Chester's Eastside #RAPstar => Progression of a funhaver

[Chester]

Everything started as normal as always: I saw a picture of something that I didn't know I needed to have.
It was the newest scale performance chassis out of the well known and crazy brain of @gerry and I needed to have it immediately.

Actually the real build started last year in may, so the beginning will just be bringing you up to speed...

The chassis called #gangstar is made from 3mm carbon fiber and originally designed to work with SCX10 skid and gearbox.

Then there is the next special part of the build: custom narrowed AR60 with carbon fiber axle trusses inspired by those that D-Lux makes for fullsize AR60s.
Pictured below is the rear axle. The inner vertical plate incorporates some tabs for the lower link mounts of the AR60s

Front axle is pretty similar with the exception of a servo mount on the horizontal plate up top.

Originally I had the plan to use this rig with a Deadbolt body & cage. But that shouldn't be for long...

Then my engineering background struck me and I decided to go nuts.

Why should I use all the readily available stuff that everybody uses? Why should I take the easy way out?

gerry, the creator of this chassis was nice enough to hand me over the cad data of the #gangstar chassis. So I could get my own crazy mind working on how to bend the classic rules of building a car with a TVP chassis.
Yes I know this chassis isn't going to pass any class rules or anything like that but that's not the purpose I started this build for.

Coming from the comp crawler scene the belly of the chassis felt way too wide for my liking. But it needed to retain that width up top where the servo should tuck in between the chassis rails under compression.
Actually I never really liked the look of the Axial gearbox so I drew up my own one.
The chassis rails are tilted by 10° and the motor is forward mounted relatively low in the chassis.

Some inspiration came from the toyzuki conversion but I never liked the necessity to go 3 link or get crazy bent front upper links.
So I kept the motor right behind the front axle, kept it 4 linked front and rear.
I also did some kind of tummy tuck by removing the belly that the SCX10 skid comes with.

In comparison I could lower the chassis by 7,5mm (in other words I gained 7.5mm ground clearance) and at the same time didn't increase the center of gravity.

 

[Chester]

Drivetrain setup...

The new skid and gearbox are made of 5 parts that are 3D printed and 1 motorplate laser cut from 3mm aluminium.

1. Skid and main gearbox housing
- contains the standard output and input gears from the Wraith transmission

2. intermediate gear stage
- contains a single 36t gear from XR10 connected to Wraith input gear

3. gearbox cover
- connection between gearbox and motorplate
- contains additional gear stage 36/12 tooth from XR10

4. dig case
- contains everything that's normally inside the rear portion of the Wraith gearbox

5. dig cover
- rear cover for everything dig related

Some little refinements later I ordered the parts at shapeways and a few days later I had them in my hands.

For mounting the lower links I decided that I do not like srews holding the links on the skid. So i designed the skid to take a 3mm pin for each pair of lower links. And just because I can: 3mm carbon fiber rod...

Installed the skid/gearbox (let's call it skidbox from here on), bend up a simple battery mount for placing the battery directly above the front axle.

Now it was time to fill the skidbox with some gears.
As already mentioned the first stage of the gearbox takes standard axial gears like found in the SCX10 or Wraith. I went down the SSD route and installed the 52t and 20t gears (no idler gear in this gearbox).
The 20t is mounted on a cut SCX topshaft, my dremel and a file made short work of it. The gearbox is designed to take the already existing cross pin holes in the top shaft.

Then there is a the first 36t gear from an XR10 (went with a set of RC4WD gears, these are holding up in my compcrawler for years now).

Next piece of gearbox with the last gear stage (XR10 36/12t idler gear).

And the iceing on the cake: gearbox cover and motor plate.

I had an 13,5t Novak brushless motor lying around so in it went. Paired with a 15t pinion the complete unit has almost double the gearbox reduction of a standard SCX gearbox.
But I can fit any thing from 10-23t pinion if I like to.
This should give me a good low speed resolution and the 13.5t should pack enough oomph to not just creep around...

The skidbox-motor-combo then was installed and stood there forever (not)...

And yes I know, it was right around that time that traxxas had freshly released their TRX-4 which uses a similar motor layout. But it's still not a mass produced item of a big company but rather a brain fart of myself (which actually was somewhere in my mind for several years now)...

 

[Chester]

First looks...

Not being able to complete my original plan bodywise I looked through the classifieds of the german forum where I found a complete and new honcho body with used cage. Shouldn't be that hard to mount this one up so on it went...

Some paint...

Some light... Actually 2 red leds for the back and 22 super bright white ones up front...

So my little funhaver was "finished" the night before some friends a I headed to ReconG6 in Poland on the last weekend of september 2017...

 

[Chester]

G6 Poland Jurapark Bałtów

Having way too much fun to think of taking pictures all our freshly build cars of our 6 man group (only two of our cars had seen trails before) survived with only minor damages.

That's it for stage 1 of this rig. Technically it is pretty complete but I don't like the Honcho that much. Neither will my original plan of building this rig into a Unimog happen nore will it see the Deadbolt again.
Sudden chances lead to changing plans and that's what keeps me going on and spending my time with this hobby...

 

[JatoTheRipper]

Awesome engineering work on the trans case!

I'd love to see video of your ToyZuki if you have any footage.

 

[Chester]

Awesome engineering work on the trans case!

I'd love to see video of your ToyZuki if you have any footage.

Thanks. With "your ToyZuki" you mean my rig? Unfortunately there is no video footage that I know of. A friend of mine still keeps my sd card hostage that I used in the GoPro I borrowed from him for G6 Poland last september :lmao:

Some additional tech info on my #gangstar:
Chassis:
- #tschiparts #gangstar (3mm carbon fiber)

drivetrain:
- self designed skidbox
- SSD SCX10 gears
- RC4WD XR10 gears
- Axial Dig for Wraith

axles:
- narrowed Axial AR60 (184mm pin to pin)
- 3mm carbon fiber axle trusses
- servo on axle

electronics:
- Servo: Blue Bird BLS3507 (40,5kg/562,5oz @8,4V)
- Motor: Novak Crawler brushless 13,5t
- ESC: CC Mamba Micro X
- BEC: CC 10A

wheels & tires:
- Axial 1.9 glue on wheels modded for SLW hubs
- 350 SLW hubs
- Proline TSL XL 1.9

 

[Chester]

A friend offered me a body that I fell in love with the first time he mentioned it to be used on his #gangstar build (which now uses the gold Range Rover hardbody as seen in the above post). Didn't want to use the same body as him (for me that's like keeping your fingers of a friends girl)...
So when he offered me his former and unused body I took my chance immediately and got to work on it virtually...

Some scale details needed to be added to the lexan shell...

Further details showing my team name (Team Eastside Crawlerz)

Front bumper added...

So here is a complete overview of my front dress up parts:

Bumper with bumper skid and integrated fairlead for the winch

Frame for the grill with team logo

Grill insert (seperate piece so it can be printed in a different color than the frame)

Headlight buckets left an right which can take 3 leds each

Projector lenses (don't know a better name) for the headlights

So this adds up to a nice front styling package...

Because the new body is way too long for my current chassis (340mm wheelbase body, 318mm wheelbase chassis) the body needs to be hacked up and shortened. This might be straight forward with a hardbody but how to do it with lexan?

By adding reinforcements where the body is cut. So I made up these nifty little side braces (ignore the rear cage. This will be used later in the next installement of this ride)...

After designing all these parts I can imagine how long it took James Knight of Knightcustoms to create all of his beautiful scale detailing parts. I can look over some small mistakes and decide if I want to change it up for my own parts. He's doing it for the masses and therefor can't take any mistakes or not perfectly matching parts. Greatest respect from my side!!! "thumbsup"

 

[Chester]

Let's continue outside of CAD...

First parts where in some weeks ago, namely the front bumper and some prototype parts of the side reinforcements.
Bumper is a perfect fit

Then it was time to cut up the perfectly new body (Proline Raptor for the Axial Yeti; so that's where the name comes from: #gangstar + RAPTOR = #RAPstar) to get it shortened.

The side window looks a bit short but on the same day I cut the body I've seen a F150 in my hometown (we don't get to see many of these trucks over here in Germany) and it isn't that much off the real deal 8)

So actually that's it where I'm at right now. Like last year the roadtrip to it's 2nd maiden voyage in poland is right around the corner. There's still a lot of work that has to be done like paint, getting all the parts for the front printed and so on. Next paycheck will get some of these problems sorted :wink:

Gonny keep y'all posted about further progress. Hope you like my build so far...

 

[4RunnerKid]

i like what's happening here. carry on. 8)

 

[Chester]

i like what's happening here. carry on. 8)

Thx Buddy "thumbsup"

Little update tech wise:
I got some VP VVD's on the way that I'll cut up for the front to work with an Incision locker and underdrive gears. Last year I drove overdrive up front and I didn't like it. Had OD in since using these axles on a shafty and thought it would fit the performance scaler...

Rear axle is about to get a 5mm Ti axleshaft. A friend is making it for me right to my specs. So axles are going to be bullet proof for now but I'll keep my wildboars as the week link and easy/cheap to replace before overstressing anything tranny or anything else...

 

[Chester]

I'll continue with the process of the build even if it is already up and running.

I got my VVD's and cut them right up. Shortened axle means shortend VVD:

Servo, draglink, tierod and wheels installed and front axle is finished:

 

[Chester]

Interiour + scale parts

Because I had to cut out the side windows when I shortened the body I was in need of an interiour. I knew that when I designed the side braces for mounting the halfcuts. I integrated some mounting tabs to screw the half interiour into the body.

So here's the basic idea for the interiour:

The torsos are from tamiya (for something like wild willy with the use of these silly huge heads), the heads are from axial (later changed for white ones).

The CAD-bug bit again:

Made from 1.5mm styrene:

Dash cluster and steering wheel added for the driver, nav system added for the co, levers added to add some leverage, paint added to highlight the faces of the dudes:

On the outside of the shell I received my 3D printed parts:

 

[Chester]

Paint, Team sticker

Some "random color":

Some silver:

Some gold:

And finally the well deserved team eastside crawlerz sticker:

So withour giving anything away...
It's green:

 

[Chester]

Action shots day and night

Some pics from #OffmaniaRC2018 in Jurapark Baltow in Poland:

Some light:

Some night stage:

There is some video footage of the #RAPstar but I didn't find any time since october to edit/upload it... Maybe over christmas holidays I can get it done (if I remember myself to do it)...

So I call this thing "done". There's an SCX10.2 raw builders kit coming where this body will find it's home on. Plans for the #gangstar are also existing, it's going to get 3D printed portals, a bit shorter wheelbase and a Unimog-Cab. It's going to live on as my personal tinkerbox...