to d a yellow/black two tone scheme of either the Hunter or Galaxy at some stage though.

I'll do a proper build post with more details once the car will be in order. Consider this as a teaser :-D

When you built a chassis variant from the one you just built the day before, you notice the difference between the builds while going step by step...
But then at some point in the build you notice that a lot of the step variances directly comes from a page sequence inverted in the print of the instruction manual you got :-D

Had to change my plans somehow. My son would like to be able to build his Hunter within the vacation (schools are closed for holidays this week and next week). For that I will need few screws, washers, spring washers and spacers... Made the stock count on the 4x12 screws (the most concerning area and I have enough of those for the structurally critical elements, other will be managed with alternative screws). I need to do the stock take of the tapping screws in 3 and metric screws in 3 as well, which is why I decided to move on the Galaxy built yesterday. I have not finished as I'm missing servo and esc for it... I'll do stock take on the other screws within the next days and I'll order what will be required.

On the build itself, you may note that the blue parts are not as clean as the rest. It will be marks of use. I did tried to figure out how to clean them with a part I got from somewhere else (a set of Galaxy parts), and all the attempts to clean them were either making it look even worse (had to scratch the surface to remove the dirt, and it damaging the part surface). The bath of white spirit did not work, the WD40 neither (have something in mind, but I'll check later, it may need later replacement)...

As my son is pushing a bit to be able to build his own Hunter, after having sorted the small parts, I came to the conclusion that the only car I could complete was the Galaxy RS. For the two remaining Hunters, I'll need to order screws (metric and tappingf screws in 3mm) and recut some spacers...

On Sunday evening, as teased, I decided to start the build of the Galaxy RS...


The manual was printed before starting the sorting, and I used it to start the operations, and as teased in my previous post, I had the intention to sense the difference between the builds...
I then followed the manual page by page, going from front unfinished to back and then... Back to front, as I noticed the scan I had was having some inverted page sequence... 

At the end, I did not finished, as I was missing servo and esc to finish it.... I stopped at the time to mount the servo.

Some pics of the differences between the chassis...




As mentioned earlier, the blue part are not as clean as I would like. I still need to find a solution for this. I'll take care of this later with another try (or an alternative solution I have in mind)...
For the rear part and the gear cover with shock bridge, they are not possible to mount due to the Galaxy specs. The roll cage stay and the shocks stay extensions are in the path. I decided to use the first part I designed to reinforce the shock towers and help the force particions...


And at the end, I decided to go to sleep with the chassis set on the mobile work desk...


Since a few days, I'm asking myself if a brushless could do it for my Hunter runner (and Yogi-bear did only increased this thinking in my mind by his mention of it the other day)... I started by looking at the options for the pinion... And it will require some work!


Modern pinions are shorter than the original ones. This needs to be managed. From what I saw from the unbuilt kits (but I was already aware of this state from the eighties, as I depleted 2 of the three pinions included in the kit), the original pinion are wearing fast. On the other hand, modern should be more resistant and should offer more possibilities, the fact they are shorter doesn't really help in this specific case: the idle gear needs to be reworked in order to get the 48T gear closer to the motor. That should be possible, relatively easily. I got the idle gear stl file from a guy who is actually posting on another forum, and he has some quite interesting ideas... I told him my idea (not that I'm not able to do, but just because he is selling his work, and for me it makes sense to value his work as well, so he can even provide an improved version of it) and we started some detail engineering discussion on this topic there on my thread on that other forum...

On the Tuesday evening, I did check something that makes me think that something was wrong : the transmission was not as smooth as the one of the Hunter in the same state... And following my discussion on the other side, I wanted to do more precise measurement... I unmounted the gearbox and motor again to check in details and to precisely estimate the modification to do...





Few measurements for the record if someone search for it
The washer that  came with the NIP idle gear is 0.6 mm thickness
A new idle gear is 15.5 mm large, including 4.9mm for the 48T gear
Chassis side wall to motor mount is 16.4 mm
Printed idle gear is less large than the original one (15.0mm without ball bearing and 15.2 with them).
Apparently the 48T gear could be enlarged of 3 mm without any risk of touching the diffs satellites (maybe even 3.5mm). On the NIP idle gear, up to 4.0 mm of the 20T gear can be removed (it was exactly this which was mention by a french guy in a french forum). This would allow to use a modern 0.6 mod pinion with the following advantages:

• pressure point closer to the motor, so less vibrations of the motor shaft
• Pressure point on idle gear closer to the motor (motor mount is metal, while chassis is ABS
• More choices in terms of pinions (19,20, 21 as provided in the Marui kits, while possibility to mount 18 to 22 with modern pinions

And last point : the rotation issue was coming from the motor : it doesn't turn freely on a rotation (I believe the shaft is not straight, perhaps due to the pressure point far to the motorI will have to replace this motor. 

On top of the list of screws, servo and ESC I need, I'll need to find 2 motors instead of 1... The project is moving ahead, but each day come with surprises, and it is fun
 

First thing this morning, I ordered screws to complete my part set. They should allow me to build all the kits.

Next is calculation (based on the question : would be a brushless fitting those cars? (I'm quite sure Yogi-bear would be interested by the answer)

It's all about ratios, so I calculated those

Motor pinion choices are 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (assuming modern pinion to complete the set).
Idle gear is 48T/28T
Differential is 60T

Internal ratios would give with the motor pinions the following

• 18T: 8.00
• 19T: 7.58
• 20T: 7.20
• 21T: 6.86
• 22T: 6.55

I also assume the motor mount could be modified to be able to mount smaller pinions, or biggest ones (but then the motor cover would be an issue).
Ultimately, from what I found on internet in terms of recommended ratios for motors, it seems a 15.5T could work well with a 22T and a 6.55 ratio... Tires, although very vintage, have the same external diameter as a modern 2.2 inches buggy wheel, so I didn't factor this in, as the recommendations are mentioned in the chart I found for standard sized rubber tires. (I won't go for a 13.5 or 10.5T motor there, I believe the idle gear would not survive)

For reference, the chart I found :