I am very close to having my 12.9 grade metallic blue hardware shipped over from the states. The friend of mine that bought them all for me has just had a baby, so is understandably busy. I posted earlier in this thread with a pic of the hardware he has ordered for me. Unfortunately I tried to source metallic blue from seemingly all of the distributors locally, but no one in Australia could help me. Everyone has regular 12.9 grade, but no metallic blue, and no one was willing to order it in for me. Oh well, my money does not stay local, I tried.
A bit of background as to why I want to only use metallic blue stems back to when I first got into this hobby. My first hobby grade RC was an OFNA Dominator. It did not take long for the modding bug to hit, and all of a sudden I was learning about great companies like Smash & Bash Racing, and DUH Engineering. Both being backyard startups, SaBR had already closed its doors, but DUH was just getting started. I got to know Eric quite well, and ended sending him quite a lot of my money for various Titanium parts he was manufacturing at the time. Here is a pic of the various parts I purchased from him back in the day:
Eric was into his Maxx Hybrids, using Proline Bulks to mount Maxx suspension onto a Dominator chassis. And thus the start of my Maxx obsession began haha. Here are some pics of the hybrid build that he did that got me hooked:
Anyway, Eric only ever used metric blue hardware on his builds. I have not seen many others use the same, and as he was the builder that got me hooked on building trucks like this, I decided I wanted to continue the tradition. Still with the great strength of 12.9 grade, just that little bit different from everyone else:
