R.C. Cars!

Here they are, just arrived: The Raybrig NSX 2000, and the Rover Mini Cooper. Both are 1:10 Scale, and both come with Motors, but no Radio Unit or Battery Pack... I will have to purchase those sometime soon. As a bonus, both came with mechanical Speed Controllers.. I may choose to upgrade to electronic speed controllers some time in the future. We shall see.

Here we have the collection of parts for my Raybrig NSX 2000. There are quite a few of them.. but the only part that concerns me is the body.. as I'll have to be painting that, and I don't want it to look dumb.

Here is a sample of the instructions. I can teach myself French and Japanese while building this thing! Awesome! Also, there are a lot of steps. It's a bit more complicated that I was at first expecting, but that was a good thing. I didn't want it to be a few pieces snapping together than it's done.

Here's the Raybrig in the box. The tires are freaking sweet. I'm thinking of getting spinners for it. No, I'm not.

Yea! The Radio controllers came! Also, a bunch of battery packs.. Only instead of a battery charger, they sent me a powered engine starter... We um... we don't need that. In case you were wondering.. these controllers are 'teh 4w3s0m3!!1!'

We're finally starting, and Rachel is excited... she wants me to stop taking pictures so we can actually start them..

Okay, we're starting... Here we see my instructions, and a number of bags of parts. I'm making sure I have all the parts first.

Rachel just wants to start.. and she's growing impatient of my picture taking.

Here's the first step! Exciting!

Rachel's first step is rather similar.

As you can see, it's not too complicated... then we saw that we had to grease many parts (the grey'd parts, with the grease tube pointing at it.) That's when things started to get messy.

Here is where the first of about a thousand "Rachel and Ron screwing" jokes is inserted. Try to come up with a new one for each new picture. I'll try to keep track. Screw Joke #1!

Here Rachel already get to start working on the main chassis of her car. I don't get to work on mine for a while still.

Here we are with parts in place. In the small circular opening in the middle is where the motor will go, to turn that collection of gears. The wide hole is for the battery.

Here's my work thus far. I have to make two of these.

Here they are, completed.

And here is Rachel's... a bit farther along than me, it would appear. She's quite pleased.

Rachel was pretty jazzed when she finally had assembled a number of moving parts, and her car was beginning to look more "car-like"... so she was moving it around like a car, and shaking it to get the parts to move...and I went to take a picture... but took a video instead, and then posted it for all the world to see. Awesome!

And here's a shot of the chassis assemble with the moveable parts.

And here's a shot at my stuff... I'm still a bit behind.

I had to star measuring distances betwwen the two ends of those small arm-like pieces to make sure they were made just right.

Screw joke #2!

And now, I have created my robot!

Here's my robot waving hi to you.

Here Rachel has the front steering assembly almost completed.

Here Rachel has added the motor to her car.. and has the 2nd half of the main chassis set as well.

And I finished my rear drive assembly.

Here we have the two parts of the chassis put together.. and her creation is beging to look quite car-like.

And now she's adding shocks... you can see to the left that I've created my 2nd robot.

And here are my two completed drive assemblies.

Screwing Joke #3!

Here we have my "bathtub". on the left goes the battery, on the right, the motor and speed controller assembly... The front and the rear: drive assemblies.

Meanwhile, Rachel has finished her shocks, and we called it quits for day two.

Here's what mine looks like.. after I set the assemblies in place temporarily.. I don't get to install them for another 10 steps or so.

Here's really where I'm currently at.

Rachel grabbed her glasses.

Okay, day 3, and time for the controllers. I had to look all over for enough batteries to fill this thing (8 AA), just so we could test things out and neutral set the servos. The controllers are 'teh aw3s0m3'.

Here's the parts I needed for this step: 2 servos, the reciever, power switch, a charged Battery pack, the speed controller, and the controller.

Remember that bit about the charged battery pack.. well thankfully the battery charger arrived today, and here it is.

Here I test out the drive servo, and it works!

Here again with Rachel's car, and the drive servo is now in place.

And my servos have parts attached and calibrated to center.

Okay, I now get to add my servos and radio reciever to the tub. You can see the mechanical speed controller up top connected to the speed servo. The one inside the tub will control the steering. Also, that orange knife is really sharp. You ought to be careful with it, or you'll cut your thumb.

Here we have Rachel, testing out the steering controls of her car. All appears to be in order.. (we both had it where when we first tested it, the trigger was controller the steering, so we had to switch wires.. it was weird..)

Rachel is now adding the radio receiver and speed controller to her car.

Screw Joke #4!

and Screw Joke #5!

Rachel is now making her tires.

And I'm preparing my motor to be added.

Rachel now has all of her servos, her receiver, and her motor all wired up.

And her tires have been assembled.

All that's left is to actually attach the tires, and paint the body, and this car is ready to run.

Remember that sharp knife i was talking about? this is the third time it got me. Not bad, just annoying. [Quite obviously, the knife it to blame]

Here's mine again.. I have the motor in place now... I know, I know.. I look like I'm way far behind. Progress begins to appear in a hurry here, though.

Now the front steering assembly is in place, along with tie drive shaft (silver).. that makes it possible to go on to the next step...

Here I have the motor and the steering servo in splace, and the front and rear drive assemblies.

...which is to add the rear wheel assembly. Now it's starting to look like a car. So I connected the speed controller, wired up the motor, and grabbed some batteries to give it a test.

And now the speed controller and speed servo [Along with the motor heat sync] are added.

It's a little dark, but you can certainly see the steering assembly operating. The motor was also spinning all 4 wheel locations quite nicely.

And now for the step that had me a bit nervous: creating the oil-filled shocks.

So here is my car now. My next step is to mount the speed controller and speed controlling servo, and then I have to make some oil filled shocks, which is bound to be a [messy] adventure. Then I'm on to tires, and body work.

There's the oil and the springs.

The pistons are in place, along with the rubber washers.

The blue rubber pieces are to seal in the oil.

Oil!

tissue paper for the overflow.

Blue seal is in place.

And I'm finished with the oil. Awesome.

And now the springs are in place

And the rear shocks are in place.

And the front shocks are in place.jpg

And here we are, all set to make the wheels.

Here's the parts: Tire, rim, and foam filling.

here we are in various stages of development.

And here we have it, just have to actually attach the tires, and we're ready for some body work.

Here's my car, put together (sans the shell) and you get a good look at the Mechanical Speed Controller in action.

I got a new Car shell!! After purchasing the cars for me and Rachel, I found the most beautiful car in the world: The Lamborghini Murcielago. After doing a lot of research, I found a shell size that'd work on my assembled chassis, and then afer doing more searching, I found the exact shell I wanted in that size. So I bought it, and here it is.. It came with decals, a spoiler, and special detailed headlight assemblies. I was pleased. The Lamborghini is on the left, and my Raybrig NSX 2000 is on the right.

Here is the instructions and decals for the new car.

There on the top are the specialized headlight assemblies.

Before painting, you need to wash the car bodies, and let them dry.

Here are those Lamborghini decals.

Here's a catalog of all the current HPI body shell types. My car is the second to the left on the second row from the bottom.

Hey! I cut the NSX shell, and there it sits , all set for decals and paint, and final side-mirror/rear-wing installation.

The Electronic Speed Controllers (ESC) arrived from Hong Kong!! These will replace the Manual Speed Controllers that came with our kits.

Step one is to remove the Manual Speed Controller (MSC). The MSC was made up of 1 servo, the resistor, the power switch, and the power board that connected to the servo with the small metal bar. As you can see, I've taken out the servo and the board.

And now I'm wiring up the ESC. First I moved the Receiver box, as there was more room for it, then I wired up the ESC to the Reciever and the motor.

And now everything is in place. Very nice! Hopefully my car will work better now.

Rachel is now working on removing her MSC.

And now that all of that is removed, she can add her ESC.

In order to seat the ESC well, we had to remove the old MSC mounting brackets, which required separating the two halves (front and back) of Rachel's car. Just 4 screws, not too complicated.

And now she it wiring up her ESC.

And Here is everything wired up and set.

The few times I've tested out my car on the ground, it has not performed well. First, the manual speed controller seemed quite intent on spinning the tires when it was in neutral. Small manual corrections fixed that, but did make me keen on getting ESCs for our cars, and they are just a ton better. Whenever I held the car and tested it, the tires spun quite well, and steering seemed good as well.. but on the ground, the tires just spun for a few seconds, then it quit, and the car would either jerk forward, backwards or quit, without any real indication of why. On the kitchen floor the tires stun a lot, and it shot forward for a few feet, then quit, then occasionally jumped back.. It seemed to accomplish little beside putting a ton of skid marks on the kitchen floor. With the ESC installed, I still wasn't getting any good results, so I decided to try it out on the sidewalk outside. While out there [with no results once again] Rachel spotted something. So we headed inside, and took this video.. Notice anything?

So, in case you didn't notice it, the Rear tires were spinning the opposite direction as the front tires. Now suddenly everything makes sense. I also know where the problem is, and how to fix it.. but getting to that area may prove tricky. I opted to flip the rear wheel drive assembly gears, as the front wheel assemblies has the steering assembly all hooked up to it as well.

First I had to remove the guard, then the whole rear wheel assembly.

After removing a bunch more screws, and the bar that connects the drive assembly to the tire assemblies, I was set to open up the drive assembly.

Here in the center is the gear that needed to be flipped. With that flipped, I could close it up, reassemble the whole assembly, and reattach it to the drive shaft and rear of the car. At this point my hands had gotten a good deal of grease on them, and I couldn't hold on to the screws very well.

Painting time is getting near.. I decided to start the painting with the Lamborghini shell, as it was going to be solid black, and all the others were a bit more complicated. I have already marked where the drill holes should go, and now I'm masking off the areas that are to remain clear.

Here we go.. the lights, windshield, side, and rear windows are all masked.

Here are the three shells and 2 chassis all set before any painting is done.

Here they are from the side. Paint is all set behind the mini.

Here are the light boxes for the lamborghini. I've masked off the three light areas, so I can throw some led lights in there when it's all done, and then light them up and through.

I've painted the first coat on the Lamborghini. Fear not, I painted them outside. I allowed them to dry a bit, then brought them inside.

Here we have the spoiler, rear bumper, and headlight boxes all painted.

And take a look at that. Sexy, no? It's the first coat, and I intend to do one more, then I will get rid of the masks, and I can take off the clear plastic film on the outside, and it'll shine like glass. How very exciting.

So, this is kind of unrelated, but whatever. I was going to drink this powerade that was in the fridge, but it was resting against the back wall of the fridge, and now half of it is solid ice.

I've now added the window masks on the NSX. This paint job is a bit more complicated, as I have to add a number of "fade" stickers to the outside, then mask off (based on those stickers) the top and bottom, so I can paint the top a special Blue-Violet, and the bottom Silver.

So now Rachel is working on masking the Mini. It turned out to be kinda complicated to mask these cars, because you can't really see on the inside (where the masks need to go) where the windows and border lines (Which are prominent on the outside) actually are. I tried outlining them with a red marker, and using that as a guide, and that worked alright. Rachel opted to look on the outside, while placing the sticker on the inside. That seemed to work well for her.

It did mean a lot of placing, then peeling off, and placing again.

Seriously, though, that car looks kewl. Next step, adding the fade stickers.

Here's the two cars, both masked.

Placing the stickers on the outside of the car is a bit of a tricky thing as well. problem is that the stickers, once placed, pretty much want to stay where they are. That means you either need to place them perfect the first time, or be content with crappy looking sticker placement. I went online to look for some help, and they suggested creating a mixture of water and a few drops of dishwashing soap, and spraying that on the car first, then placing the sticker, which should slide for a while.. then once it's where it ought to be, you can use a paper towel or something to dry the water away, and the sticker will stay. I decided to give it a shot. Here we have the spray bottle, the soap, and the source of my water.

Here is my working area. You can see Rachel in the back there, working on masking the Mini. The stickers for this car all have to be cut out by hand (boo), so I have the knife, and some cardboard so as not to cut up the table. Also, instructions, cause I don't want to screw it all up.

In order to put on the fade stickers, I had to peel up the plastic mask a bit. You can see the difference between the plastic sheet, and uncovered here.

So I sprayed the front with that soap solution.

And after some work, I got the first fade sticker in place, and dried the area.

Now I've got the first 3 stickers in place, and the front is all set.

The left side is now all set.

The rear fades are taken care of. I was getting a bit better at this point. These stickers are still a bit tricky, and if one is set a bit off, the rest of them start to sway a bit as well, as they all have to line up.

And now the right fade stickers are all set.

While I was working, I added masks for the headlights on the Mini. We'll have to figure out something to throw back there to house some leds, and then we'll have working headlights on that car as well.

Here he have it. 2nd coat is done, and I've removed the masks from the inside. I want to drill the post holes before removing the outside mask, but the masks have proved successful, at least.

I added the tailpipe stickers to the rear bumper, adn they look pretty hot as well.

Here I've single-handedly kept the masking tape industry afloat for another year while masking off the NSX. I taped off all the areas to be painted silver, and am set to paint this thing the special "Raybrig Blue" [It's really just Blue-Violet.. no need to get too excited.] Also, you can see the headlight pieces for the Lamborghini. I removed the top masks, and the rear masks, and you can see the openings for led lights, and you can see that it's rather shiny. The car will also be that shiny, once it's complete.

As you can see, all appears to be masked off fairly well.

And here I've painted the thing. It's a pretty slick color, I think. I'll have to paint one more coat of blue, then remove some of the masks, and paint two coats of silver, and then it'll be set to add decals.

And here we have it. It's very strange, in real life, the car looks mostly purple, but in images, it looks sky blue. I'm assuming the slash mixed with various bits of magic cause this to be.

I'm finished with the second coat of Raybrig Blue now, and you can see that it looks awesome.

I've removed the tape, and you can see that the lines seemed to have been pretty effective. Now to mask it for the silver.

Yes indeed, that looks sexy.

Now it's all masked for the silver.. this is a bit trickier, as there's the chance of some overspray. I tried to mask it off as good at possible.

Finshed with two coats of silver, and there you have it. Looking mighty fine, and ready for some sticker work, and adding of the side mirrors & air foil.

In a word: "Sexxy!"

Time to put the stickers on the NSX. I'm starting with the hood area.

Here are my two cars, both are done being painted, and now, the stickers (and the drilling..)

Here we are so far. Not too shabby. With just a few touches, it really starts to go from looking generic to looking 'teh awesome'.

I'm trying to get a shot where the car looks the way it does in real life (a nice purple color) but every photo makes it look sky blue.

More stickers going on.. you can see the spoiler and rear window are all set, and looking fabulous.

And here's the front view, before I added the winshield and side window frames.

And now, after I added the windshield and side window frames.

Looking pretty snazzy. I've finished the first of two decal sheets already.

on the left side below the cardboard you can see the side mirrors. Rachel and I went looking (and eventually found, obviously) some silver foil stickers to use on side mirrors, and I wasn't content with the silver stickers they included in the kit (top left corner on the sticker sheet). Now you can see the side mirrors reflect quite well.

Rachel now has her paint, and has masked off the top, the wheel covers, and the front grill.

She did and excellent job of masking off the areas. Hers was a bit tricky, as a lot of the areas she needed to mask off had ridges that went out, and made masking difficult.

I've now begun adding the ribbon type decals to the car, like that silver X on the rear, and the lines on the cap. There are quite a few of these stickers, and they're kinda tricky, as I have to cut them out by hand, and they're all fairly thin, and seem to want to break

Here's the hood after I've added most of the stickers.

And here it is with all the stickers for the hood added. I've still got quite a few on the sides to put on, and those will link up with some of the lines on the hood. So far, still looking good, I think.

Here we hasve the NSX with all the stickers on, and set for drilling.

Here's the Drill, and the two shells.

Small hole drilled for the side mirror.

Post holes and spoiler holes drilled on the Lamborghini. You're supposed to start with small holes, and gradually make them bigger so as to not rip the plastic.

Holes drilled in the NSX Spoiler.

And now the mirrors have been attached, and look pretty fantastic.

And now the spoiler is also attached.

With holes drilled, it's time to remove the plastic. And now the Lamborghini shines like glass... [until i try to pick it up, obviously.]

Very, very glossy.

Finished! I think it turned out great!

Here we have the Mini, with the Metallic Blue painted.. and the silver.. and the black. That Metallic Blue is awesome.

The metallic blue has little flecks of silvery glitter in it... I guess that's what makes it "metallic".

You can see the wheel covers are black, along with a thin line of trim along the bottom between the wheels. And the front grill is silver. The top is still masked in tape, but will soon be painted white.

The windows are still masked as well, obviously. There are quite a few stickers to be added as well.

That grill stands out quite well as well. The lights up front are masked, and are set for some real lights to get put in place.

Here's my Lamborghini with headlight pieces put in place. It looks pretty slick.

There weren't many stickers I wanted to put on this thing.. just the window frames, some grill stuff, the hood symbol, and the rear lights, but I ended up adding a few more to make it a bit less plain.

That rear bumper and exhaust turned out really good, I think.

Funny thing about gloss black. If you think about touching it, your fingerprints will show up on it.

There's that rear section again. I really like the look of that bumper piece now that it's attached.

Here's those headlights close-up. I'm going to be putting some LED lights behind there, to make this car "hella kewl".

Here's Rachel, rather proud, having finished painting her Mini.

I'll spare you the engine revving sounds...but believe me.. they were there.

Here we have it, The Mini Cooper, now that we've finished painting. That Metallic Blue is excellent.

You can see the headlights are clear, and waiting for some Lights to get installed there. That, plus the stickers, and this car is done.

Looking at the car close up, you can see where the backing of silver then black really paid off, as there are hints of both colors in places.. making it a bit more glittery, and making the blue seem a bit deeper. Very nice!

Turns out that this car was the most complicated one to paint, as it involved 4 different colors: metallic Blue, black, silver, and white, each with different masking areas.

Here's Rachel's Mini all completed with stickers and everything. It turned out spectacularly well. It just looks fantastic.

Here's a front on view. I still need to find some little flash lights so we can fill in the headlights with silver cones & bulbs.

The paint and the stickers really turned out great. Check out those tail lights

Here's the back. Those tail lights are stickers but they look like real lights

The paint job really shines. The white, the black, the silver, and the metallic blue... fantastic

Here we have both finished cars

I'm really pleased with just how great they turned out. Looking back through the older pictures, I gotta say I think we did a great job. They turned out better than I had even hoped they would.

Here's a rough check on size. They are the same scale, so the Raybrig NSX is a good bit longer than the Mini.

It's a good bit wider as well.