Washington DC GTG

05/26/2026

Reminder! We are racing at Hobby Works this Saturday!

Looking forward to some good track time with good folks, spending time introducing new folks to the hobby and plan is to get more timed racing completed. We will start with Kyosho Stock as usual and follow up with either 3500AAA or 2500 LiPo depending on how many are present.

I picked up one of the new Jaguar XJR RTR last time and just about right out of the box, on par with best lap times! Probably going to be the most popular LM racing car.

05/24/2026

Kent Racing Toyota GRMN Yaris

Materials:
Krylon Fusion Satin Black
Krylon Fusion Matte Fire Red
Rust-Oleum Satin Sweet Pea
Molotow Liquid Chrome pen
Tamiya Panel Line Black
Krylon Fusion Satin Clear

This is more a proof of concept. I bought some of the RX& white bodies and picked up some vintage livery decals and wanted to see how much I could do in paint alone so I laid out some mask tape over the decals, traced the numbers out and transposed them to the body, measured and laid out the stripes and while doing the roof, chose to block out a number card vs. just have the stripes interrupted by the numbers. I tested a circle first but this shape seemed to fit better proportionally. I chose to extend the strips down the back tailgate, the OG does not continue beyond the roof. Rather than live with a solid color, I color matched the side skirt panel to the stripes. CI carried this over to the front grille accents as well. I should have used the grey panel liner on this one, maybe next time. In the end, I thought this would be best as a nice clean livery and left off all the sponsor graphics. I'll save those for the RX7 variant.

I already have a chassis setup for the GRMN Yaris so at some point, I can get some use out of it. It was mainly to practice stenciling numbers. If I keep up the dtenciling, maybe I"ll borrow my wifes' Cricut and make my own stencils. At least it was a fun to do. There are some days you just put something mind numbing on in the background and want to focus on hobby stuff to unwind and it was nice to do that this week. It was only about 3 days of work overall though. While a simple in design, it's all paint and no decals.

On a side note, working with Autoscale Studio again on some custom resin printed wheels for this body. Going to try printing some OZ Ralley wheels in the same sizes/offsets as those for the printed wheels he did for my KPGC. For the time being, I used my EK Civic display chassis for photos.

05/24/2026

2002 JGTC Supra Nose Clip

Has anyone modeled this nose clip? The nose clip that came with my be**er body has some micro cracks in it.
Hoping someone has modeled this or able to use these dimension s to model it. I’d love to get it in a nose clip adapter format as well so that I can adjust the front end ride height. Some of these older bodies sat really high.

Measurements in MM.

05/20/2026

A trip down memory lane.

I’m sure I mentioned this before but the AU Supra was the first body I bought for racing. I have a soft spot for this body and keep an eye on sales posts and eBay listing and happen to see this one lingering on eBay for awhile. It was a touch more than I wanted to spend in a be**er body but after a couple weeks my resolve withered and bought it. Now I’m starting a new car build from an old MR-03 LM I had sitting in a box to get the build started to get it back on the track. Plan is to convert the front suspension and rear end to MR-04 parts and waiting for 04 MM2 motor pod to be delivered.
I had forgotten how robust the early bodies are made. The plastic is super thick. The body alone is 42g!

I can’t wait to spend time with this one on the track!

Anyone happen to have a set of the stock wheels?

05/14/2026

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Porsche 962 C LH

Materials:
Kyosho Porsche 962C LH unpainted body
Krylon Fusion Matte Fire Red
Krylon Fusion Gloss Sunbeam Yellow
Krylon Fusion Satin Black
Molotow Liquid Chrome pen
Tamiya XF-1 Flat Black
Pledge Floor Gloss
Pattos 24-Turtles-2012-24

This one was a request from local racer. I spent a good while just thinking on how to adapt a Nascar livery to LM body and I think it turned out well. I made some creative decisions but stayed true to the livery as much as I could. I laid out the body stripes as best I could on LM body and took some liberty with placement of the roof number and stripes that parallel with the numbers.
The request included adding headlights and brake lights on this one as well. The TMNT graphic up front ends up covering one of the headlights but what can you do. I painted the wheels to match typical Nascar steelies as well but didn't get a chance to put them on borrowed chassis for photos.

All in all, it was a fun build. It's fun to do something that challenges you to be creative in an adaptation.

05/03/2026

Macross YF-21 McLaren 720S GT3

Materials:
Kyosho McLaren 720S GT3 unpainted body
Krylon Gloss Patriotic Blue
Krylon Fusion Gloss Sunbeam
Kyrlon Fusion Satin Black
Krylon Fusion Gloss Smoke Grey
Pledge Acrylic Floor Polish
Molotow Liquid Chrome pen
Tamiya Black panel line accent color
HG YF-21 Sturmvogel II decals

I think this one will be the last in my Macross series for awhile, after doing about 4 in a row. This one was personal request from my son, under strict orders to mimic the blue/yellow variant and will replace his Audi R8 German Police car. I wasn't sure the blue/yellow combo would work as well as the red/white but when it's all done, it does look good.
The color lines are varied slightly from the others as I want each to feel more unique vs. a simple recolor. The side vent plates more closely mimic the character art. I copied the grey to the rear top flap over from the last Gundam livery as well as color keying the rear wheel vents. Went with black headlight buckets on this one, I though fluorescent orange clashed to much with the dark blue.

04/26/2026

April racing is a wrap!

Thanks to everyone that came out today! We continue to see new drivers and of course introduce racing to more kids!

Some highlights for the day; Thought Dave's new McLaren 720 might have a bad board and cleaning out the servo box seemed to have solved the lazy recentering; Carlton's brand new XJR RTR laid down same lap times as his brushless car! I got a good chance to run about half a dozen cars today, probably the most exercise many of my cars have seen in a long while. Promise we will get more timed races in moving forward. We had a good Kyosho Stock showing today and with Carlton laying down some heat, can run that XJR in 3500 class as well and not miss a beat.

Apologies for not having racing in March, the Endurance event landed on a date that was best for the majority and had to adjust accordingly. The Endurance race is an annual tradition in our parts.

Couple tips to share; when you get a chance, swap out the stock philips screws with the button HEX screws, can get MZW440 at good prices. I personally always replace the philips screw with HEX when I take the stock ones out. Nothing more frustrating than a stripped stock screw. Always take care not to overtighten as well. I'll make sure Hobby Works restocks on these.
kyosho 30 front, 20 rear are a good baseline for Hobby Works track conditions and good starting point for sure and will get you around without slipping and sliding. You may want to test and tune from there based on desired grip/push and driving habits. We haven't received the new Kyosho 'X' tires yet but they have received good reviews. Tires are going to be pretty track dependant as well so what works great at Hobby Works, might now be best setup when going to other locations so it's best to keep some extra wheels and a small balanced tire selection handy. My personal preference is Marka 10 rear and PN KSK medium front. I don't recall what the new shore rating equivalent is for medium. Narrow class cars, will want something a smidge different and that's very subjective to driving habits.

A reminder for the new to Hobby Works folks and everyone else, Mach 5 Mini Raceway is racing less than 20 minutes from Hobby Works Saturdays. Remnant Racing generally runs on Thursdays and IAM-RC Hobby Shop runs on Sundays.

Send a message to learn more

04/10/2026

Blaupunkt Porsche 962C LH
Materials:
Kyosho Porsche 962C LH unpainted body
Krylon Fusion Matte Deep Gray
Rust-Oleum Satin Sweet Pea
Molotow Liquid Chrome pen
Tamiya XF-1 Flat Black
Tamiya Panel Line Black
Pledge Floor Gloss
Pattos P962-Blapunkt-1989 decals

Shout out to my racing buddy Daniel with the Silver Horse RC team for gifting me this 962 unpainted body to whatever I wanted with it. I thought no better tribute than to pick a classic pink liver in his honor!

Learned a few lessons on this one as well. The panel lines in a couple places fade to almost nothing so when I used the panel line fountain pen, it was really messy trying to extend the line where the panel line almost disappears. I watched a few video's on how to improve panel lines with panel line chisels for models and next time, I'll work on cleaning up some of the lines around the cockpit.
Forgive me for leaving off a couple of the decals. Some of the text didn't come out with the best resolution and looked really fuzzy so I left those off.
Yeas, the wheel gap at the back was way off, I didn't get enough time to use my adjustable dummy chassis.

04/05/2026

MSZ-006 A1 Zeta Plus McLaren 720S GT3
Materials:
Kyosho McLaren 720S GT3 unpainted body
Krylon Fusion Matte Deep Gray
Kyrlon Fusion Matte Clamshell
Rust-Oleum Husqvarna Orange
Molotow Liquid Chrome pen
Tamiya XF-1 Flat Black
Tmaiya Panel Line Black
Pledge Floor Gloss
HG G-reworksMSZ-006 A1 Zeta Plus decals

This one started out as the give-away for the Carolina Cup but due to bad weather, I didn't get enough good weather days to get all the painting done and dry in time for the event. My paint booth is an outside basement stairwell.

the design borrows from the YF-21 with side body color striping which mimics the Zeta Plus as well. I added in some of the darker grey to match up with the model, which I happen to have as well. The tricky part was finding a good match for the orange. In the end, the closest match I could find readily available was Husqvarna orange. It's a surprisingly close match. I also panel lined this one as well.
One thing I did do differently was apply the decals using Tamiya Mark Fit decal solution. I don't think it really help this particular brand of decal to contour but it did help keep them on and not flake off with the slightest touch. Overall it turned out really good. Sadly I couldn't finish it in time for the Carolina Cup.

04/04/2026

Stopped by Hobby Works and picked up some new stuff! Just opened up this Autoscale and building an MM2 chassis for it this weekend!

Love vintage race cars and this one looks great! Those front fog lights are guaranteed lost but we will see how long they hang on.

Internal debate on using the ASC wheels or not... I typically try to squeeze negative offset wides on the rear. I don't have a lot of suitable rear tire options in narrow width though.