Marui Hunter - My first buggy... Found one to restore :-) - and a Galaxy RS too :)

[silvertriple]

New series of deliveries this week


Some NIPs:

• Rear wheels

• Pinion gear set (and an Idle gear). May be I should have ordered 2

• Universal Join

• Differential

Other parts in cluster : brand new radio box cover an gear box covers (but from a Galaxy).
Another Motor Mount and some screws.

Still on the way : other screws and a NIP damper.

Added with parts in good shape I unbuilt on the two received chassis, and the remaining of the NIP already received (Front Arm set, Rear axles, Suspension set, Front wheels), I should have everything to rebuild 3 Hunters, at the exception of the roll bar, rear bumper, and radio box cover, pilot and body shells and missing servo saver and adjuster set for one. I'll order some parts on Shapeways to complete the third Hunter, will rely on a Tamiya servo saver for the third Hunter, and will improvise ajuster set using some other parts I have here.

On the body shell side, I did not start the cleaning. Attempt is for this week-end, as well as the cleaning of the chassis. That may take a bit of time, especially considering I may be tempted to play with the 3D printer when it arrives tomorrow.


PS : there is 3 groups with Marui RC cars on Facebook, and they are great place to find parts!

[Dadio]

Nice haul !

[silvertriple]

Did play a bit with the 3Dprinter I received saturday (ok, that was more than a bit). Got some prints done, but that was a journey. Got back to Hunter activities later today only, so it did not moved as far as I expected intitially.

Bodies went to green hell around 16:30.



Glanzer is a very good product for this. Less than 2 hours after, here is the white/blue body



It will be longer for the red body, but it is promising...



The one who gave the trick said 24 hours to 48 hours. It looks in good path, even on the red one. I'm not sure I'll be able to do something with the red one as the wing holes are too big, but with the 3D printer, I should be able to solve this...

A+
Marc

[silvertriple]

Got more Glanzer delivered today in the afternoon while I was in meetings (why it is always happening this way?). Decided to launch another bath (full bath this time) for the two bodies and the driver figure.  Put the filtered glanzer and additional ones in the bin.

While doing this, I was thinking to the end of this exercise as the filtering was quite diffficult. Searched on thingiverse to find a funnel with integrated filtration to print, and launched the 3D print, and ordered tea infusion buckets (English men won't like it, but hey, I'm french, and I don't take much tea, and this will have a practical use).

In the meantime, the driver head is already clean...


Will let the bath goes till later tonight, when I'll decide if I make it longer or stop it. in any case, I will have to wait the print ending and as well the delivery of the tea buckets I'll de-assemble to make the filtering... Sounds like a plan!

[silvertriple]

Body shells status


Bath lasted 72 hours. I got an awful work day yesterday, and did not had the time to take care of it earlier, and it was almost the same on Thursday.
I did not have too much hope initially for the red one which was painted from outside. It will have to be painted from outside apparently.
The blue one is in much better shape, but there is still some blue traces here and there... And the stickers suffered from the long bath. It's in better shape than expected, but I'm not sure what I do with those. On the body itself, i will try to remove the remaining blue traces with paint killer and with a knife...

The driver"s body is on the other side like new


Let's see where it goes...

[silvertriple]

Paint killer did the job and helped me to finish it. The bottom of the body will require recut, but it was cut lower than the cut line. Not sure what I do with the stickers, some are quite damaged.

The detail examination of the second body shell shows traces of repair, it must be painted from outside anyway and in any case, wing and body can't be attached together without some inventive solution... I will find a way.

[silvertriple]

Designed a part that should do it if my measurements are correct. Exporting the STL and looking forward for a test print. It it works as expected, I'll add some details on it to make it fitting even better (I believe we need to have something entering in the recess, but I prefer to have this tested for measurement first.

[silvertriple]

After the test print, I checked with the chassis...





Status:

• The gearbox cover is not symmetrical, I need to review the recess on the left side, while it is useless on the right side

• holes for the links fixation are not very far off

Modified my work in Fusion360 to take those elements into account...



Print is in progress, results later...

[silvertriple]

After a few adjustments (to reduce the width of the inserts going into the shock towers), here is the result:



Fit is perfect... Only thing left is to use another material to print the definitive parts.

And I'll check as well how a Galaxy rear end is made to confirm it is applicable as well for a Galaxy...

[silvertriple]

Went a bit further on the shock tower reinforcement to build a prototype for an repair attempt for broken shock tower.

It will help me to define the solution, as I need to check multiple things. I have a idea in mind, but will have to verify it is feasible. In the meantime, this part can be use to reinforce non broken shock towers. It was tested yesterday night, and did not have the time to post about this earlier...





I tested it on the 3 proper chassis I have and it fits in all the case...

Material is currently PLA. But I intend to print this either in PETG or ABS (PETG is probably easier to print).

Next step is to design the lower parts... I still need to think about this, and it may require a modification of the part you see on the pictures, as I may need to complete the inside of the shock towers, at least partially. That said, measures are proper, so I believe i'm in the good direction...

[matt1ptkn]

Wow, great progress! Removing paint from RC bodies is such an unpleasant and messy process. Looks like your results came out well.

[Dadio]

That's really coming on , the more I look at it the more I think you should combine the reinforcement with the gear cover as one part ?

[Coelacanth]

What I remember from the Hunter and Galaxy is the 2 rear mounting "ears" for the gearbox being very fragile and always cracking. Since you're making considerable effort to strengthen the Hunter parts, I would consider improving that, too. I'm digging your work...Marui cars have more weak links to count them all, and it's great we now have the technology to fix those flaws!

[silvertriple]

That's really coming on , the more I look at it the more I think you should combine the reinforcement with the gear cover as one part ?

Well, I thought about this, and looked in details on the 4 chassis (included a broken one) I have in hands currently:

• I believe threads to mount the gearbox cover would not resist efforts from the suspension... Only way to get this working would be screw crossing the chassis end to end. And it would require nylon nut to fix it...

• I didn't break the suspension on my Hunter, but the under gearbox cover was eaten by oilless bearings at jumps/jumps reception - ultimately the idle gear died due to this. The threads were the cause for this : the one fixing the under gear box cover around the axles. This is the reason why I believe the existing threads won't do it to fix the suspension.

Ultimately, for force partition for a non broken chassis, that should be enough to do a link between the two shock towers to avoid to break them. For a repairing shock tower, the target is to replace, but the more I think, the more I believe the right strategy is to have a part replacing the shock tower on each side, with a way to fix it from under the chassis, and locked by the M3 screws that is used for the pivot for the damper - I may need more analysis for the Galaxy, but the problem is similar in some ways...

What I remember from the Hunter and Galaxy is the 2 rear mounting "ears" for the gearbox being very fragile and always cracking. Since you're making considerable effort to strengthen the Hunter parts, I would consider improving that, too. I'm digging your work...Marui cars have more weak links to count them all, and it's great we now have the technology to fix those flaws!

The ears from the gearbox, I see what you mean... I'll consider this later on. But before that, more urgently, I would consider improve the motor mount fixation threads. on the four chassis I got, at least 2 got some damaged threads here. My approach is to work on the functional structure first. I'll tackle the cosmetics after this

Thanks anyway for the feedbacks...

[Coelacanth]

I would think fixing mounting ears that are prone to cracking is more than a cosmetic change, as both Hunter and Galaxy RS I worked on and restored had those ears crack...but yes, mounting ears that aren't cracked also look better.