I just finished painting a nice new body for my Evader ST and I ran into a few problems.. I wont post pics of the mutilated body as I will most definitely be banned from the site...lol..
-First off...The paint Ran under the mask, so of course...be SURE the mask is placed correctly.
-Second...Any Stickers you are going to leave showing...Be SURE they are pressed down properly to...After the paint goes over top of them, they almost seemed to form an air bubble under them, or possibly some condensation build up ( thats a Guess)
-Third...how the heck do you cut the excess Lexan away from what is to become of the body. I tried using a Dremmel tool with a disk, that was to UNdetailed. Then I tried using a craft (exacto) knife and that was difficult to do the round edges.So what do you use to cut a nice straight edge?

Now to the best part... I managed to invent a way to hold the back Down. I Zip Tied an Elastic to the back, which I then stretch over the batter box. Its easy and quick, can be done with one hand. Now, I cant figure out how to hold the front down. Since the body is a different body then the Stock one, The Front mounts down actually poke all the way through the holes, so I cant even use the horrible cotter pins. What other methods do you guys use to hold bodies down?

cristmas ornament hangers

I used a pair of Kitchen sheers....they seemed to worked just fine

and after I cut it out i used some fine sand paper and sanded all of the rough edges down and it looks nice...


-Ryan

hey can you email me the pics i have had a few bad bodies in the past and i have made them look decent not show stoppers but attention grabbers [email protected]

uhh i cut before and i take a sharpy and i have the holes pre planed

If you cut a lot of boddies a pair of lexan scissors is worth the $7 investment, but for one time only kitchen shears or any other heavy duty scissors will work fine. But keep in mind using them too much will dull the scissors pretty quick. A shorter rounded set of scissors will let you cut the rounded areas out really nice and clean. If you have problems with your masking, you can get a paint on masks that work really well. You just paint them on the entire thing and then cut aroudn the areas you want to unmask and then peal them out. I never have problems with paint running under my paint on masking.

I use these [link=http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXD573&P=ML]http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXD573&P=ML[/link]
I picked them up at my LHS for $6.50. They are short and rounded so they work well for everything except for the body mount holes, I just use a drill with a really big carbide burr on it.

You cut before you paint??

I trim my bodies with a dremel and drill bit in it or rotary file in the dremel. Scissors don't work for doing around wheel wells and such and would be a pain in the *****. After cutting ya just lightly sand the edges

ok ultimate way to cut a body if you arent afraid of fumes:
Soldering Iron.

As do I.

I completely cut, trim and mount my body before painting. The only thing left to do after the paint is take my dremel tool with the sanding disk to it to do some final trimming. I do wash the inside of the body good prior to spraying the paint. This has always worked for me, and eliminates a bunch of extra holes being cut/drilled in the final body..

This could be taken several different ways, none of which would make painting any easier.

Totally joking, I know what you meant, I just read it wrong the first time and chuckled a bit, so I had to comment.

well i had problems with my firs body

story--
i trimmed it but the rear shock tower had to stick out ok i fixed.sprayed the color then put a heat lamp in to help it dry fasted BAD IDEA i should have let it dry over night but i was so quick i didn't think it felt dry but i put a few layers in so i was like ya its dry so i put the fuel protector coat in so it didnt take the paint off if my lid poped open or a miss fuel sprayed it and put it on the truck well it wasnt that dry u could touch it BUT the under coats were still wet and that fuel coat locked it up so put it on the truck and the paint just pushed into a little pile around the mounts and pipe and any were the truck touched the body so i have little holes in the body that u can see threw now cause i was to quick, next bod im going to spray a coat let it DRY spray a coat let it DRY then spray the fuel coat on let it dry then let it dry for 1 extra day to let the paint set well then its set
hope u learn from my mistakes

ps i put the stickers on and put the heat lamp to close and melted the front of the bod i was so sad but hay i learned thats what counts and i trimed the front up now and its not to bad any more

PICS

Hi

Here is a simple way for cutting out a body if you have a dremil. First cut off as much of the exes lexan that you can with some sizers. Then use a Dremil with a heavy grit drum sander to get right up to the edges of the body to give it a nice clean look. BE SURE TO WHERE A MASK SO YOU DO NOT BREATH IN THE LEXAN DUST THAT THE DREMIL WILL PRODUCE.

good advice. the drum sander let's you finely sand the nooks and crannies while still being able to take out some serious meat where needed. i've done my last 3 bodies like this and they came out great!


more dremmel tips: a pointed sanding stone attachment is great for cleaning up reused wheels. the sanding stone (as opposed to the drum) is not as violent. it lets you be pretty rough on the residue glue and rubber without hurting the plastic.