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Hi captains, I ended up working on the boat all day and night. I finally stopped working on her at 1 am. After I glued the air exhaust cube in place I continued onto other items. I removed all the water tubes aft and am getting ready to purchase new tubes in the correct size. The size changed once I bought the water pumps. The nipples on the pumps were too small for the tubes I had in place so smaller ones will be added to ensure a proper fit. Once I removed the tubes all the way aft I filled in a pair of water pickups with epoxy and on the bottom of the boat filled and skimmed over the that pair with epoxy. Now it’s as if they were never there. The pair that I chose to eliminate were the ones just above the props. The removal of the pair of water intakes eliminated four water inlet tubes so now there are four left, one for each pump. After that I moved on to adjust some of the contact springs so that the superstructure fits better. Later on I decided to scratch build and install the ducts for the engine room intake fans. I made those from basswood frames and a balsa bottom plate and they were coated in epoxy and later sanded smooth. Once they were installed they were painted red which is turning out to be a great contrast from the gull grey interior. After those were installed and painted I decided to get a jump on the sump pit. This is part of the rectangle box assembly that is around the stuffing tubes, shafts and couplers. Coming from the rectangle boxes will be water tubes that feed into the sump pit so that any water that leaks from the stuffing tubes will drain from the rectangle boxes and into the sump pit where it will be bailed from the boat. The sump pit will be located between the aluminum receiver box and the servo/switch box along the keel. It is important for me to finish this before the next time she sees water because I had a few minor floods in the engine room because of the stuffing tubes letting in water. This should stop that from happening. The sump pit was built around a Robbe automatic bilgepump. It was made from balsa to save weight and was heavily coated in epoxy, cured, sanded and recoated. Tonight I will sand it, give it a final coat of epoxy and afterwards paint it red and get it ready for installation. At this point, many scratch made components in the engine room will be painted red. It really makes those items pop when you look inside. The final item that needs to be finished inside the engine room in the short term is the exhaust ducts and the tubing between the fan cube and exhaust ducts need to be connected. Then, the engine room door will go in place which will be sealed shut so that water can’t pour inside and overtake the room. In between working on the sump pit I also made adjustments to the rectangle boxes and painted them red. I still have to make the lids for those boxes so that when water splashes out of the stuffing tube at thousands of rpms it is contained inside the box. One final note with that, when the lid is removed from the rectangle box there will be an aluminum splash guard in there. It will be made from a thin aluminum soda can and it will be half round lining the inside of the box to further keep the water contained so that it drains and doesn’t leak out. The lining will simply lift out once the top is removed. I have been putting a lot of thought into how I’m going to tackle mounting the superstructure. The superstructure when pushed against the hull is a snug fit but when I let go it still seems to ‘do its own thing’ and come up slightly in some areas. So mounting it so that it is tightly flush with the deck has become pretty important. It will not only make the boat appear better overall but will keep any water potential water out of the boat. I found that I have 3 places to secure on each side. I have to secure the front, mid, and aft in order for this to be perfect. I am still up in the air on how to do this. For the front, I need to build the interior wall and I can possibly latch the front of the cabins to the wall in the cockpit. For the mid section, this would have to be done in the engine room. I am still unsure which way to go with this because there are so many possibilities. For the aft section, again there are many options but I am leaning toward making the seats/boarding step on the aft side of the cockpit removable with tiny earth magnets (I already have them) and use the interior space as a means to secure the structure. I could drill a hole put a thick pin though the wall which fastens to wood on the hull side or cut out a section of the wall and feed a Velcro strap though it to fasten it to the hull. I’m sure you all have ideas too. What do you think? How would you secure the superstructure (cabins) to the hull? I would like to hear your ideas.
Pics will follow tomorrow. -Rich.
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All Forums >> RC Boats >> RC Scale Boating >> RE: the unofficial home of the dumas dauntless 
RE: the unofficial home of the dumas dauntless - 
will be installing tonight bob what kind of motors do you have i just jot a spare 9.6 graupner 700bb turbo let me know if you can use it
