I'd spent such a hardcore night (until 4am!) getting the electrics done, I had the whole of saturday to paint the bodyshell and get ready for racing the next day - so maybe I would be able to get it done in time afterall!
Bodyshell
There are good R/C car bodies and there are some pretty naff R/C car bodies, the Durango falls into neither camp - because it's just plain gorgeous!
The narrow profile is a tricky one to design for - it's unusual, and you could forgive this pure-bred race company to merely go for a purposeful and functional design, devoid of 'looks'.
The original Durango prototype bodies weren't what you'd ever describe as beautiful - possibly interesting and unique yes, but not really a pretty design, they did a job. No, instead - Team Durango have outdone the best to produce not only a unique and outrageous design, but also a pretty darn beautiful one. The wing is similarly good looking and functional - it's wide enough, with raised sides to clear the tyres and mounted onto the sturdy mount it's very solid and should work well.
The bodyshell comes with a large set of decals and excellent window masks which follow the window lines perfectly - so many don't, you wonder why. We like to do things differently so we copied the window masks and plotter-cut some new  ones with 'borders' for doing the neat chrome line around the edge. The rest  of the masking is again computer drawn and plotter-cut - only the small chrome line around the edges is hand-cut (whilst on the shell). The narrow shell makes it a little tricky to mask and even harder to cut neat lines into the masking tape with a knife. The airbrush is similarly in a fairly tight space as you try to follow the complex contours. I used a combination of Spazstix and Faskolor to paint the shell - with Createx (Faskolor) irridescent purple and irridescent red making up the main colours. I backed it all with Faskoat to help stop any skuffs. |
For the decals, I used my printer to create some nice chrome decals to complement the chrome I'd used when painting - I printed a whole heap of different designs but in the end I decided the body just looked too-damn-nice to plaster in stickers and kept things to a bare minimum.
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The finished shell with stickers applied. I want to have its babies. |
The body hugs the sides of the metal chassis snugly - to avoid having the paint rub off in this vulnerable area I lined the inside with some Team Azarashi chassis-protection sheet - a thick hard-wearing clear self-adhesive plastic.
The body has some excellent-looking air scoops above both the ESC and motor - and these can be cut out to air cooling but I chose to leave them shut for now. The body doesn't have a pre-determined point for the aerial tube to exit - I really didn't have time to measure a perfect hole and didn't want to wreck my lovely new shell - so I cable-tied the short aerial tube alongside the battery wires within the car, which I've done before (for the sake of looks) and never had a problem with the Sanwa 2.4ghz system.
I've yet to hear any negative words said about the DEX410 bodyshell - so I can't be too far wrong in my  undying love for its shape - can I?. It's like nothing else, and once fitted to the car - it really begs not to be driven! Don't scratch me it screams as you set off to the race track the first time - to give it what it really deserves. |
