Boy Castle
Newbie
Boys and Girls, Welcome to my first EVER build thread on RCC... so excitement! I'm a long time lurker here, and there are some incredible people/builds on this forum, but I thought it time I show everyone what I do with my spare time...
My C2 Bronco clapped out during the Australian cANZ Nationals on the first course of the weekend... Naturally, that fostered an incredible amount of unnatural hate towards it, and it had to die.
However, it shall be reborn! We have the technology!
You've all seen a bog standard Defender body before, so I'll skip the 100% unmolested bosy pics and we'll get right into the grit of the project.
Firstly, this is a C2 rig! And while I'm a big advocate of ultra scale looking trucks, 95mm tyres just aren't going to cut it! With the rubber that I have in mind, the guards had to get a nice... trim.
The second factor in the rigs performance is CoG. It's got a big white back-side on it and I needed to bring the weight back down to a manageable level, so under the knife it goes once more!
Tidy up the edges and test fit the chassis to make sure everythings going to plan and you can't help but smile! There's just something about the way that a standard axial chassis slides under a defender body that make the worlds seem like a much nicer place.
However, keep in mind that this rig is not going to be your standard "slap a 90 body on an axial and away you go" style build. I known for a while now that if I was to build a new C2, there's be a lot more of my blood and sweat in it than anything I've built to date.
On that note, it was time to add some eyecandy to the body and provide it with a bit more protection in those rollovers that are BOUND to happen... The build has barely begun and I'm already thinking about how much that first rollover is going to hurt!
So I took some measurements, broke out the brass tube, and went to town. I wanted it to still be at least a four seater, because there's nothing better than scaring the crap out of your mates when you're thrashing your rig offroad! The way it's mounted to the interior is by soldering steel hex bolts in the bottom of the vertical tubes and cutting the heads off. I then reamed holes in the floor of the interior and fixed the cage with nylock nuts on the bolt threads... easy as pie!
I decided to make a side-by-side comparison after sharing the above on Stalkbook and getting the predicted "err brass? really? that's a bit heavy to be going crazy with"... What I found was very interesting.
The first weigh in was a Honcho rear cage with the top bars removed and some custom trimming off the old bronco.
And then the brass cage... at 1/2 the weight! Granted this is going on a hardbody rig, so it's neither here nor there really, but I found it interesting that the thought of someone re-creating their dingo cages out of brass could actually bring their CoG down.
After that interesting discovery I decided to test fit the cage, and put the rubber under it to see how far they're going to be poking out the sides... Tough! This is starting to make me very happy.
Now, I know I'm going to need this rig to sit lower than I'd normally like to keep the CoG down, and the standard axial skid has always given me the irrits in how far it hangs down through the rails. So, time to break out the micro torch again and make a mount for a divorced transfer case.
It starts simple, two pieces of 5/32 (i think) brass tube that perfectly sheathes 3mm allthread, that's how it's mounted, and it also allows for a little bit of trickery when it comes to the lower link mounts. I reenforced those tubes with two more, and then planned out the cuts for the lower rod ends. It essentially involved cutting the structure into two halves which all came together by threading allthread from one side to the other, very effective.
By doing it this way, I worked out that the lower rod ends won't even stick out past the bottom of the chassis rails, which means that if I run bent lower links, there's nothing to hang up on in the centre of the vehicle. I basically get max clearance at low ride height... it's all coming together nicely.
Plate it up so that mounting the transfer case becomes freedom of choice, and the whole thing is strong as hell and only about 4grams heavier than the original plastic skid... I've got a version two of this setup in my mind already if I feel the need to make it lighter.
After playing with fire, quite literally, I decided it was time to rebuild the axles and get stuck into the links. It was at this point that I discovered that beer bottles are exceptionally handy for holding scx10 axles to rebuild them.
After the axles were built, I started playing with ride height and how I want the rig to sit when it's ready to hit the rocks...
And this is where my story stops... for now.
My C2 Bronco clapped out during the Australian cANZ Nationals on the first course of the weekend... Naturally, that fostered an incredible amount of unnatural hate towards it, and it had to die.
However, it shall be reborn! We have the technology!
You've all seen a bog standard Defender body before, so I'll skip the 100% unmolested bosy pics and we'll get right into the grit of the project.
Firstly, this is a C2 rig! And while I'm a big advocate of ultra scale looking trucks, 95mm tyres just aren't going to cut it! With the rubber that I have in mind, the guards had to get a nice... trim.
The second factor in the rigs performance is CoG. It's got a big white back-side on it and I needed to bring the weight back down to a manageable level, so under the knife it goes once more!
Tidy up the edges and test fit the chassis to make sure everythings going to plan and you can't help but smile! There's just something about the way that a standard axial chassis slides under a defender body that make the worlds seem like a much nicer place.
However, keep in mind that this rig is not going to be your standard "slap a 90 body on an axial and away you go" style build. I known for a while now that if I was to build a new C2, there's be a lot more of my blood and sweat in it than anything I've built to date.
On that note, it was time to add some eyecandy to the body and provide it with a bit more protection in those rollovers that are BOUND to happen... The build has barely begun and I'm already thinking about how much that first rollover is going to hurt!
So I took some measurements, broke out the brass tube, and went to town. I wanted it to still be at least a four seater, because there's nothing better than scaring the crap out of your mates when you're thrashing your rig offroad! The way it's mounted to the interior is by soldering steel hex bolts in the bottom of the vertical tubes and cutting the heads off. I then reamed holes in the floor of the interior and fixed the cage with nylock nuts on the bolt threads... easy as pie!
I decided to make a side-by-side comparison after sharing the above on Stalkbook and getting the predicted "err brass? really? that's a bit heavy to be going crazy with"... What I found was very interesting.
The first weigh in was a Honcho rear cage with the top bars removed and some custom trimming off the old bronco.
And then the brass cage... at 1/2 the weight! Granted this is going on a hardbody rig, so it's neither here nor there really, but I found it interesting that the thought of someone re-creating their dingo cages out of brass could actually bring their CoG down.
After that interesting discovery I decided to test fit the cage, and put the rubber under it to see how far they're going to be poking out the sides... Tough! This is starting to make me very happy.
Now, I know I'm going to need this rig to sit lower than I'd normally like to keep the CoG down, and the standard axial skid has always given me the irrits in how far it hangs down through the rails. So, time to break out the micro torch again and make a mount for a divorced transfer case.
It starts simple, two pieces of 5/32 (i think) brass tube that perfectly sheathes 3mm allthread, that's how it's mounted, and it also allows for a little bit of trickery when it comes to the lower link mounts. I reenforced those tubes with two more, and then planned out the cuts for the lower rod ends. It essentially involved cutting the structure into two halves which all came together by threading allthread from one side to the other, very effective.
By doing it this way, I worked out that the lower rod ends won't even stick out past the bottom of the chassis rails, which means that if I run bent lower links, there's nothing to hang up on in the centre of the vehicle. I basically get max clearance at low ride height... it's all coming together nicely.
Plate it up so that mounting the transfer case becomes freedom of choice, and the whole thing is strong as hell and only about 4grams heavier than the original plastic skid... I've got a version two of this setup in my mind already if I feel the need to make it lighter.
After playing with fire, quite literally, I decided it was time to rebuild the axles and get stuck into the links. It was at this point that I discovered that beer bottles are exceptionally handy for holding scx10 axles to rebuild them.
After the axles were built, I started playing with ride height and how I want the rig to sit when it's ready to hit the rocks...
And this is where my story stops... for now.
