the answer is: Marui Hunter (resto)

[Lonestar]

Then it was time to see what happened to the cheap, but period- and range- correct electronics which I had dropped in there almost two decades already...

first check (in French):




Also with a few surprises... Made in Korea back then was almost an insult



Everything's gummed up inside... some wd40 fixed it, at least temporarily... but this shouldn't be considered a "fix", really!

Then again, the all-expected moment:



woo-hoo!!! It's alive!!!

[Lonestar]

After brushing the last bits of dust off the car (and the radio, actually!!!) this is what it looks like under the skin.





Time to put on all the stickies now. I absolutely SUCK with putting stickers on. Thank Goodness, the good ole Funco-like body has mostly flat surfaces

this buggy exudes old-skool-ness! The lettering on the tires was such a PITA to do years ago, but it really makes the car - I love it!







(tbc- conclusion coming soon...)

[duckhead]

That's the hint I was talking about

OtherMakes.JPG

A subtle, yet obvious hint!!! Totally missed that one.

The build is coming along nice, looks good!

[Lonestar]

Nice, I'll look forward to your resto. After restoring my brother's Galaxy and currently working on a Shogun, the Marui cars indeed each all had major design flaws and bad weak links, they were all quite fragile. They were really good runners though, until they inevitably broke.

Absolutely - gorgeous looks that in some cases can even hold a candle to Tamiya (think Super Wheelie, Big Bear, and my good the Samurai was soooo good looking) but terrible engineering... hence why so few runners are left now!

[Coelacanth]

I agree...the Samurai was a home run, appearance-wise. I think Marui followed that car up nicely with the Shogun, another pretty car...but then, IMHO, they went a...different direction with the Ninja.

[Lonestar]

I agree...the Samurai was a home run, appearance-wise. I think Marui followed that car up nicely with the Shogun, another pretty car...but then, IMHO, they went a...different direction with the Ninja.

The Ninja came before the Shogun

[Coelacanth]

Right you are! Still, a different direction...good thing they backtracked.

[Lonestar]

Well, I actually love the Ninja... it's one of my all-time favourites. Such a killer looking buggy. I have an NiB one and one in the resto pipeline. I don't care how it runs really, because just like the hunter I will never run mine To be clear, in the mid-80's no plastic car was working well anyway. Crap, nothing worked well back then, other than the RC10 and the Ultima/Optima, and even then these two had to get a LOT of hop-ups to get them to perform. All I care about the Ninja is that sleek black body with red accents (pinstriping, rims, shocks...) - fantastic!

Anyways - end of the Marui Hunter project. Conclusion is, nothing new under the sun for Marui... These looked great, with a fantastic, seminal mid-80's buggy appearance and superb box art. They were well distributed, in Europe at least, and clearly were benefiting from the market momentum created by Tamiya, and they happily followed behind with superbly designed boxes, similar dimensions, a somewhat reasonable product range, etc... They didn't quite perform on the track as expected based on their looks though, and were crippled by reliability issues, which means other entry-level vehicles a la Hornet were running circles around them by the end of the 5-mn mark, because they were still running Still I have a very soft spot for that buggy because it was one of my very first exposures to the RC-car culture as a kid.

On to the next project now!

[matt1ptkn]

I love the Challenger 260 radio. It was the best I could afford bitd. I have several now that I still use in a few vintage runners, and now that everyone else uses 2.4, I rarely get any interference. They really lack many of the electronic adjustments that we're accustomed to now, though. Lovin' the progress! Keep it up.

[Dadio]

Great to see this finished and safely on its shelf ! How did you solve the broken mono shock mount in the end ?

[Lonestar]

Great to see this finished and safely on its shelf ! How did you solve the broken mono shock mount in the end ?

haha thanks! Yes, the shelf is where it belongs, really...

To fix that broken mount (and hence the chassis altogether), I used something like that:



and I *know* the first time the RR wheel moves up, the thing will snap

Cheers!
Paul