Tamiya 1/6th Monkey

[kprice52001]

The 1/6th Tamiya monkey, I picked it up in a 5 and dime here in japan for a great deal about $20.00. It looked like fun and Ive never done a bike before so I figured what the hell how hard can it be....... Right?

As you can see my fenders resemble some thing more like fruit but I have some wet dry paper and a proxxon power tool with some buffing compound on the way from amazon so I'm hoping that I can buff this out. I'm so scared to wet sand this as I know that all I'm going to do is burn through the paint. I'm like a bull in a china shop.

The Kit itself is typical Tamiya quality engineering. The thing practically snaps together. I did run into some issues when I was taking the chrome off the parts. I used an oven cleaner and let them soak for a few minutes and then ran them under cold water. The parts had a residue that resembled some type of adhesive that I could not remove. I even soaked them in bleach to try to get it all off. The residue seemed to work as a barrier that prevented the Tamiya glue from reacting with the plastic. But, at the end of the day when they were all dry I was able to sand it all off. It just made for a little extra work. Ill post more pics as I make progress.








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[kprice52001]

Today is a very sad day for the Monkey. I attempted to strip paint off the front rim because I put a thump print in it while attempting to install it to the front fork. I was impatient I figured the paint was dry enough.... Like a dumb ass I dunked the wheel assy. into a tub of lacquer thinner and it attacked the plastic. The good news is that on this kit all 7 parts that make up the front wheel are on the same sprue. My wife is going to call tamiya tomorrow and order it for me.

Moral of the story is never, ever dunk your plastic in Lacquer thinner!


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