What's your favorite & least favorite steps when building a new kit?

[Bottom Feeder]

Favorite:
Building transmissions, specifically ball diffs. They are like the heart of an RC car and I love the attention involved in assembling them correctly.

Least favorite:
Oil shocks. I used to enjoy doing them but nowadays I dread them. A lot of messy work and they rarely bleed properly the first time. It's a nice sense of accomplishment when I'm past that step in the manual. I have two new cars (a Worlds Car re-re and an Axial EXO Terra) that I've had for years and are still waiting on the shocks. Add that to the two sets of anodized 10T shocks and two sets of original gold buggy shocks from projects that still need to be disassembled, cleaned and rebuilt. Ugh.

What's yours?

[Frankentruck]

Favorite: the building. All of it.

Least favorite: the body paintwork. I have no painting ability and my masking aways leaks.

[GoMachV]

Im with ^
The only part I hate is the body. I hate trimming, I hate painting, I hate stickers....

[juicedcoupe]

Oddly enough, I like building shocks. With vintage AE shocks, bleeder caps make it much easier.

I dislike painting, especially trucks. Masking the bed and roll bar area drives me nuts. And I just so happen to be working on one right now.



Not necessarily new kit related, but I enjoy rebuilding brushed motors.

Instead of building a new kit, I get more satisfaction by bringing a sad piece of junk back to life. Kinda like a rescue.

[jwscab]

i don't mind shocks these days. I think the things I dislike most are prepping for paint and glueing tires. I like painting, and I like trimming, but coming up with a paint job and the tape work kinda sucks.

transmission is probably most fun.

[Coelacanth]

I like most of the building too...I love dialing in the steering & suspension, eliminating any play with aluminum spacers, getting the shock dampening perfect so the car plants with no bounce when dropped from any angle (except upside-down, lol).

I never look forward to the body trimming, and my projects often stall out completely when it comes time to paint. So it's evident those are the tasks I look forward to the least. Part of it is being a perfectionist, and I can't do a car and turn anything over to someone else to complete those tasks. It has to be me doing the painting or it's just not totally my car.

[JosephS]

Least favorite part for me is setting up turnbuckles. Getting them just right is a pain. Mounting up tires with foam is a close second.
Favorite part checking parts for free movement, spinning the front wheels is the best.

[TRX-1-3]

Favorite:

Mounting the sub-assemblies to the chassis.

Least Favorite:

Shocks. Specifically, threading the ball ends/links onto the shafts.

[GoMachV]

Shocks. Specifically, threading the ball ends/links onto the shafts.

I used to hate that part too, but after buying a set of shock shaft pliers it has become really easy and much less cringe worthy haha.

[jkelm24]

Favorite:

Diffs / Trans


Least Favorite:

Threading ends to turnbuckles and shock shafts

[GeneralZod]

My favorite: sniffing the tires

dislike: assembling the shocks. messy and bleeding them takes several tries to get them right.

[TRX-1-3]

Shocks. Specifically, threading the ball ends/links onto the shafts.

I used to hate that part too, but after buying a set of shock shaft pliers it has become really easy and much less cringe worthy haha.

Without the speciality pliers as a kid (now as an "adult" also), it's either needle noses and a rag or a wrap of servo tape around the shaft to aid the finger grip while you thread them on. This hatred of shafts and end links also extends to turnbuckles as jkelm24 points out, but at least you can hold those with a wrench without worry of marring like is the case with a shock shaft. Regardless, the only thing that comes close to the thumb fatigue of turnbuckles and shock shafts is marathon playing of Mike Tyson's Punchout on the NES. Hang in there Little Mac!

Sushikamakazefujiamanipponichi? Anyone?

[Dadio]

My favourite thing starts before it arrives , downloading a PDF of the instruction manual and reading it before the kit arrives .
You guys need a set of taps for pre cutting the threads on shock fittings , I use an M3 tap a lot when building kits if it's an M3 into plastic , it stops the stretching and splitting down the line .
I hate paint !!

[RC10th]

My favorite - Putting the tires on the rims of a new kit first.

My least favorite - shocks

[CrazyRC]

My favorite is painting the body. I'm not a big fan of cutting the body, but there isn't much better than pulling the overspray film off for the first time.

My least favorite is turnbuckles. I can't stand setting up turnbuckles.