Finally pulled the trigger early last year and I immediately tracked down some uber-Avante parts to add the appropriate amount of:
Here's what I decided on to dress it up (ignore the motor plate in the pic).
Of course, knowing me, everything went out for some color via anodizing, hence the motor plate shown earlier with the dress up parts. I also did the rear shock mounts and a few other aluminum bits from the kit. (ignore the rc10 parts in the first pic below).
Here's my build progress so far (shown as I was about to install the 2nd ball diff).
My observations so far? Well honestly, I'm not enjoying this build. It's my first Tamiya since my Hornet as a kid and this is a complicated bitch. The instructions are at times very cryptic. Right now I'm stuck looking for some compression washers lost somewhere in the bags and bags of parts with no rhyme or reason for their bag association. Bag B? Bag D? But you need screw "BD4", wtf. Some of the parts use their actual name (i.e the output shaft to the center drive shaft) and other times it's a vague shaft "BE5" which doesn't help since it's in a bag with 4 other shafts and a bunch of screws, bolts, pins and other crap.
Add to this that I'm substituting parts/upgrades on the fly as I build and I'm not a Tamiya experienced builder. Like the torque splitter setup took a looong time. Eventually after some searching I realized the instructions had an error!
http://www.tamiyaclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=72192
If you don't have access to their site here's the diagram:
sumb**ch
So the build is going...... but I've never had one I can't wait to finish for the final product, but really want to skip to the end because the build is so painful to get through.
I will probably build it with the stock motor and esc, but I was thinking of putting something brushless in and running it once or twice. We'll see, but with the amount of ABS plastic in this thing, no wonder they're known as brittle and breakable. Imagine how good this could be in nylon or delrin plastic. And also jeez, the gearing leaves me scratching my head. Could we possibly add more planetary gears and other complication and drag?
Ok rant off, will post back with more progress soon.
The body is a subtle play on the gold and yellow anodizing, you'll have to see soon.
