Marui Samurai 4WD - Another SilverTriple's journey...

[silvertriple]

That's looking really cool , with the driver figures have you considered getting a scanner and having your avatar driving ? With a cheap Xbox Kinect scanner and Reconstruct me software you can scan your own head , print it and be the driver the early version Kinect scanners are cheap as chips and the software is free

Nice idea Have a kinect on the Xbox One here, and one of the xbox 360 which my kids where playing with at my parents place... I'll think about it

[Dadio]

That's looking really cool , with the driver figures have you considered getting a scanner and having your avatar driving ? With a cheap Xbox Kinect scanner and Reconstruct me software you can scan your own head , print it and be the driver the early version Kinect scanners are cheap as chips and the software is free

Nice idea Have a kinect on the Xbox One here, and one of the xbox 360 which my kids where playing with at my parents place... I'll think about it

Just another bit of fun to take up your time

[silvertriple]

Still had a lot to do. I intend to change the motor of this Samurai at some point for something more fancy, but in the meantime, I decided to hide the 540 silver can...

And for that, I designed a motor cover which goes nicely with the gearbox, as it uses some of the Marui design principles...

Tadaaaaa!



It works, but if you want to run the car with it, you should move the shocks pivot ball on the 550 motor size position, as the cover extend the motor can (and I put it in my Thingiverse designs as well as few other things)...

[silvertriple]

Beside the Hunter and Galaxy, I also worked a bit on the Samurai...
First, I suspected 2 of the shocks having an issue with the o-ring. It looks like the o-rings I used are too large. I decided to open them to inspect them.
Front shock was fine, but that was not the case for the rears. the o-ring was actually moving. I tried with o-rings with the lower tore diameter, and it makes it even worse. At the end of the day, I had spring and no longer shocks. Maybe the material of the o-ring is not proper. I raided the spare parts of my son's Super(Hot)Shot as it was the easiest to access to get 3 red Tamiya o-rings of the proper diameter. I will try to change them tomorrow evening.

In the meantime, I reorganized the cables in order to reduce the mess on the right side next to the pilot. Once done, I fixed the roof.




My driver is now in good place

Remains to do on this Samurai :
- resolve the shocks issue
- bodyshell paint job (I'm thinking to pearl white with red accent, and there will be probably two body shells and with different designs). For the wheels and Wing, I'm contemplating the idea of spraying primer and then pearl white (TS) on top of it, eventually with red accents on the wing... Time will tell, it's still under thinking.

Any case, the car won't run until I have an underguard to put on this chassis. But something is telling me it is going to arrive soon...

[silvertriple]

I did not made updates on this thread lately...

First, shocks issue was solved with Tamiya red o-rings. They works much better, and the don't leak anymore.

I received the under guard from Optima House recently. I had the time to mount them during an evening, butt did not bother to take pictures at that time as it was a bit late... It's nice, well done and mounting perfectly (I check on one of the original Samurais and it works as well. I did not checked on @Dadio chassis, as the Samurai parts for other builds are in a box under a lot of other boxes, but will do as soon as possible.




I had to finish this car. I trimmed the bodyshell and the free wing weeks ago (I ordered 3 Samurai body and wing and received 4 wings, one was free, and it goes with the body I had already). I had something simple in mind, and I wanted to honor all the parts mounted on the car, so I asked my friend @optimaforever an OptimaHouse logo to be able to make some masks and put the logo on the shell (maybe this will be a first for him to see his logo on a real car ).

This afternoon, it decided to procrastinate a bit on the Nichimos CAD models and to finish the Samurai. I won't detail the process, but will just put pictures of it...





And finally...


I'll let them cure for some time before making pics of the finished car...

[Dadio]

That under guard is excellent , really looks the part .

[silvertriple]

That under guard is excellent , really looks the part .

It's really looks like an original part... It works well with the Samurai...
Unfortunately, it won't work with your chassis (I checked) : it is fixed at the rear end (bottom screw of the gearbox), at the front end (bumper fixations), and in the middle under the battery with a insert that serves as a carrier for M3 lock nuts. That insert suppose the presence of the recess in the chassis as there is on the original chassis...

[silvertriple]

I took some pictures yesterday evenning before going to sleep . I could not wait more to see the final result... I wanted it to be simple and effective, and I'm very happy with the result.











The wing will be used only on the shelf, there is a Nylon PA12 SLS printed wing for the runs. I need to find a can of TS-45 for this.

[silvertriple]

Spend yesterday the full day at Belley, for the Belleysane Vintage RC event...


The Nichimo made its first off road track run. The ground clearance is quite bad, and the car quite slow... But it turns well... It may be much more efficient on modern tracks... It is much boring to run than others in the current state, so it made only one run...

The Samurai made also its first run yesterday. I love this car, it reached the top of my favorites. It's light and very efficient with the central diff set properly to give a bit of traction... I really love the behavior of this car. Unfortunately, I got an issue during the second run, while I was starting to increase the rythm... Nothing to do with the printed parts, or the transmission : a gear in the servo is stripped so I'll need to change that one (I had a servo in the box, but anyone who build a Samurai knows that changing a steering servo on a Samurai is not an easy task)...

After this I ran all the other cars, except the Hunter and Galaxy... We had 14 cars there, and 12 of them ran. Beside the broken servo on my Samurai, my son almost teared his Supershot down to parts on the track, but nothing lost and the car is back together...

[Dadio]

Sounds like a great day , you ran 12 cars and only a stripped servo gear to show for it Your not trying hard enough how was the Shogun on a track ?

[silvertriple]

Ninja Coors and Shogun are far for run ability, I did not even thought about getting them in this event...

The Samurai was simply great, very nice handling... The central diff was set to have a little bit of traction, and I believe the track (which I'll put pictures later on) was exactly the type of ground in which the Samurai is in its natural element (no Astro here, just dirt within very vintage style)... The cars that I run the most are the Turbo Optima, the Javelin and the Turbo Scorpion, and they are pretty much solid cars, making rounds around the Tamiya (when those are on the track, between heavy maintenance sessions)

[silvertriple]

Ninja Coors and Shogun are far for run ability, I did not even thought about getting them in this event...

The Samurai was simply great, very nice handling... The central diff was set to have a little bit of traction, and I believe the track (which I'll put pictures later on) was exactly the type of ground in which the Samurai is in its natural element (no Astro here, just dirt within very vintage style)... The cars that I run the most are the Turbo Optima, the Javelin and the Turbo Scorpion, and they are pretty much solid cars, making rounds around the Tamiya (when those are on the track, between heavy maintenance sessions)

[Dadio]

Heh I just realized the car in the picture I thought was the Shogun is actually an Optima , think I need new glasses

[silvertriple]

The track:



As you can see, this is the typical track you would find here back in the eighties (the club in Belley is mainly targeted for leisure off road).

There is also an onroad track (asphalt pacman type). I did not have the M06 with me as I did not really considered it enough vintage to be qualified for the event, and both my on road Kyosho are not yet ready, so I did not run over it this week-end.


We went there this morning again, and we raced. The category was rigid axle and 540 silver can... I had two cars ready for that : the Hornet, and the Lunchbox, and my son had his Super Storm Dragon and his Lunchbox. Both of us took the Lunchboxes.
The race start was moved 15 minutes earlier due to the weather : org team wanted to have the race before the rain...

The race was a lot of fun : in case you put your cars on the roof, only the driver can get it back on the wheels, so, you have to run. I really thought I lost all chances when someone pushed me out at the first turn... I went down from the podium without even running, put my Lunchbox back on the wheels, and ran calmly... The thing is with rigid axles so imprecise that it is a nightmare to keep them on the track, many cars where actually waiting for their owner to come back to put them on their wheels... At the end of my first lap, I was still far from the race head, but at least, I overtook many other racers (no joy at all when they are on the roof, but they put me on the roof in first place, lol: ). Then during the second lap I had some nice fight with my son, we went head to head for 4 turns, before he missed one, and got his Lunchbox on the roof... And I continued, with not much traffic except funny obstacle to avoid... Did not know what I was in my position, when the judge shouted "please finish your lap" while I was going to cross the line... My Lunchbox made it to the 3rd place and that is my first RC racing podium !

After that my son did try hard to break his Supershot, and we may have to get new chassis parts for him, as per what he showed me at the end (he is trying harder than me, I think I need to get him a solid Kyosho rerelease at some point)...

Overall, that was a lot of fun, with a lot of vintage rc cars lovers... And some very nice builds, many discussions, and people asking me a lot of things about both my Nichimo Spirit FF and the Marui Samurai...
I can't wait for the next event

[silvertriple]

Heh I just realized the car in the picture I thought was the Shogun is actually an Optima , think I need new glasses

The position of the car made you think it was a Shogun, perhaps, with all other Marui cars around...

The Turbo Optima is really really nice to run on that track. The 10.5T motor gives largely enough Speed for the straight line, and it was actually the first time I made it run on anything else than my garden track. Much more efficient than the Javelin. I was doing rounds around the TopForce, Avantes and other Tamiyas, and it was quite fun to race against a Yokomo Dogfighter (yeah, your favorite one), and the few Schumacher re-releases... We did not have much chance to race the Tamiyas, as they were very much often under maintenance... But that was pure fun at the end.

There was a challenge yesterday, I opted to used the Turbo Optima, and I believed I would have better picked the Nichimo Spirit FF, actually : that was opened to any offroad 1/10, with series, and the qualifications series were on the on-road track, and only the final was on the off road track. The on road track is quite bad for the off road cars, and I was scared of breaking something, and was pushed out at turn 2 because one of the racer had an issue with his steering servo and took me out with him. Once the car was back on the track it was already too late to get back on the Schumacher running alone, so It was finished... When I say I would have better choice with the Nichimo, I would probably have a much easier turns and could have got back to the Schumacher... But the race conditions were unknown before we got called for the qualification series...

Overall lot of fun and I did not sleep enough I have some work on the Samurai (Steering servo change is a nightmare ) and some severe checks on my son's Supershot ahead this afternoon (and some cleaning work as well)...