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Well, we did a Frog build last winter, so I found a Lunchbox kit for the kids for this winter. The motivation factor has definitely not been as great this year, mainly due to the fact that they each have a Slash and a Grasshopper as well as their shared Frog to play with. Oh, and a Blade mCX.
We've made some progress lately and now that it's starting to take shape we may get rolling a bit faster.... I hope. We've been talking about a Mystery Machine themed paint job, still TBD.

Christmas morning:


Santa remembered a lexan body as well:


First chassis steps were easy:


"Hey, this is just like my Grasshopper one you always make me rebuild!":


Gearbox is attached:


The shocks rock:

This is awesome - my daughter started toying around with my VLB in the yard last summer, she's 2.5y.o... The VLB is pretty much indestructible, the only two weaknesses are the front rims that sometimes just break away from the bearing are, and the dreadful body posts that snap as soon as you just look at them too hard... a lexan top helps, but still. Note that I have some brand spanking new alloy body mounts for sale as I had stocked up on them a while ago... "just in case".

I love this thread This is all what the hobby's about, 10y.o. playing with toy cars (we're all 10y.o. at heart aren't we?)

Paul

its cool they are into it. I hope my boy will be to when he gets a little older.

Rick- yep, it's fun watching them learn.
Paul- did you have the mounts listed in the BST? PM me details.

We're having fun with it... and have got a few of the kids' friends into rc as well.

Awesome

The Midnight Pumpkin and Lunch Box have always been one of my favorites. So much so that I was thinking of starting a message board just for them. Although there is a lot to talk about it probably wouldn't be that active. Could prove to be a good source for archiving information though.

Small update... a local racer has been trying his hand at painting and volunteered to try something on the kids' lexan body.





As soon as we get the front end assembled I'll get some more pics.
Thanks Neil!

That looks awesome!
The kids are going to love driving that one.

Nice, Thats one of the better Mystery Machine paint jobs I've seen. I would hate to scratch it.

Lowgear wrote:I would hate to scratch it.

With an 8- and 10-yr-old driving??
I'll keep the pictures unscathed.

The only thing he couldn't do was the black outlining. I had given him this to go by: http://www.roadtransport.com/blogs/big-lorry-blog/Mystery%20Machine3.jpg
I think he did a great job and the Fascolor paints by Parma were very close.
Thanks for the comments guys. The body has encouraged the kids to get back to the build. Now I just have to find the time as I started a Venom Creeper build last night myself.

That is awesome. The Lunch Box was my first real RC that my dad bought me when I was a kid. One of the best presents I have ever received to this day. Your a cool Dad

do yourself a favor and reinforce the body mount holes with some thicker lexan on the backside. back in the day, i had a parma bigfoot shuttle body on my midnight pumpkin. it only took 1 or 2 rollovers to rip the body apart.

looks awesome by the way.

scr8p wrote:do yourself a favor and reinforce the body mount holes with some thicker lexan on the backside. back in the day, i had a parma bigfoot shuttle body on my midnight pumpkin. it only took 1 or 2 rollovers to rip the body apart.

looks awesome by the way.

I had the same thing happen to my shuttle, I loved that body.

For the vonats this past year I ran the parma lexan body on my LB. I took 1" squares of scrap lexan(.030" I think) put a hole in the center and sho-goo'd them behind each body mount hole. That body survived a lot of abuse with no cracking at the mount points. I broke 3 of the 4 mounts though.

aconsola wrote:For the vonats this past year I ran the parma lexan body on my LB. I took 1" squares of scrap lexan(.030" I think) put a hole in the center and sho-goo'd them behind each body mount hole. That body survived a lot of abuse with no cracking at the mount points. I broke 3 of the 4 mounts though.

that's what i did......... after i ripped up my shuttle. and just like you, because the body was stronger, i ended up breaking body mounts. so then, i took some associated mounts, and shaped them to match the LB mounts, and attached them to the chassis. never broke another mount. broke the chassis though.

keep beefin' stuff up, and you'll always find the next weak point.

Thanks guys. I have alloy mounts coming from Lonestar and I was thinking of taking the Traxxas plastic body post washers and attaching them to the inside of the body. I need to find some shoo-goo I guess. I would think that CA would just chip the paint off. The destruction of this body is inevitable though.