Like a lot of other folks, I jumped on the $99 Barrage Doomsday deal from Horizon. I'd had my eye on the Barrage for a while, but at the $200 price point, I just didn't feel that it was as good of a value as other options. Now that I've pretty much already bought all of those options, the Doomsday deal came along and now here we are. :roll:
Right out of the box, the Doomsday had a Mad Max monster truck kind of look that would have really appealed to me if this thing was actually fast enough to be used as a monster truck. Since it's crawler slow, the Mad Max vibe didn't work for me. Driving it was really surprising though. Those rock hard monster truck tires (mounted to short course style wheels) climbed surprisingly well. I've got a dirt hill that very few of my vehicles can get up without a lot of wheel speed. The Doomsday is the only truck I have that got up the hill without that wheel speed. On the rocks the stock tires are less capable, but still more capable than you would expect.
While I Was waiting for new wheels & tires to get here, I wanted to address the awful approach angle with the stock front bumper, as well as to de-Maxify the body.
So, the stock bumpers came off the truck. I liked the rear bumper, and thought that it could make a decent starting point for a new front bumper, but then I'd be left with no rear bumper. Ultimately I decided that the rear bumper was big enough to do both! I cut the bumper in half and reshaped it to match the v-shaped grill on the body. For the other half of the bumper, I flattened it out, transferred the mounting holes, and countersunk them. I'm pretty happy with how the front grill came out, but I'm not totally sold on how the rear bumper looks. It looks like a comb, so I may cut the "teeth" off of it. Time will tell.
To get rid of the Mad Max vibe, I pulled off the side pipes, pulled off the roll bar, and got rid of the window netting. I used side cutters to remove all of the webbing, but kept the frames. I sanded them, and reinstalled. While they were off, I masked and painted the window areas black.
The approach angle with the new bumper was much better, and I think the body looks a lot better too:
The next thing that I did was to re-arrange the electronics, and to upgrade the servo. For the electronics, I moved the ESC/receiver tray to the back where the battery tray was. I mounted the battery tray to the front, but discovered that having the 2nd crossmember in the front interfered with the servo, so I had to try something else. I made an ABS mount that screwed to the factory crossmember, and positioned the stock battery tray behind the shock tower, as low as it could go. It's not as rigid as I'd like, and I may install another crossmember beneath it to make it more rigid, but overall it's working very well.
As you can see in the last pic, I also lowered the body mounts one hole, which required some minor trimming of the posts to prevent interference with the tops of the shocks.
Lastly, the new wheels and tires came. The wheels are very cheap ebay wheels, but I'm pretty fond of how they look. They came with orange anodized beadlock rings, which I hated, so I hit them with some Easy Off oven cleaner, then cleaned them up with steel wool, and painted the oval details with black model paint. I only painted 4 of the rings in case I didn't like them, and honestly, I'm not real fond of it, so next time I have them apart I'll probably flip them around.
The tires are cheap Austar Dick Cepek clones. The tires are nice and soft, but they're not very sticky. I used the foams that came with them. These foams are generally way too soft, but on this light weight vehicle, the tires don't have ANY compression at all, so I think they'll be fine.
For the servo, I robbed the JX 6221 out of my Clone Hammers. Originally I had the stock servo from my Gen7 in it, but that servo died on the first drive. The 6221 has all the power that this little truck should ever need.
I don't have a lot more upgrades planned, but I do have a couple. I need to get substantially softer springs, and lighter shock oil. Eventually I'll want a nicer body, but other than that, I just want to drive it. I'm planning to keep this little truck right in my 1:1 truck so that if I get a few minutes to take it out, I'll have it with me.
Right out of the box, the Doomsday had a Mad Max monster truck kind of look that would have really appealed to me if this thing was actually fast enough to be used as a monster truck. Since it's crawler slow, the Mad Max vibe didn't work for me. Driving it was really surprising though. Those rock hard monster truck tires (mounted to short course style wheels) climbed surprisingly well. I've got a dirt hill that very few of my vehicles can get up without a lot of wheel speed. The Doomsday is the only truck I have that got up the hill without that wheel speed. On the rocks the stock tires are less capable, but still more capable than you would expect.
While I Was waiting for new wheels & tires to get here, I wanted to address the awful approach angle with the stock front bumper, as well as to de-Maxify the body.
So, the stock bumpers came off the truck. I liked the rear bumper, and thought that it could make a decent starting point for a new front bumper, but then I'd be left with no rear bumper. Ultimately I decided that the rear bumper was big enough to do both! I cut the bumper in half and reshaped it to match the v-shaped grill on the body. For the other half of the bumper, I flattened it out, transferred the mounting holes, and countersunk them. I'm pretty happy with how the front grill came out, but I'm not totally sold on how the rear bumper looks. It looks like a comb, so I may cut the "teeth" off of it. Time will tell.
To get rid of the Mad Max vibe, I pulled off the side pipes, pulled off the roll bar, and got rid of the window netting. I used side cutters to remove all of the webbing, but kept the frames. I sanded them, and reinstalled. While they were off, I masked and painted the window areas black.
The approach angle with the new bumper was much better, and I think the body looks a lot better too:
The next thing that I did was to re-arrange the electronics, and to upgrade the servo. For the electronics, I moved the ESC/receiver tray to the back where the battery tray was. I mounted the battery tray to the front, but discovered that having the 2nd crossmember in the front interfered with the servo, so I had to try something else. I made an ABS mount that screwed to the factory crossmember, and positioned the stock battery tray behind the shock tower, as low as it could go. It's not as rigid as I'd like, and I may install another crossmember beneath it to make it more rigid, but overall it's working very well.
As you can see in the last pic, I also lowered the body mounts one hole, which required some minor trimming of the posts to prevent interference with the tops of the shocks.
Lastly, the new wheels and tires came. The wheels are very cheap ebay wheels, but I'm pretty fond of how they look. They came with orange anodized beadlock rings, which I hated, so I hit them with some Easy Off oven cleaner, then cleaned them up with steel wool, and painted the oval details with black model paint. I only painted 4 of the rings in case I didn't like them, and honestly, I'm not real fond of it, so next time I have them apart I'll probably flip them around.
The tires are cheap Austar Dick Cepek clones. The tires are nice and soft, but they're not very sticky. I used the foams that came with them. These foams are generally way too soft, but on this light weight vehicle, the tires don't have ANY compression at all, so I think they'll be fine.
For the servo, I robbed the JX 6221 out of my Clone Hammers. Originally I had the stock servo from my Gen7 in it, but that servo died on the first drive. The 6221 has all the power that this little truck should ever need.
I don't have a lot more upgrades planned, but I do have a couple. I need to get substantially softer springs, and lighter shock oil. Eventually I'll want a nicer body, but other than that, I just want to drive it. I'm planning to keep this little truck right in my 1:1 truck so that if I get a few minutes to take it out, I'll have it with me.
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