Author Archives: beermoker

A second life – The Tamiya Bullhead


We bought this original 1991 Bullhead used at a fair price. Many parts were missing, the body had various extra holes for lamps and attachments. On the other side, it wasn’t broken. Instead of the original chrome rims, old white dirty rims from the Clodbuster were installed. We disassembled the chassis into all individual parts, cleaned all parts and then reassembled them. We stripped the bodywork and then sealed all the superfluous holes with ABS plates. A lot of work with putty and sanding followed before the body could be primed and painted. We chose mica blue (Tamiya TS-50) as the color. Finally, several coats of clear coat (Tamiya TS-13) followed. Missing and defective chrome parts were replaced with new parts from rere-Bullhead. The old white rims were dyed with yellow fabric paint and then painted wet-on-wet with yellow (TS-16) and camel yellow (TS-34). The aim was to match the color of the yellow fabric dampers. The previous owner had built custom exterior mirrors and a lift kit for the rear axle out of metal. We wanted to use these nice parts again and therefore derusted, ground and polished them. Finally, the USA flag should be mounted. Here we didn’t like Tamiya’s solution to attach the flag directly to the bracket. With the help of a stabilizer part from the rere-Fox, an aluminum antenna holder and a black antenna tube, we built a flagpole so that the flag now forms a nice finish for the rear. We’re happy to have given this bullhead after more than 30 years a second life and hope you like it as much as we do.

DT-03 meets Vaillant

With the Neo Fighter on the DT-03 chassis, Tamiya launched a brilliant entry-level buggy a few years ago. The Kit already includes an electronic speed controller TBLE-02 S, a torque-tuned motor and CVA shock absorbers for a suittable price. Many thousands of children and teenager started their RC hobby with a DT-03 buggy or one of the precursor DT-01 and DT-02. Last but not least, the Tamiya Figther Cup is the world’s largest RC car youth racing series.

We only replaced the plastic bearings with ball bearings in our Neo Fighter and exchanged the torque-tuned motor for a Tamiya Sport Tuned motor (the old black one – 53068). A Blue Bird BMS-617 is used as the steering servo. With this set-up, the Neo-Fighter already achieves astonishing driving performance and can still be easily mastered by an RC beginner.

While thinking about how we want to paint our Neo-Fighter, we looked dreamily into our showcase with the old Tamiya buggies and saw the good old “Nylon Parts Coloring Set” by Tamiya (53130). We knew then: the rims had to turn pink! We quickly came up with the “Black Avante” from Tamiya and it was clear that the body should be painted in a combination of silver (Tamiya PS-12) and gun metal (Tamiya PS-23). Looking for suitable pink decals, we looked through our stock and suddenly held the Vaillant Decal-sheet from the 1/10 Porsche 934 Turbo RSR in our hands. The color of the decorative strips was perfect and could easily be adapted to the Neo-Fighter Body.

We are more than satisfied with the result and are excited to see if you also like our Neo-Fighter.