TOPIC:

Colors! There is an infinite of possibilities... I had to color the parts before the builds...


I made the counts before actually starting this, in red parts, I have one single part missing, and in grey parts, much more, resulting in my choice to do full colored printed set... After all, that was the  initial plan...

I did a scan of the driver figure of the Big Bear

It's not perfect as the left arm/hand is almost joining the body making it very difficult to scan. I an ideal situation, the arms would be detached from the body. If ever I find a Big Bear driver figure in NIP, I'll rescan it... In the meantime, I'll do a test print to check how is the result with a resin print...

Today was a very productive day (or maybe should I say yesterday, looking at my clock)...

Frist, I put the white golden Eagle on a chassis... The chassis was already assembled (it arrived this way). This car is very unlikely to run...


... unlike the black golden eagle which remains my test bed for gears... I just went for a red conversion. The fact is, I had red parts, and just found in my set of parts the one missing piece telling me I could have mounted in original parts... But those red parts are rare and worth saving, for the time the car will finish her life on the shelve. But since I like red, as it goes nicely with black, I mounted the full set of nylon SLS red parts... The car ran last year with some ABS printed parts and it will run now with Nylon printed parts...



Next was the White Toyota. I used the 6V chassis, with the grey parts. unfortunately, it's not close enough to the original grey to my teste, but still, it's more in correspondance with the original car than with black parts (and for those, I'm at least missing the wheelie bar in grey in original parts)...
Chassis assmbly went nicely, and for this I used a set of original gears. Again, this car is unlikely to run (it's there to have the 13 Maruis on a picture).



The shelf looks like this now (yes, there is the 5 super wheelies in one single picture)


After that, I could have stop there, but this was not enough. I had the parts laid out for almost another build, so it was time to do, and it won't be my daughter's car, as a motor pinion is missing, and is coming tomorrow (or today)...
I started out the build, and at the end, the only key missing element was a screw, a very specific screw, which is used as shaft for the rear train... I know it would be missing a few weeks ago when i found a usefull tool in a local shop : a tube cutter (3-22mm, just what I needed). It was not very expensive, so I took it, specifically thinking about those very simple use cases...

After a few rotations, I have a spacer, exactly at the right dimensions, and this is really perfect.


The assembled chassis went under the Mitsubishi body...




I still need to take care of the bumper, and the steering rods (I'll have to check tomorrow, I should have some somewhere). And overally, I'm very happy with the bodyshell, it is still visible that it is printed, but much less compared to the Nylon PA12 MJF version...

This morning, I separated the parts for the 4th Super Wheelie to reassemble... My daughter car will be a runner, and the original gearbox which came with the car was heavily damaged : I decided to go for a printed gearbox with printed gear set. That will be the second test bed...


Then I needed to take care of the bumpers, CJ-7 like for at least two cars...
I have a few damaged bumpers able to do the job...


My plan is the following : a printed part to go on top of it, and a printed drilling template to make sur I can put the part in place and glue it in the right place...
 

I drilled the bumpers while the top parts are currently printing (resin)

Time for another build while the bumper parts prints are ongoing


We go full pink for this one


There is going to be a lot of pink


Hopefully, with this, my daughter won't say "not enough pink"


I just have to drop in a rx and a battery, and she will be ready to run once I have sorted the bumper...




Only waiting for the Toyota Land Cruiser and Big Bear stickers before going for a full Marui family picture (I'll probably do an extended one - need to see if I can drop Super Wheelies arms in a Big Bear to make a Datsun pick up. The CJ-7 bumpers will be sorted soon as the print is finished...

Bumper print as per plan...

Next was to paint them...

No, I don't like super wheelies, I love them



We just have to wait for the white Toyota Land Cruiser and the Big Bear stickers, now... I'm a bit late on my plan as I do need also to rebuild a 44B Hilux before next week-end...

Today, some stickers arrived from Down Under, courtesy of my friend Johann (aka yogi-bear)... This is just a sample, but it's on really nice and thin material and super easy to apply, like it was on the Mitsubishi...


I applied a set on the Big Bear bodyshell, and the result is really nice...



And there is a super cool sticker on the set, which is not really original, but I could not help to add it on the car, because I feel like Johann is sponsoring me, here... I wished he had some white version as well so I could put it on the Mitsubishi as well...

The Big Bear is almost done. I have a few wheels, and I hope to be able to pull 4 wheels with tires in ok state to be mounted on the chassis. I'll take care of this during the week...

Then, it was time to deal with the Land Cruiser...







Again, the stickers material is very nice... Super easy to apply even in the recesses or curves...

Big Bear wheels!


At first sight it looks like a score... But no, it's definitely not. Those wheels were accumulated with the different chassis and cars I got among this project (and that doesn't even include the first Big Bear which had modified rims to suit Lunchbox tires).
There is a total of 12 wheels in this box. Among which 11 have part of the tire. The top 6 are visible on the pictures, and 4 of them are in much better state than any of the others. They have been clearly repaired alredy. 4 others might be in state to become repaired tires. And the last 3 will serve as donnor for repaired tires...

At least that is the plan. The first priority will be to work on the 4 nicest wheels, to make sure we have nice rims with those...

4 wheels were cleaned... And the Big Bear has its original wide look... It's wild.




It took the place of the runner on the shelf...


It will be time to do soon a single picture with a lot of Marui cars

And just for the sake of comparison... I put the original Big Bear next to my test bed relying on Custom printed rims (t's definitely not made to look alike) and Lunchbox tires...




The Big Bear tires are larger, and their sides are quite soft. I guess running lunchbox tires is definitely making the car easier to run, and as well with lot of benefits (autonomy, less issues with the gears, easier to rotate)...