Nissan Dealership Diorama Project – Test Vehicle shots. :D

It’s been a while since I’ve focused on a hobby. Yes, I picked a new one and it’s building small-scale replicas of buildings called dioramas. I decided to build a Nissan Dealership and therefore required Nissan vehicles. The first vehicle I bought, just to see whether the scale can accomodate the market-sold car replicas, was the Nissan GT-R. 😀

As you can see, it’s far larger than the Q-steer/Choro-Q. Plus the Q-steer looks as if it’s not as serious wherein taking a Tomica would make the dealership look more realistic.The detail is also quite good despite being a Tomica on par with the matchbox and hotwheels. It’s not one of those Tomica Limited Versions that had better detailing but this cheapest line is still awesome as the important details are retained. Such as that GT-R logo on the grille.

I’m planning to get the Nissan Elgrand as well as the Nissan 370Z for the showroom area. Then I might get another set of those cars, preferably more GT-Rs and have them repainted. 😀

I’m a Tomica Collector when I was a kid and I know how nice it is to get it in this kind of packaging compared to the other competitors. It just looks rewarding. 😀

Project RX-7 to Q-steer : First Night

Yes, I started the project last night and it was a nightmare. Before I started, though, I backed up the project by buying my first 32g tube of Tamiya Putty white. Just in case I screw up with the body. So I started doing the very basic step which is trimming. I also have the idea in my mind that the front spoiler of the body is not on the body itself but rather on the Choro-Q chassis. So I have t unmount the front spoiler permanently. There are other problems:

1. THE VERY BIG ONE : The terminals used for the motor soldered on the IC were hitting the window area of the body.

2. It seems that the whole body will not make it to the front mount. In short, the body is short.

SOLUTION TO:

1. I have to dig up some space on the area of that window and to get rid of punching a hole, I also have to sand the terminals of the motor. The only worry I have is that the terminals might not work as I might detach the soldered lead from the terminals.

2. This is due to (1). It took me the whole three hours from 9pm to 12am just to get the body lined-up properly

PROBLEM 3: Even if I made the body lined-up properly with the wheels fitting the wheel wells just fine, the front mount of the chassis might be too long for the body

SOLUTION TO (3) – I trimmed the lower part of the front according to the shape of the chassis mount. It fits well now. The only problem I have is how am I going to mount the spoiler without breaking it when I remove and mount the body.

I’ll post some pictures soon.

Preparing the Choro-Q RX-7 Body for conversion

I am still thinking about how am I going to mount this complicated body onto the Q-steer chassis, For one thing, see that front spoiler/ front skirt? That’s not with the body but with the Choro-Q chassis and there’s also a lot of space in front which means it might not hit the Q-steer chassis front mount since the body’s front side is too far from it.

So I think it’s time to fiddle with body molding or creating and modifying body shape using the same method as the one in real cars. Yup, but I’m not going to use the materials used for cars, it’s too heavy and might destroy the light plastic material. I can buy the epoxy in hardware stores but those are for hard plastics. Eventually I found these:

Tamiiya’s Epoxy Putty and Putty White. The epoxy putty it the one I’m going to use for creating the mount for the RX-7 and the White Putty is for finishing touches. I can also make my own bodykits which can be snapped on but that’s kind of too much for now. I’ll see how the project goes and then I’ll modify my own bodykits. (I will get another RX-7 and make it look like Keisuke’s RX-7!! hahahahah!)

Q-steer plans after midterms.

I want to fiddle again with my cars in the garage but this time I want to go deeper. 😀 A friend of mine gave me two new cars, a Nissan Skyline Coupe V36 and Mazda RX-7 Spirit R:

He gave it to me with a request to make at least one of them be a snap-on-snap-off body for Q-steer. I inspected both cars if I can do the job but it seems to be a big problem for the V36 since there’s a lot of space at the front. For the Rx-7, however, it may be possible so I tried opening the body and realized that the front skirt or splitter is on the chassis insteat of the body. Rawr.

It seems to be a great challenge. I think I will take the modification one notch up. I’ll try to mingle with putty and other molding stuff to get the body to the Q-steer Chassis. Hehehe~!

I will also try to fiddle with the circuit board which include the soldering of LED’s and other electronics stuff. I’ve had workshop skills training from my course and I guess you’ll just need basic soldering skills. 😀 Hope everything goes well in the project.