TOPIC:

  Having recently retired, I thought I would treat myself to an r/c car to build; I had a couple back in the 1980's and some aircraft too. I saw the build that Jonny Retro did in May and thought I would build the same Citroen DS 57834 on the MB-01 chassis.My late father had one of these in the 1960's and it was a spaceship compared to the Morris Minors and Ford Anglias that our neighbours drove - the lady next door had a Ford Prefect which looked particularly ancient next to the DS. I'm planning on adding a part interior at some point. I'm waiting for a can of white Plasti Dip to whitewall the tyres and some shorter, softer springs to make it a bit lower and more 'floaty' too. 

Hi and welcome to TB!
I like the Citröen!
Your color chice is great, it matches the era. And I agree on lowering it a few millimeters.

Thanks! I replaced all the plastic 'bearings' with proper bearings and the kit suspension balls with metal.
I guess most people building R/C cars want the suspension stiff - I'm aiming for a bit of wallow and body roll! 
I did consider replacing some other parts with alloy but as the DS is mainly a desk queen it seemed a bit excessive.
I think the magnetic mounts are brilliant although I had to do a bit of thinking 'outside the box'. I don't remember seeing anything like these back in the 'old days' and there are so many other option parts available now!

Welcome on board Dave. The ds is awesome and very hard to repair. One of the most vomiting car.  She's too nice and the marshall head lights are realy nicely done. Congrats on the body painting. And it's rare to see a frenchy body by tamiya. The first Citroën  ( except the xsara but from carson) IMO.

Shiny!

I'm guessing that's not an off the shelf colour?

 

Hi Jonny,

The colour I used for the main body is Fastrax 287 Blue/Green, which is quite close to a shade used by the Belgian factory in the late 1950's called Vert Nil; my father was Belgian, and we had one in what I think is this colour with a white roof in the early 60's - it was quite exotic for west London as it was on Belgian plates and left-hand drive.
I'm unsure if it was bought new, but it was the car I have my earliest memories of; but I do remember we went to the south of France in it in around 1964 when the main roads were the old Route Nationales; there were very few stretches of Autoroutes then.

Since my last photo session I have lowered the suspension and swapped the springs out for softer ones, and whitewalled the tyres with Plasti-Dip.
I'll add a few new images after the weekend

Here's some fresh pictures with the whitewalls and lowered suspension..
 

You were on the nationale 7. A mythic road in France. Very nice work.

Very well done and you got the stance spot on. Looks great.

You mentioned something about Plasti Dipping the tires, could you explain this process please. They look perfect..

Sure!

If you are not familiar with Plasti Dip, it's a rubberised paint that comes in various colours - obviously I used white matt for my tyres. I measured the distance from the centre of the axle to the ridge in the tyre moulding - on my 60D it was 27mm, and using a compass from a geometry set, I drew circles at 54mm diameter on good-quality masking tape; in the UK the brand I find best is Frog Tape, it's the blue-coloured variant I use. I made six-inch squares of overlapping strips of the masking tape and cut the circles out with a scalpel blade. The six inches give you a decent amount of mask, I remove the tyres from the wheels and stuff them with tissue paper to prevent overspray, and then apply the masking tape squares over the side of the tyres to be whitewalled, pressing the edges firmly with the tail of a paintbrush to prevent any creep under the edges.
The first coat is sprayed very lightly and allowed to dry for a few minutes before adding additional coats for depth of finish, and about six coats did the trick without pooling or sagging into the hub recess. Once the paint had cured for an hour or so, I carefully removed the masking tape (slowly!) leaving a mainly clean edge.
Any minor creep under the tape edges was removed with a pointed cocktail stick and the tyres were then left overnight to fully dry; You can then replace the tyres on the hubs. the finish is rubbery and flexible so it doesn't crack like conventional paint, and I believe that you can peel it off quite easily if you need to start again, luckily I didn't!