TOPIC:

After a morning spent on a track indoor session, i got back to work after the lunch. But I had prepared my plan yesterday, as it required some printed parts...

I was teasing a way to fix my ESC: there is a natural room for it in the place of the Speed controller servo. I started to design a very simple part for this.


Once printed, I did check it: it requires to cut the plastic of the setting jumpers of Hobbywing Quicrun 1060, but beside this it worked. But it look like unachieved. There was something missing... I had a servo model somewhere, let's use this to do something : what if I put a fake servo head on top of my ESC support : that would look like a servo :-D


and then, I decided to go for a wireless MSC in addition to the ESC and it's fake servo supporting it. Which means I need to do something to support the MSC . Fusion360, measure, model, print, try.


A modification later, I had my support and I even added a servo horn on my fake servo (it even rotate at will ).



Next was to put the wireless MSC in

And it's driving servo


Once here, I added the RX as planned. There is not much choice actually as the chain is taking some place...

I used my dremel to clean the resistors radiator. It's not perfect, but it is much better than what it was before. it's fixed in sandwich between the rear plates with the central wing support. 


And this joins the rear of the gearbox next


Next step is about the roll cage. 6 screws are added at that step, in 3 different lengths.


I added the wing to check it was fitting properly (well, I check on the two others, there would be no reasons for it not working but I still had to check.



Before I get to the roof, I need to paint the driver figure. And unfortunately, I do not have enough barbecue picks available to add it to current batch in progress... Which means I won't finish the car this week.

In the meantime, I did try to assess the weight.
Currently, it is still under the kilogram. I'm not sure how Marui measured the 1060g, because wheels alone, I believe we are way above that value. Maybe without wheels, but then the value should be lower than 1060g...


Any way, I had a doubt with the matt black chassis, to the point I even considered painting it, but at the end, with all those red touches, it's really nice...Looking forward to next week-end when I'll be able (hopefully) to finish this car...

Rooohhhh I want it🤪. Congrats Marc. 

I did not post late on Sunday evenning as I have my stuff to prepare for a work travel, but before going to bed, I worked a bit to prepare a driver figure before painting it.

I got a few Marui multipurpose driver figure reproduction  from OptimaHouse.


There is one thing bothering me on the helmet.  The face is separate and will allow for a nice paint of the face, and should even allow to put some black around the face. But the Helmet doesn't have the front opening. To make it more realist, I decided to make holes to have proper aeration for my driver, and they would look more natural for what I want.


On Monday I went for a 3 days business travel (my first since the start of the Covid era). As a result, I'm in an hotel room, and the only thing related to RC I brought with me are my caliper, the printed measuring tool and the Samurai chassis frames and my personal laptop with Fusion 360


I spend some time to look at the chassis again... When you look something long enough, you would see different things, to the point it become obvious... I saw clearly some tangent lines...


And another one, then another one, and another one... When you get more than one clearly visible, it sounds like it is no coincidence. I believe Kurihara San liked tangence, and used them to define some elements of the Samurai chassis...





I took the assumptions, added a few perpendicularity and parallels, and I draw some elements in a sketch based on the projection of the holes defined previously...


Next steps will be to extrapolate the chassis from there and the different offsets, and angles....

I was back home on Wednesday evening.
I tool the time to take care of the driver figure paint job, at least for the helmet...


On Thursday, I did a few five minutes job in between meetings to deal with the driver body(s) (I used a paint marker rather than a brush, it's just very much quicker - and yes, there is also some Hunter/Galaxy driver that were worked on simultaneously).


In the evenning, I put my driver together


Then it was required to put it in place. I noticed that my "wireless" MSC support might be slightly higher than the original one, as the driver figure is not entering as easily as on one of the original Samurai. 


To ease the entrance, I decided to cut the non Samurai part, and it was a mistake, as my driver lost his left arm in this accident . I took another body, and found a possible angle, so I painted it quickly (with abuse of the hair dryer).


Later on I had my driver figure fixed to the roof (not fixed yet to the roll cage). I trimed one of the body shell. I need to trim the wing as well, but the wing won't be used to run, as I intend to use the nylon printed wing for this...
I took few pictures, and for that I added my wheels





Obviously, there is still some work. I need to get thru the paintjob for the bodyshell and decide what I do for my wheels and wing.  I also need to fix the roof, and I also noticed that I need to rework my shocks as I suspect 2 of them having the small o-ring travelling with the piston (I may not have used the proper o-rings). I already set the steering on my remote, and the car ran slowly in my house, during which I noticed that the front tires touch bumper when they are fully turned. I may have to think about a smaller bumper for this single reason...

Last element: I put the validated Samurai parts on Thingiverse today (at very single exception of the fake servo, as I can't share the servo head, as it is the work of someone who did not published his stl). You can find all my parts here : www.thingiverse...le/designs

Still had a lot to do. I intend to change the motor of this Samurai at some point for something more fancy, but in the meantime, I decided to hide the 540 silver can...

And for that, I designed a motor cover which goes nicely with the gearbox, as it uses some of the Marui design principles...

Tadaaaaa!



It works, but if you want to run the car with it, you should move the shocks pivot ball on the 550 motor size position, as the cover extend the motor can (and I put it in my Thingiverse designs as well as few other things)...

Yeahhh it fits well and protect the holes. Nice

Beside the Hunter and Galaxy, I also worked a bit on the Samurai...
First, I suspected 2 of the shocks having an issue with the o-ring. It looks like the o-rings I used are too large. I decided to open them to inspect them.
Front shock was fine, but that was not the case for the rears. the o-ring was actually moving. I tried with o-rings with the lower tore diameter, and it makes it even worse. At the end of the day, I had spring and no longer shocks. Maybe the material of the o-ring is not proper. I raided the spare parts of my son's Super(Hot)Shot as it was the easiest to access to get 3 red Tamiya o-rings of the proper diameter. I will try to change them tomorrow evening.

In the meantime, I reorganized the cables in order to reduce the mess on the right side next to the pilot. Once done, I fixed the roof.




My driver is now in good place

Remains to do on this Samurai :
- resolve the shocks issue
- bodyshell paint job (I'm thinking to pearl white with red accent, and there will be probably two body shells and with different designs). For the wheels and Wing, I'm contemplating the idea of spraying primer and then pearl white (TS) on top of it, eventually with red accents on the wing... Time will tell, it's still under thinking.

Any case, the car won't run until I have an underguard to put on this chassis. But something is telling me it is going to arrive soon...

Really awesome work. I'm fan

I did not made updates on this thread lately...

First, shocks issue was solved with Tamiya red o-rings. They works much better, and the don't leak anymore.

I received the under guard from Optima House recently. I had the time to mount them during an evening, butt did not bother to take pictures at that time as it was a bit late... It's nice, well done and mounting perfectly (I check on one of the original Samurais and it works as well. I did not checked on Dadio designs chassis, as the Samurai parts for other builds are in a box under a lot of other boxes, but will do as soon as possible.




I had to finish this car. I trimmed the bodyshell and the free wing weeks ago (I ordered 3 Samurai body and wing and received 4 wings, one was free, and it goes with the body I had already). I had something simple in mind, and I wanted to honor all the parts mounted on the car, so I asked my friend [mention]optimaforever[/mention] an OptimaHouse logo to be able to make some masks and put the logo on the shell (maybe this will be a first for him to see his logo on a real car ).

This afternoon, it decided to procrastinate a bit on the Nichimos CAD models and to finish the Samurai. I won't detail the process, but will just put pictures of it...





And finally...


I'll let them cure for some time before making pics of the finished car...

The masks to spray the logo/name are brilliant, Really tidy look