Sand Rover, Tamiya's unlovable child

[Dadio]

Metal part much better, looking at what happens to the shock towers on Marui Hunter/Galaxys, it's a good things. You may also think about reinforcing the two pillars where this is fixed, because the right may be a weak point compared to the left side where the motor plate will do the job to help it...

The holes for the mount go right through the chassis and are used underneath for the gearbox bottom cover , I'm planning on replacing the short self tapping screws for long bolts that go right through bottom to top , the mount will be stronger as well , this was mostly just to check the geometry , from the picture the wheels look like they are far more angled than they are .

[Dadio]

One of the unsatisfactory things about the Holiday Buggy chassis is the lack of damping , now at the rear it's very easy to replace the rear FRP transverse leaf spring with coil over shocks but up front like the Grasshopper it just has pogo springs and very little space, I've been wracking my brain as to how to fit dampers , I've looked at an inboard mono shock system akin to the Yokomo 834B rear ,a tiny pair of coilovers , all sorts of ideas but they all needed either the body or chassis to be cut about and I was really looking for something that used existing screw holes and no cutting , then I had one of those daft ideas , I remembered cassette players with "soft eject" , most soft ejects used a high viscosity oil to slow the rotation of a geared shaft connected to the door , just like the pivot point on the front suspension of the Holiday Buggy ! So I dug up some 500,000 diff syrup and tested the idea , now it's bound to very slowly leek but didn't all early 80s shocks but it works really well .
https://youtu.be/OqGbOkIgmGc

[Dadio]

I can get moving again on this as the body has finally arrived , not the seller Time Tunnel Models fault as he was very helpful but Tamiya's glacial parts supply chain
Now it's time to fill some of the holes made in the body that Tamiya added to fit the re re , they left the screw holes for the front body mount but rather annoyingly the area of body where the rear body mounts are on the original chassis has been cut away . I'm going to just fill the front holes the old fashion way but I'm going to design and print a rear section of the body , this will be a free download for anybody else to use .

I also noticed another annoying thing to rectify , I've fitted original windscreen posts and although they fit they are twisted on an angle , I don't remember the original being like that , I've tried to take a picture , you hopefully can see the slot in the windscreen post not aligned with the slot in the body , dremmel time probably

[Dadio]

First draft

[Dadio]

Finished the rear body hole patch , it's not perfect but as it's going to be glued and filled before paint it will be fine .
[attachment=0]20230418_161647.jpg[/attachment[attachment=0]20230418_161658.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=0]20230418_161658.jpg[/attachment]

[Dadio]

The body fix is now a free download on Thingiverse

[Dadio]

Rear body mount patch is epoxied in , filled and sanded , next will be the holes in the front bonnet , not going to do anything technical there just glue a plate in behind and then fill the holes .

[morrisey0]

next will be the holes in the front bonnet , not going to do anything technical there just glue a plate in behind and then fill the holes

Just a tip, from my experience with the HB body, is to make sure whatever backer and filler you use is as flexible as possible. If the SR body is the same material, it is super flexy and needs materials that will move with it.

[Dadio]

next will be the holes in the front bonnet , not going to do anything technical there just glue a plate in behind and then fill the holes

Just a tip, from my experience with the HB body, is to make sure whatever backer and filler you use is as flexible as possible. If the SR body is the same material, it is super flexy and needs materials that will move with it.

Luckily for me the SR body is the more traditional Tamiya body material like the Rough Rider , Sand Scorcher etc , possibly polystyrene like airfix models , not the polythene type material of the HB that's basicall like teflon when it comes to paint or glue

[Dadio]

Today's job was to fill the unwanted holes in the front of the body , I glued in a piece of plasti-card behind with epoxy then used UV printing resin to fill the holes , painting a thin layer then curing with a UV light and repeating till the hole is filled , its very quick and the resin once cured sands at a similar rate as the plastic of the body . Once filled it's block sanded flat .
The body is now ready for undercoat , then it will be a little more finishing probably before paint .
I also need to do something about the windscreen posts .

[Dadio]

Lots of wet sanding and filler primer later and I'm ready to start the next bit .

A lot of full size Beach Buggys have a side faring under the body edge streching between the wheel arches and i want to try and make some for the Sand Rover body .

[Dadio]

Preliminary side pod design , going to print one and see how it looks .

[Dadio]

Dead chuffed , nailed the side pod first time , well almost , I was a little conservative and kept it further back under the body than needed by a couple of mm , in these pictures I've used three layers of servo tape to secure it , I'd always planned on servo tape but only the one layer .

[Dadio]

A bit of sanding and priming , needs a little more work but getting there .

[Dadio]

These pictures do it no justice , still miles from finished but it needs to dry before I go further and I had to rework the body a bit and I don't want the side pods too far ahead .