Model Kit Builder

The Mini-RC Family …

Klaus Weitzel — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:34:19 +0000

I don’t know what it is with those little buggers, they seem to have a biological live and reproduce … here are all my current cars, starting with the Carson (and Radioshack) XMODS:

White Supra Gen1 Chassis with Mini-Z Tires

Yellow Nissan Skyline Gen1

Metallic Gray Mitsubishi Lancer VIII on Evo

Blue Honda Civic Coupe Gen1 with Body Kit

Black Hummer H2 with Off-road-Kit

Orange Ford F150 Truck with slammed wheels

Orange 2009 Dodge Challenger on Evo

Honda Acura RSX Gen1 Switchback with Body Kit

Did I forget anything? No … I didn’t forget anything but I omitted three cars and some bodies.

A dark-gray Gen 1 Skyline
A silver Evo Skyline
A blue Evo Ford Mustang 06
some trucking Bodies (Hummer H2, Nissan Titan, Ford F150)

Why did I omitt them? The Mustang is still “New in Box” while the Gen1 Chassis of the Skyline is used for a 3rd party Subaru Body, which is very much XMOD … and the silver Evo Skyline is being transfered into the project car for this site.

Now, besides the XMods there are also the Mini-Z cars, not as many but a bit better:

Nissan Skyline 2000GT on MA-010 AWD Chassis

BMW M3 Coupe on MR-02MM ASF Chassis

McLaren F1 on MR-02MM i-Series Chassis

Nissan Skyline GT-R on MR-02MM ASF Chassis

There is still some important stuff to do though. For the ASF chassis I do not have a working transmitter. i do have a KT18, but it needs to be fixed, since the steering return Pin broke inside the case. This is a common problem with those transmitters and does not require much to fix.

The AWD Skyline does need a set of new rims, although I like the style of the current ones. The original style I cannot apreciate somehow. The BMW is, from what I can see a Body by i-Waver and was actually lowered a bit by me, I just thought it sits to high to look great. The McLaren currently has a broken H-bar and the mirrors are missing, but replacement for the H-bar is on the way … and the Skyline? Let’s leave it at that and make it a training body … come to bodies, I still have a couple of bodies, but they will be featured a different time.

Then there is only the Mad Bull Monstertruck to talk about … but di I really? No, it’s been covered already on this Blog.

Lately …

Klaus Weitzel — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:36:26 +0000

… I have been a bit lazy with this site. The reason for it is simple, I am creating content for my new site Mini-RC-Tutorials. Besides creating the content there is quite some other things to manage, especially getting the design ready.

The designer did a really good job in listening to my ideas … OK … reading my ideas from the mails I forwarded. Thanks a lot for this to Maikel, the Dutch designer creating this!

First and final Design Suggestion

There are still some minor (and I really mean minor!) changes necessary to then get this design ready for the content management system WebsiteBaker which I am using on that site. Apologies for the small image, but I won’t give you more untill the site is finished.

Getting the Skyline onto the Mini-Z AWD Chassis

Klaus Weitzel — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:18:39 +0000

The Skyline of the previous post was not meant to sit on the AWD chassis, but it can be a nice fit and a nice drifter as well.

There is only very little work involved to make the Body fit the Chassis. This work needs to be don at the front- ans side body-clips. The front body-clip is a bit to wide for the AWD mounting post, so you need to sand down the sides until it slides in without force. You’d rather take off a bit more than required so the the symmetry of the set-up is kept instead of more on one side than the other and the whole set-up is asymmetrical.

the same applies for the side mounts which are glued inside the body. They needs to be sanded down a little bit to make the body slide over the chassis like intended. If you have done this, you should have a nice Body for your drift-car … and it should look like this:

Shakotan-Boogie Jun’s Skyline on MiniZ AWD

Currently I still have the original Wheels of the Subaru on the car, but I do think it does look quite nice. I still have a set of 6 spoke AWD wheels here, but they are intended for the Yellow X-Mods Skyline.

I also have a set of Upgrades for the chassis lying here, the “Graphite Front and Rear Gear Box” by 3racing. The installation will be covered on my new site www.mini-rc-tutorials.com once I get around to do it.

Shakotan-Boogie Jun’s Skyline for Mini-Z

Klaus Weitzel — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:04:17 +0000

Jepp … I had to have it. It’s just the best of the Skylines there is. Also for the Mini-Z Chassis. Just for you, here are some images of the Body still sitting on it’s dummy chassis:

Silver Shakotan-Boogie Jun's Skyline

It will need a little bit of modification to fit on the AWD Chassis which I had in mind for it. Currently there is a Subaru on that chassis. The modifications should be straight forward and will be published on my new site Mini-RC-Tutorials (in German).

Skyline the hardest work done?

Klaus Weitzel — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:55:52 +0000

Over the last couple of days I di fit the body kit for the skyline so that the huge gaps in the body lines may disappear. It took quite some sanding and refitting to get where it is now:

Skyline Body left side

Skyline Body right side

Skyline Body rear

Skyline Body front

Next step is to take out the white primer and prime the body in white, obvious, isn’t it? The yellow colour is ordered and hopefully will arrive next week.

Skyline – the project

Klaus Weitzel — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:41:25 +0000

The Nissan Skyline will be the first X-Mod Project I am doing. The final car will be based on the well documented demo car of Focus Auto Sales. The car is a 1999 R34 Nissan Skyline GTR Vspec in the factory colour Lightning Yellow with white rims and some subtle body modifications. The guys over at FAS allowed me the use of images but in exchange they want pictures of the finished X-Mod …

Lets first of all start with some of the images I am allowed to use:

FAS Nissan Skyline GTR - front left

FAS Nissan Skyline GTR - left side

The work on the X-Mod Skyline has started by getting rid of the previously mentioned “imperfections” and paint stripping all over.

X-Mods Nissan Skyline GT-R 2

Skyline GTR Body stripped and primed

Jacko L. of FAS has given me following info about the body modifications:

Our car has a Top Secret hood, and Garage Saurus carbon fiber front diffuser, side skirts, rear spats and Nissan factory carbon fiber rear diffuser.

Those changes are mainly small additions to the existing Skyline body which should not be to hard to recreate from what I can see. The Top Secret Aero Bonnet will be the most difficult piece to model. It is a recession with a “spoiler lip” around it.

Since the rest of the car is stock and the original wheels seem to have been used that area should be done by preparing and painting the rims which are with the X-Mod Kit.

X-Mods sighted

Klaus Weitzel — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:07:05 +0000

Somehow those mini-rc cars seem to multiply … You all know my Kyosho MR02 and the Mini-Bull, now there are some X-Mods here as well. During the Christmas period one of the german online sellers had a special offer where you could buy 3 for €90,– which by itself is a good offer. One (a ‘65 Mustang) was given as a gift to my brother-in-law while the other two remained with me. I am talking about a Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec and a ‘06 Mustang.

X-Mods Nissan Skyline GT-R 1

X-Mods Nissan Skyline GT-R 2

The Mustang is still in box, but that won’t be forever. Unfortunately for you that is the reason why there are no pictures yet. instead you can have a quick glimpse at the chassis, which has been upgraded a bit with alloy parts in the area of the rear end.

X3200 Chassis (evolution type) 1

X3200 Chassis (evolution type) 2

What stroke me a bit is the bad finish of the product … OK … thy are painted but that paint job is far from perfect. The rear bumper of the Skyline had a fingerprint on the inside (yes, now I can identify the culprit …) and the there was a huge grain of something enclosed in the painted windscreen.

Then there is a red Hummer H2 which I bought yesterday … again it has some imperfections in the paint job, but I thought all the excess plastic scrape-off in the gearbox was a bigger issue. It showed up when I installed an AWD Upgrade to the trucking chassis.

Trucking Hummer H2 1

Trucking Hummer H2 2

These “imperfections” I think where the reason that the price dropped by half in just a few weeks. Overall they are no reason not to buy them little machines and also nothing what a little bit of paint stripping, sanding and painting can not fix.

The last year …

Klaus Weitzel — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:11:57 +0000

… was very eventful, I think for everybody. Besides the all encompassing financial crisis a couple of traditional modelling companies went out of business and shook the world, mainly that of the model railway fans. But the sum ups are better left to other people.

I will only say one thing:

Happy New Year to all my readers.

insolvency

Online Modelling magazin from Sweden

Klaus Weitzel — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:43:25 +0000

The IPMSStockholm gives a nice web-zine on their Internet site http://www.ipmsstockholm.org … you might ask yourself if your Swedish language skills are enough to understand their web-zine, but don’t worry, they have a large English section. The Nordics are a bit better in English language like many other countries, largely, I think due to the fact that they do not dub their movies.

But back to the facts … the site is online since 1997 and does have a quite extensive archive of articles about plastic scale modelling. They do offer the web-zine in Swedish and English, a news section, some helpful tips and more …

“Scale” News is the title of their news section. Originally it was started as news and blog section, but it seems that it became largely an announcement board for the release of the magazine.

“The Magazine” is the section which brought me to the site. Large archive and loads of articles about plastic scale modelling … nothing more to add.

The reference pages are titled “Helpdesk” and do include colour reference charts, reference pictures about modelling topics sorted by topic and country and explanations about various skills you might require.

A quite extensive listing of European shops is available in the section “Shop Guide” again nicely sorted by Country (in alphabetical order). I would pref a filter option though. They do have a submission form for new entries on their site so go and list your favorite.

The last section of interest is the “Archive” which brought me there … it features all the articles that have been made available through their site.

Then they do have a forum (sort of a must, isn’t it?) with a language mix of Swedish and English and some Swedish only section about the IPMS Stockholm.

Taisho – revival of a vintage white metal figure kit

Klaus Weitzel — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:05:19 +0000

Most of you will have followed the “long” negotiations between Gustavo and me about the loan of the original Taisho kit here. and some might be quite exited about the closure of the deal. The kit is now ready and I got a first copy (OK … part of the deal).

Head with helmet

Detail of the face with it's features

So, for those of you who are interested in purchasing this kit it is available on E-Bay by Gustavo under his seller name “miniatnapoleon“. He does have quite some other good figures listed there as well, so if you are interested in figures and are looking for some great and inexpensive figure kits, pay his auctions a visit … it’s well worth it. Even with the very moderate (!) shipping costs on top you get a great kit for a fraction of the price of an original!