Marui Shogun Restoration

[Coelacanth]

I can't remember either, and they sure do look like old Hotshot or Supershot tires. I picked them up at the hobby store where I worked back in the 80's. No, they don't last long, that's for sure. These were stored in a Ziploc bag all these years.

I got to work coming up with a repair for the rear bumper mount that had one side broken:

The plan was to fabricate a little piece of Kydex to bolt down on top of the remaining unbroken (but warped) mounting ear down onto the rear bumper mounting posts, and put some kind of spacer on top of the left side post where the broken mounting ear used to be. After some careful measuring, filing and drilling, I think it'll work out pretty well, and at least be a bit more sturdy than simply re-mounting the rear bumper with only the remaining unbroken mounting ear. The repair job looks pretty good. I'll probably trim it down to better line up with the gearbox.

I also got to work fixing the rough job the original builder did on the body. The front wheel cut-outs, front body mount and antenna hole weren't too much trouble, but that mangled rear body mount hole was a mess. I decided to Dremel out a nice clean hole to remove the mess, and will glue on a Lexan repair piece underneath, before giving it a fresh spray of black paint.

[Dadio]

Is the gearbox ABS , if it is it can be glued perfectly with acetone , acetone actually melts ABS so using it as a glue is like welding it , have you replaced any other grey ABS parts ? If you have then you could use a section of the replaced part to make an exact copy of the bracket and use acetone to fit it , you can even literally dissolve some ABS in acetone to make a paste and use the paste as glue .

[Coelacanth]

Is the gearbox ABS , if it is it can be glued perfectly with acetone.

Thanks for the idea, but unfortunately the mounting ear that was broken off is missing. It really is incredible that the Marui designers figured the rear gearbox--especially the 1/8" thin left side--would be a good place to locate an ABS plastic bumper mount. Marui cars are known for their fragility, it's a wonder any of them survived at all.

[Coelacanth]

It just seemed wrong to reassemble this car with the ugly red plastic Ninja shocks it had installed originally. I don't even think I would've reinstalled the original yellow plastic craptastic shocks, if it had them. Gold aluminum oil-filled shocks and some more gold hardware are just what King Midas ordered! This rare car just deserves better, IMHO.

[clintf]

Looking good, definitely keeping an eye on this restoration. There don't appear to be a whole lot of Maruis around these days.

[naushad]

I've restored a few of these buggies. Have 2 shoguns and 2 ninjas.

The rear gearbox is a pain for both models - very hard to find now NIP and the rear tabs being fragile as you've found. Essentially, with the motor pretty much in contact with the gearbox, the heat dissipation is next to non-existent so the plastic melts deforming the gearbox. The tolerances in the gearbox is such that such deformity makes it less smooth. Apart from the issues with shims, I won't be surprised this is what partly led to the gearbox not running smoothly when you rebuilt it. I recall early having to find good rear half from the rigs I bought over the years! It follows that the drivetrain probably won't cope with a mod motor.

Conversely, the front gearbox I've found less problematic - possibly because the motor isn't attached to it!

[Coelacanth]

Thanks for the info, naushad. The word on Marui RC cars in general is that they were decent models that competed with or outperformed models in the same price range (i.e. Tamiya Grasshopper, Hornet, Frog, Hotshot) but were all plagued by fragility. Every Marui car had some major weaknesses. That's why there are so few survivors for us to restore.

I got to repainting this body. I figured it had decent RC paint like Pactra, and since it was mostly good and needed only some touch-up to cover up some areas of chipped or flaked off paint, I got some leftover Tamiya black and sprayed over the existing black. The body was originally painted with the common "lazy black everywhere" paint job, including the windows. Unfortunately, not long after I sprayed on the black overcoat, I could see the Tamiya paint was reacting with whatever was already there. In those areas like the corners, I was able to wipe up sections with a toothbrush.

I supposed the original paint was therefore NOT Pactra, and began soaking tissues in DOT 3 brake fluid and left the bunched-up tissues on the body shell. After several hours, I was able to remove large portions of the original black paint with a toothbrush, X-Acto knife (on the inside) and my fingernails (on the outside). I also discovered there was a LOT of black overspray on the outside of the body...something you wouldn't really notice with an all-black paint job. I've been at it for almost 2 days now but I'm almost finished. It takes a lot of patience because each round of DOT 3 tissue soaking takes hours of waiting before you can brush or scrape off more of the paint, but I'm actually glad. Now I can do a nicer paint job with good paint and have clear windows. I'm no fan of box-art, especially not the original box-art design with silver areas to go with the black & gold, I don't think silver works with black & gold. I'll probably come up with something that's mostly black but maybe I'll add some subtle gold trim or gold pearl.

[coxbros1]

Keep updates comin!

[Coelacanth]

After a lot of painstaking black paint removal, most of it overspray on the outside of the body that was obvious when looking at it over a white piece of paper, it's ready to be repainted. I'm lucky to be able to salvage this original body, even with a few cracks and flaws, and not have to buy a repro body.

[Lonestar]

After a lot of painstaking black paint removal, most of it overspray on the outside of the body that was obvious when looking at it over a white piece of paper, it's ready to be repainted. I'm lucky to be able to salvage this original body, even with a few cracks and flaws, and not have to buy a repro body.


Body_PaintRemoved.jpg

Congrats for getting to that point... lots of patience involved

[Coelacanth]

Painting is finally done! I had a major setback following my own stupidity, only brushing on 2 thick layers of FasMask (instead of 3 or 4) and peeling off most areas of the mask was a painstakingly tedious, frustrating ordeal requiring many hours of X-Acto knife cutting and scraping of paint and mask, and several subsequent touch-ups. OMGawd that wasn't fun.

Well, I don't do box-arts, because it lacks imagination and creativity, and also because I don't like how the original box-art has silver sections that I don't think contrast nicely with the black & gold sections. I try to somehow bring out the body's lines and accentuate them in a way that does it justice. Here's what I came up with for this Shogun's salvaged, repainted body. I'm waiting on a sticker sheet from MCI, but I won't be putting all the box-art-suggested stickers back on, only the ones that I think will improve the esthetics without obscuring the paint job. Next thing to do: Take care of that repaired rear body mount section with the big round hole.

[Dadio]

That's come out really well , all the stress was worth it for the result !

[RC10resto]

Yes, worth the effort - looks great.
Nice save

[Coelacanth]

The body repair of the originally mangled rear body mount section is done. It's not picture-perfect, but a lot better than the way it was before:



I already ground out a largeish circle to get rid of the original damaged Lexan, everything except a bit of a crack that ran rearward. I didn't want to totally remove the crack because the hole would've ended up being too big. I think I ended up with a fair compromise.



I found a piece of Lexan with a curve that was very close to matching the inside of that part of the Shogun body, then painted it black.

I used Shoe Goo to stick on the repair patch to the underside of the body, and since it's hard to get a clamp in there to firmly press on the patch until the Goo cured, I used a couple hard drive magnets on opposite sides to keep it tightly secured for 24 hours. I work in I.T. and every time I get a hard drive crap out, I remove the magnets. These are the best fridge magnets ever! I even use them inside my Grand National's transmission and oil pans to keep any metal particles from flowing around the oil. They stick on so hard, you practically need a screwdriver to pry one end up, and remove them.

[Coelacanth]

The finished body mount repair looks a lot better now; repair patch from the inside and outside: