Back in black

 Two bottles of Rit dye and two hours later we have a black chassis and a few other bits.

Now to make the front upper deck and a few other little bits.

More to come once I fire up the dremel and cut even more stuff. Might even put a few dremel logos on the shell once I'm done as I've used it so much during this build.

It's done!

 The blue marble didn't turn out that great but the damascus steel/sliver marble came out perfectly.

 A few hours more of painting and it's done. I just need to add a few stickers and that's it. Not bad for my first time air brushing in about a year - 2 years.

Rather pleased with it. All I need now is a ton more stuff to run it then I can start racing pan car.

- Jeremy

It's time to get back to the dirt.

Okay time for something new and not onroad. The first class I ever raced was mod 2wd truck all the way back in 2007. It was a Duratrax Evader with a Venom 7.5t brushless in it, I was using 5000mah NiMH Venom pack and a pair of Proline Bow Ties on the rear. The rest of it was stock, crappy radio and all I somehow made it to 3rd in the B Main. I think that's been my greatest memory in RC so far. Now being a bit older now and taking things a bit more seriously. It's time to get back to the dirt. 

Welcome everyone to Project Ulfberht. ( It's a sword if you don't know. Wiki page and a good video on it. )

I’ve been a big fan of Jang’s rustler for years so that’s been a huge influence on this build but I can’t go too light weight as there is a weight rule locally ( 1725 grams ) so I’m not going to cut as much to start with. I can always remove more later on anyway. 

A few hours with a dremel and a hot knife and we get this. Just needs a final sand and I can Rit dye it.Now if you’ve noticed that slipper isn’t stock, well fully stock anyway. Though nor is it an Associated slipper. I want get an ST racing top shaft later on but this will do for now. Anyway, I wanted something better than the normal one and I wanted to use a better spur gear. So a few minutes with the drill and a vice to get this.

Half Traxxas and half AE. Now this was actually somewhat tricky to make with the lack of a lathe. I used a hand drill, 5mm and 4mm drill bits. You need to drill out the spur to 5mm to fit on the top shaft and also very carefully drill out the AE slipper plate. Drilling the slipper plate with it been held in a vice is tricky as you don’t want to scratch of bend the hole/tube but it’s the only way to hold it in a vice as it’s too thin to hold it any other way. So with the drill bit drilling into the hole on the other side, you’re drilling on two flat plates. The flat plates/flat spots are to hold onto the flat on the normal AE shaft. I guess you could also dremel the Traxxas one but more effort. I’ll most likely do it later on though.

The drill bit will bite very hard and it takes a lot of time to get to to cut right. Tapping fluid or just normal shock oil helps though. Now once you have those drilled out, you need to drill the little spring holder out to 4mm to clear the threads on the shaft. After that, just put it all together and you have a much nicer slipper clutch.

That's progress so far, an update will follow shortly.
-Jeremy

Paint time!

At last I have the body for the pan car. Really pleased with how sleek and smooth it is.

After about 2 hours of just making sure it was mounted right I started to draw my design. 4 hours of masking later I got this.

Now for the clear unmasked bit I'm going for a blue marble. I've never painted marble before so I did a test on an old scrap shell. The paint I used was the only airbrush blue I had so it's a peal blue/purple. It's rather nice though.

I'm going to use number 4 ( the roof ) and number 1. 4 was cling wrap laid and 1 was it dabbed.

2 was aluminum foil dabbed but it wasn't the affect I was going for. 3 was just plain if you're wondering.

http://www.hpibajaforum.com/forum/showthread.php?s=dad63f17270e85c391a6cf798a8661ee&t=90272
http://www.rctech.net/forum/13016464-post22924.html
http://www.rctech.net/forum/painting-designs-graphics-photography/71825-marble-effect.html
http://www.rctech.net/forum/13017592-post22929.html

Are some good guides and tips for painting marble.

Also keen eyes will also spot a new project in the background. That shall be posted soon once I have enough to post here.

9/5/5 MRDA

Pretty crappy photos but they're okayish enough to post. Good to see a friendly comp too, nice driving by all and I drove a few near perfect set up cars so the local scene has for sure stepped up a notch. 

Now I just need a new radio and some parts to get the VDF back out.