TOPIC:

Donor car arrived a couple of days ago so I started the initila teardown ... the body was always going t go in the bin, but at least with all the gaffer tape "repairs" on the inside I don't have to feel guilty about it...






Pinion missing (16T or 20T AV/0.6mod), I have some spares between those so will be ok, motor screws are not right ...




Inexplicable bleaching to underside of top deck...




White plastic blts (including the wheels) are all very yellowed, I'll need to weight for the height of summer to treat it all with peroxide ...




Screws look right & the lower deck looks vintage, so I'm not sure what's going on here ...




MSC is all present (though not neccessarily fixed together), re-wiring will be a must though ...






...

Back in the day, Tamiya thought it was a good idea to cut the RX antenna short, and solder it to a tag to connect it to a metal antenna ...





959 practice bumper from Lars A lot of the scrapes will come out I think - but what's more interesting is the perfect alignment between the outer holes & the blanked off circles on the RM mount ...






3 out of the 4 chassis spacers were broken ...





So I made my own from 10mm aluminium bar. They won't stand too close an inspection - and it was easier to drill the holes in middle 90 degrees out of where they are "supposed" to be ... and I also don't seem to have many photos of the process, just cut, faced/sized, and finished

Nice handiwork.

tamiya remade the antenna soldering with the hummer metallic aerial

Regarding color differences of the upper and lower decks.
I've had a few of those light-colored ones as well, and I assume they are from different batches of FRP.

Deck posts: I'm guessing someone ground the posts to make room for a bigger battery, possibly an old 6V Tamiya hard case? (and that's what caused them to split)

-Lars

larbut wrote:

Regarding color differences of the upper and lower decks.
I've had a few of those light-colored ones as well, and I assume they are from different batches of FRP.

Deck posts: I'm guessing someone ground the posts to make room for a bigger battery, possibly an old 6V Tamiya hard case? (and that's what caused them to split)

-Lars

It's a specific area of bleaching on the top deck, I can't see that getting through Tamiya quality control ... difficult to say what did do it, unlikely to be UV damage given the location, ditto for battery leakage ... maybe outgassing from a decomposing balloon fitted around the RX?

I agree that the flats on the posts are to fit a 6v flat pack, even though that would have been something of an anachronysm, 7.2v stick packs having been available for around 3 years before the release of this kit - and being shown in the manual - but they are as they left the factory according to the manual, and your example in the database The look to have split/unravelled from the hole in the middle, so a combintaion of age & inapropriate torque?

Jonny wrote:

larbut wrote:

Regarding color differences of the upper and lower decks.
I've had a few of those light-colored ones as well, and I assume they are from different batches of FRP.

Deck posts: I'm guessing someone ground the posts to make room for a bigger battery, possibly an old 6V Tamiya hard case? (and that's what caused them to split)

-Lars

It's a specific area of bleaching on the top deck, I can't see that getting through Tamiya quality control ... difficult to say what did do it, unlikely to be UV damage given the location, ditto for battery leakage ... maybe outgassing from a decomposing balloon fitted around the RX?

I don't know what may have caused the whitening, but I agree, they probably were black when they left the factory. If I remember correct, I tried black shoe cream, but without much luck (mine were not as white as yours though). My guess is that the fibers inside are showing through the gelcoat, where the gelcoat has been too thin.

Jonny wrote:

I agree that the flats on the posts are to fit a 6v flat pack, even though that would have been something of an anachronysm, 7.2v stick packs having been available for around 3 years before the release of this kit - and being shown in the manual - but they are as they left the factory according to the manual, and your example in the database The look to have split/unravelled from the hole in the middle, so a combintaion of age & inapropriate torque?

I stand corrected, the flat area is of course as they should be

Maybe that the whitening is due to solvent evaporation of a plastic like servo or cell and stocked up side down with sun Shine?

I was wrong, it's the topside of the upper chassis plate that's got the bleaching, it had been fitted upside down to hide it. Probably don't need to look any further than UV as the likely culprit.

Not much progress here, the chassis has been stripped & put through the ultrasonic tank, white bits have also been in a jam jar full of 12% peroxide on one of the 3 sunny days so far this year, they didn't come out sparkly white by any means but they've gone from heavily nicotine stained looking to racing white. Lots of gas was being produced so I know it was working




I wanted to test my "recent" purchase of mk.2 Acoms RXs & servos, but ended up doing a stupid. Having rewired the MSC I plugged a battery in & was greeted by smoke & fizzing sounds - turned out that because I hadn't put the MSC completely back together, one of the plates was partially free to move, and it did - creating a short & welding itself to the adjacent one. It can only have been connected for a couple of seconds (if that), but got pretty hot - adding an L shape burn to my hand & the smell of burning bacon when I disconnected it.

There wasn't any internal damage & neither of the cells showed any sign of swelling so I've replaced the affected bits of wire - but still, I don't think I've done anything quite so foolish with an RC battery since my 'teens