RC Customization Series: The Story so Far

March 10, 2017

Two months ago, inspired by our amazing — and growing! — RC car community, I set out on a journey into the world of RC cars. Colleague Tijs Lochbaum and I took a Tamiya Hornet completely apart and gave it a whole new look. We’ll be ready for the big reveal soon, but in the meantime, we’re taking a look back to see how far we’ve come.

We started with a dream of taking a classic Tamiya Hornet and making it our own. During this whole process, Tijs Lochbaum, who is a well-known European RC drifting expert, was our guide. As it turns out, I had a lot to learn about how to make a custom RC Car. I always thought you could only buy a complete car in a toy store, so a whole new world opened up for me. For one thing, I never thought so much manual polishing was involved to make the parts look good. I could go on all day about what I didn’t know — but instead, let’s take a look at what we’ve done so far:

Lap 1 – Upgrading The Tamiya Hornet

UPGRADING THE TAMIYA HORNET - EP. 1 - SHAPEWAYS RC CUSTOMIZATION SERIES - YouTube
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UPGRADING THE TAMIYA HORNET - EP. 1 - SHAPEWAYS RC CUSTOMIZATION SERIES

In the 1st Lap of the RC Customization Series, we explain our plan and what we need to create a custom RC car classic, the Tamiya Hornet.

Lap 2 – RC Engineering

PRE-ASSEMBLY - EP. 2 - SHAPEWAYS RC CUSTOMIZATION SERIES - YouTube
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PRE-ASSEMBLY - EP. 2 - SHAPEWAYS RC CUSTOMIZATION SERIES

The 2nd Lap features an interview with designer Alberto Massarotto from AMPro Engineering. Alberto takes us through his design process to guarantee his parts fit on original RC car body and chassis.

Lap 3 – Finalizing the Parts

POLISHING, DYEING, AND PREPPING - EP. 3 - SHAPEWAYS RC CUSTOMIZATION SERIES - YouTube
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POLISHING, DYEING, AND PREPPING - EP. 3 - SHAPEWAYS RC CUSTOMIZATION SERIES

On Lap 3, we look at post-production methods. Polishing, dyeing, sanding, and preparing for spray-painting — we covered it all.

We’ve come a long way already, and we just have a few finishing touches to add. In the meantime, here’s a teaser shot of our completed Tamiya Hornet:

Stay tuned for the full reveal! 3D printed Customization How To inspiration performance enhancing pimp my ride RC Cars RC Customization Series upgrade What's Hot