Thanks! I do pretty alright and I'm certainly much better than I used to be, but yes, I do paint everything myself.
Though there is an exception, which is that tank above, "Bushmaster", the one with the battle damage on the turret. My friend originally painted that for me around 2021 and it looked pretty good and was certainly better than I could do at the time (I started in 2020), but the longer I've had it, the more I wanted to strip it to bring it up to my current painting standard.
So I stripped it and now it's significantly better than when my friend originally painted it for me. I surpassed where he was five years ago, which is sort of shocking to me. Though he's progressed pretty significantly as well, which is why I tried really hard on these particular models. I'm trying to get to his current level, which is outstanding, I think.
At any rate, I can't help but improve, I suppose. In 2020 I had painted a single model in my entire life and now I'm at...gosh, several hundred? Probably somewhere in the range of 400-500 now.
It occurs to me, there ought to be battle events where part of your score is achieved by how well everything looks, which would make all that hard work and expense painting your models pay off. Even better if it were sponsored by some of the brands of models, paint, etc that are commonly bought by people into this stuff, and gift certificates were awarded.
On a personal level. I spent a few hrs today tearing down my spin bike after receiving the parts that were sent me to fix the noise problem it's having. They sent the crank spindle, two 6004 cartridge bearings, snap rings, spring washers, and a combo crank puller/crank bolt (nut in this case) tool, which I already own, but cool anyway.
The spindle the bike came with has lots of rust on it. I wouldn't doubt if the bike at some point was subjected to high humidity, because it's always been indoors since I opened up the box and assembled it. Amazon's crap delivery service actually left it by our front door on the outside of our building though, but under the eave of the roof. Then again, these things are no doubt shipped on a boat from China, and I doubt those shipping containers are sealed from humidity.
Anyway, the scenario is the bearings are pressed into the frame, the spindle has 4 shims and two spring washers on the drive side that butt up against a flange about 3" in diameter, which the belt pulley attaches to. Then the non drive side has a slot that two snap rings sit in to lock it all in place. I checked the fit of the new bearings on the new spindle to see if it was slip, or press fit. The bearing didn't go all the way down against the flange, but slid over the non drive side, but tightly. I set the spindle in my freezer for about an hr, then tried again. This time it went down to the flange, with a slight coaxing, but not enough to scrape off the black oxide finish.
So that will be how I'll assemble it, after I get two Enduro Bearings I bought off eBay, and some Mobile Polyrex EM grease. I bought that grease because it's what Santa Cruz uses in the suspension lower links of their bikes (yes, I own a SC now). I bought the bearings because Enduro are well known for making high quality bearings at a good price, and they are ABEC 3 and filled to capacity with high quality, high pressure grease that is very corrosion resistant. They have stainless deep groove races (which fit bigger balls) and grade 10 balls. They also even offer spare seals you can buy if you ever damage one cleaning and regreasing your bearings.
The bearings the bike came with are just ABEC 5 and 30% filled with thin, high temp grease. This means they're mere electric motor bearings made with more clearance for heat expansion. So no matter what these overseas factories tell you about how much they've evolved, they are still putting inappropriate bearings in fitness bikes and likely a lot of regular bikes as well. I also bought a blind bearing puller and two drifts for the 6004 bearings, that will work with the puller kit I bought shortly after getting my Santa Cruz.
Now I know full well this is just an experiment which may or may not work, but I'm having fun doing it and I got the bearings at a very good price. The belt was tensioned very tightly, and I didn't dare loosen the tension too much, as It would no doubt have been a pain to even attach the nuts on the ends of the eyebolts that tension belt. I instead loosened them as much as I could, then slipped my leather belt tip between the bike belt and pulley, pulling it sideways and cranking it off (good ole Dickey). I'll really only be out about $44 between the tools and the bearings if this doesn't work out, as the grease I am buying for the mt bike mainly. I really think I can get this bike to last at least twice as long as it did before making noise with the better bearings and a better-than-crap-factory assembly.
The bearings that came with the bike still spin smooth with no notching or roughness, they just have too much play in them for this application. That means the clicking sound I'm hearing has to be in the spindle assembly itself somewhere. I'll just have to be liberal with the grease and squeeze as many spring washers as I can in. There wasn't really any sign of decent assembly grease being used on the spindle, it just had a lot of wet looking rust. I'll definitely be looking closely inside the part of the frame that the bearings are pressed into. If I have to I'll do some wire brushing if I see rust, coat it with rust primer, then maybe add a final coat of some Rustoleum bed liner paint I have. I'll have to limit those coats to the area between the bearings to maintain a proper press fit, but I'm hoping the rust is limited to the spindle.
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