A '91 Stealth RC10 project

[XLR8]

Got the body painted today. I'm happy with how it turned out -- not perfect but I guess it's good enough for a runner.

I used some old paint I still had from bitd. I'm amazed this stuff is still good after roughly 30 years.

[mikea96]

Nice job that looks great!

[NomadRacer]

Awesome paint job. I still have some of that "old" paint... metallic green and a gold spray bomb, unused, plus a bunch of bottles of various colors.

[XLR8]

Thanks Nomad.
Yeah, I don't have any of the old rattle cans left but I do have about 25 or 30 of the little Pactra bottles and some have never been opened.
I was thinking about throwing them in the trash last year when I cleaned the attic - just figured they were no good. I'm kinda glad I kept them now.
When I started building and racing RC buggies back in the '80's, I went ahead and invested in a decent Paashe air brush (VL series) and I'm still using to this day. Works great.
By chance have you ever used Faskolor water-based paint?

[radioactivity]

Well Doug it's been a great journey watching you build this awesome car.
And oddly enough I just, a couple of weeks ago, was pondering if my old pactra paint bottles were still usable.
Guess I'll give it a try with my old Paasche. I got a new wing for my original RC10 and could paint to match.
BTW, I've used several bottles of Fascolor, 15 or so, and I find it doesn't bite into lexan as well as pactra, tamiya or duratrax solvent based paints or spray bombs.
That said, I'll probably keep using water based for the most part. No odor, easy clean-up and some really good colors. Createx (water based) iridescant green looks really nice.

Chuck

[XLR8]

Thank you Chuck.
Most of the decals are applied to the body and wing so hopefully it's looking a little more like a race car now. I plan to do the final reveal of the completed car in a day or two.
Yeah, so I don't fully understand their chemistry but I think the key to a seemingly unlimited shelf life for those old Pactra paints might be that they are solvent based (or what I would call "oil based"). As long as the lid is kept tight, who knows how long they'd last.
I can see how there might be some durability issues with water based paints but I think I may give it a try anyway - probably for my shelfers. Before Pactra paint, I was using some kind of specialty paint that was meant for lexan (can't recall what it was called), it remained flexible after it dried but it didn't bond well (perhaps similar to what you've described for Faskolor). Even after it had dried for a day or more, you could scrape it off with your fingernail. Once I'd discovered Pactra however, I never looked back. I have used some of the modern DuraTrax paints recently and they seem to be very similar to Pactra with regard to application and durability.
I'd speculate that you wouldn't want to apply conventional solvent-based paint over Faskolor but maybe it's okay to do the reverse. Would you agree?

[radioactivity]

Doug

Before mixing solvent based paints and acrylic (water based such as fascolor, createx) I try a sample on a scrap lexan I have cut off a body.
One rule would be to fully cure between attempts.

If I were to use solvent based over acrylic I would first LIGHTLY dust 2 or 3 coats before the final heavier coats.

I have, when doing a dip, first applied a transparent/transluscent light coat of acrylic to the underside as a tack or primer coat.
Then I dipped the body using a hydrovator solvent activator on the film with success. That put the hydrovator solvent in direct contact with the acrylic paint.
However... when I used Mission Models acrylic paint with the same method it started to delaminate, or release, when hydrovator solvent got on it.

Acrylic over solvent based paint , in my experience, has been far less likely to be problematic.

I initially thought the "hydrovator film solvent" would not adhere to lexan. I now lightly sand with 3000 grit for a better mechanical bond. The dipped areas on the Delta pan car for example.
But that is more of a dipping thing....


Long story short, they can work together, sometimes. I don't have a hard fast rule other than to test first.
Don't know if that helps. Just my experiences and failures. I have trashed a couple bodies and several small pieces of lexan experimenting.

Chuck

[NomadRacer]

Thanks Nomad.
Yeah, I don't have any of the old rattle cans left but I do have about 25 or 30 of the little Pactra bottles and some have never been opened.
I was thinking about throwing them in the trash last year when I cleaned the attic - just figured they were no good. I'm kinda glad I kept them now.
When I started building and racing RC buggies back in the '80's, I went ahead and invested in a decent Paashe air brush (VL series) and I'm still using to this day. Works great.
By chance have you ever used Faskolor water-based paint?

I tried Faskolor some years ago, investing quite a bit of $$ in it. I found that it didn't "bite" into the Lexan enough for me. I have, I'm guessing 20+ bottles of it. Anybody that wants it can have it for the price of postage.

[jbmeyer13]

Hey Doug,

Just saw this thread today. I finally received some parts I'd been waiting on for a while and have been installing them on our final version of the '91 car. Fred really did an outstanding job on the front end which as I'm sure you know is quite a challenge.

Your version looks great and as Fred mentioned it would be cool to see these side by side with the original some day. Curtis, Steve, Cliff were very helpful but didn't give away everything so there was still a lot of interpretation and revisions to get things right. It appears we used similar methods for the shock towers. I drafted in CAD, printed out and then cut a template from plywood. Used same for the chassis but instead used acrylic as the material.

It's always cool to see these projects come to fruition; congrats!

Justin

[XLR8]

Thanks for the valuable feedback guys.

I really struggled to get the chassis for this one as right as possible using mostly photos available here and from the Stealth book as references. I didn't use high cost materials so I was able to go straight from CAD print-outs to finished parts bypassing the plywood template stage. If I were using cf for this build, I would definitely have made templates.

The next one will use Niki's "replica" parts so I'm hoping it will be a little closer to the original. Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting started on it.

[XLR8]

I still need to solder motor and battery connectors but, otherwise, the car is finished.

The front body clip is mounted to the shock tower with a small lexan "L" .

For me, each build seems to get a little better. This is the most fun I've had building an RC.

[radioactivity]

Wow, just wow
That is great. Congrats!

Chuck

[jbmeyer13]

If AE had ever produced this car your body would have been perfect for box art

[sandkil]

Excellent work!
That is some serious time and effort put down to get it done. Well done!

[XLR8]

Thank you Chuck, Justin and sandkil. Actually, since the paint and graphics were Cliff Lett's, you might be right about AE using it for box art. Cliff's buggies are some of my personal favorites.
It's a shame AE never produce this car (although I can understand why they didn't). However, you'll find elements of its design in AE's later buggies.

A special thanks also goes out to Jake, Niki, scr8p, GoMachV, fredswain, jwscab, bluewormx, mikea96, sticksnpuck, panhead383, radioactivity, NomadRacer and many others for their inspiration and assistance with the build.