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For this car, I'm focusing on building a good off-road Optima, and modernizing it as much as possible. Not quite the extensive modding & fabricating as with CYANide, but it'll be the opposite end of the spectrum as a box-art. It's also going to be a runner.

I've been acquiring aftermarket hop-up parts for the past several months. Some of those parts included some gold anodized Option House parts. I'll probably disappoint a few purists here, but those won't stay gold for long. Besides, some of the gold parts had the anodizing scratched or dinged anyway, so why not?

I sprayed on some yellow-cap Easy-Off oven cleaner and removed the anodizing. This resulted in some charcoal-grey-colored parts. I wet-sanded those parts starting with 400-grit and finishing with 1000-grit sandpaper. I decided not to go any higher (it's possible to get an almost chrome-like gloss by wet-sanding with 1500, 2000-grit and then rubbing compound & polishing compound) because I wanted to make sure the anodizing sticks well.

Looking good. What colour is it going to be?

based on the title, my guess would be something along the lines of purple......

based on the title, my guess would be something along the lines of purple......

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

jwscab wrote:based on the title, my guess would be something along the lines of purple......

Don't worry, it won't be garish, I hope it'll be well-executed. The Lizard King cometh!

Cant wait to see this one Marc.

Go with a midnight plum color. (Hate to date myself and make such an obscure reference) but if anyone remembers the move "The Wraith". The Demon car in that movie was midnight plum.

Coelacanth wrote:

jwscab wrote:based on the title, my guess would be something along the lines of purple......

Don't worry, it won't be garish, I hope it'll be well-executed. The Lizard King cometh!

Bring on the Green

I don't know no shotgun skank!!!!

Kudos Jwscab!!!

purple aint that bad

I already have a paint scheme planned...Barney will be sporting something I haven't seen before on an RC car (which was the same motivation I had for painting the Zebra Optima)--scales.

the steering knuckles seem to be some sort of aftermarket product.......right ??........

minimini wrote:the steering knuckles seem to be some sort of aftermarket product.......right ??........

Yes, Kyosho Lazer ZX-5/Duratrax Maximum ST alloy knuckles. The kind you see here used to be sold at Tower Hobbies but I can't find it now. Hot Racing & 3Racing make them; Hot Racing's part number is LZF2106, which will work, but the kingpin standoffs have to be filed down. The other one (that I de-anodized above) doesn't require anything, it's a perfect swap. I just can't find the header card for it anywhere...

Here's a comparison of stock, Hot Racing, and the unknown unit (sorry for the dark pic).

EDIT: Bingo, I found out it's a Duratrax DTXC9953, alloy knuckle for the Maximum ST/BX/MT. This one is better than the Hot Racing one, the quality of the anodizing was better and it requires no modding to fit. If you look around and are lucky, you can find them for a lot less than $29.99.

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXSD47&P=V

I finished polishing the rest of the aluminum parts tonight. As before, I started with 400-grit and worked my way up to 1000-grit. The finish is shinier than satin but not as shiny as chrome. I'd probably have a belly skid-plate too but by now, you probably all know how *that* went down.

I have a few more parts coming in that I need to prepare before having it all sent in for anodizing.

So will you go with Trinity purple (see pic) or something darker?