I have a new RC car to build, this is an Volkswagen Beetle off road buggy.

I did not realise until recently that there are a fair few hard body kits available. I prefer these as you can add much more detail than you can with the lexan bodies.

I will not to building this as per the reference design on the box. Instead I am going to paint it Candy Lime Green and use some after market parts to add additional details.

The kit already comes with little details like a chrome Volkswagen badge, wipers and wing mirrors.



I started the build by painting the wheels. This meant spraying primer over the florescent orange plastic. I then painted the wheels Aluminium as this should suite any body colour.



To finish the wheels I will varnish them in order to give the paint some protection.



Next I started work on the main body shell. The first thing I did was to glue the sun roof and boot handle on. I also attached the front of the body.



After attaching the parts of the body that required painting I started coating it with primer.



With a few more coats of primer it should be ready for painting. I have however noticed that the seams from the wheel arches still show. This means I am going to have to sand those down a bit more till they disappear.

The chassis for this car was pretty quick and easy to build. I used a receiver from<!--more--> an old model and a cheap servo that was ordered at the same time.



The stock silver can Tamiya motor did not even stay on the car long enough to get tested. As soon as I found out that the kit comes with a brush-less ESC I felt it was necessary to give  a brush-less motor a go. I did not realise that I would need to solder my own wires onto the new motor. To get round this I chopped some wires off of spare motors I had lying around as these already had connectors to join up with the ESC wires.



The brush-less motor has up to 4 wires instead of the standard +/- wires of a brushed motor. I matched the colours the best I could to make sure everything went into the right place.



After attaching the new motor I started on the shocks. These were a bit of a pain as the shock ends did not want to screw right onto the shafts.



I have given the body a coat of varnish before getting started on the details. One time I varnished a car body after putting the headlights on and this caused them to go foggy. I will never make that mistake again.

Next I gave the body a test fit and got to see for the first time how my painted wheels look with the body. I am pleased with the results so far.

Nice progress there

Great work and the lights look fab

It looks really cool

Looks great Kenjara,I love the colour. Are u doing anymore hop ups. Like brushless and running a lipo.

Chris

An unexpected result testing at the weekend.

It can wheelie!



Since then I have added a parcel shelf to the beetle. I found it on eBay and there a a few different types to choose from



Also I realised I was an idiot and soldered the deans connectors the wrong way round so I had to resolder those.

Thanks Dan, more to come soon! :)