Nearly finished restored Tamiya Vanquish

[TUS373]

I have a nigh on 30 year old Vanquish, it may be older. Got it from Ebay more than 12 years ago. Since then I have accumulated so many new bits that I think I may have enough to build another one from parts pool.

Over Christmas, I trimmed a new body shell and painted it black as per the box art. Tried it with a set of Avante wheels and quite like the look.

The chassis is as per the carbon double deck hop up, but this time its Pargu metal chassis, plus some carbon fibre parts, mainly the rear shock tower. Also added an Avante driver.

Now...not sure how to finish it and welcome opinions.

At the moment, I have not painted in the cock pit area, which means a better view of the driver.

It's also not snickered up. I have a set of MCI repro decals I can use.

So..leave as is? Paint cockpit as per the original Vanquish? No stickers, some stickers or all stickers please?

[TUS373]

[TUS373]

Gratuitous shot of the double deck chassis and hop ups. Polished aluminium turnbuckles, hop up steering rack. Need to get the wiring tidied up more. With this set up there is no where to easily tuck wires and the body shell is rather small. It's an unforgiving tight fit.

[generationx]

I recently restored one to box art, but with yours maybe you could get some decals done in different colours? I know you say you have a repro set from MCI (that’s what I used here) but they also do colour variations. Maybe yellow-based to match the wheels?

Here’s mine:

[TUS373]

And fine it looks too. Nice job indeed.

I have box art style MCI stickers and they took forever to arrive from Canada, so will not get anymore. In hindsight, think I may switched silver to gold but was told that gold needs to be applied spot on or looks bad.

Thinking of refurbishing the original wheels and dying them black.

How did you go about the stickers? Do you do them wet and slide into place?

[generationx]

TUS373 said:

And fine it looks too. Nice job indeed.

I have box art style MCI stickers and they took forever to arrive from Canada, so will not get anymore. In hindsight, think I may switched silver to gold but was told that gold needs to be applied spot on or looks bad.

Thinking of refurbishing the original wheels and dying them black.

How did you go about the stickers? Do you do them wet and slide into place?

I think it depends on time of year for MCI. I ordered these last summer and they took about two weeks, I presume if they have no stock they print to order. However I ordered some Rough Rider ones in their Black Friday sale and they took ages. Fortunately I wasn’t in a hurry.

I’ve never tried doing decals wet, I’ve got years of practice doing them dry and, luckily, it’s rare I mess them up. I did have to adjust one or two on my Vanquish and the silver quality reduced a bit, but not so noticeably.

[TUS373]

Easter break gave me time to finish the Vanquish body. I had deliberated on how to do the canopy area.

I used a modified MCI mask and went non box art metallic black. I like how it turned out.





Question remains...do I do full Vanquish stickers, some stickers or none? The main Vanquish stickers are silver and red body stripes. Better with or without for this one?