dr frankenstyle
Rock Crawler
You could call this another "twisted" build from Frankenstyle's laboratory. :roll: I've been told, by a few, that I needed a "street truck" to pull my boat trailer so I decided to go for it.
I want something to match the boat, old-school with some modern tech'. I'm a "work with what you have" kind of guy, and I don't have much of a build budget, so I thought back to my bygone days of RC on-roading and remembered my very first car .... and Associated RC-12 that I bought in the 70's ... so I got out the shovel and dug this out of it's grave.
The world of RC has changed LOTS since her debut. :lmao: I'd forgotten these were "Americanized", all SAE threads and heads! I had to get tools out of the garage to fit it. So to get into the modern world, I needed to set her up for new wheels, and adapt the old ball-diff to new hex-drive.
Anyone who's messed with a ball-diff knows the hubs are different from one side to the other. Here's the original axle set-up...
...and the ball-diff parts.
To get to 12mm hexes, I took some aluminum tube (slightly loose on the old axle) and drilled the old hubs, and a set of Jato front hexes to fit the tube. Then JB epoxy'd the parts together to make adapter-hubs. I found a brass hose-barb fitting that fit the outside of the alum' tube and cut pieces to beef-up the hubs. The diff-side has to "compress" the diff to adjust, so it needed to be pretty strong. I swapped the old 1/4" thread in the diff end of the axle-tube with a 4mm for modern wheel-nuts and added one to the other side to hold the wheels on.
Then for the front, I just drilled another pair of hexes (and wheels) to accept the old Associated front bushings....
... and voila, new 1.9's mounted to the 30+ yr. old spindles.
Some of the nearby "Gasser" and "Funny Car" threads reminded me how much I like drag-racing, and I had some old Pro-line "Styrker II" tires (from the 80s) that are 2" wide, so I decided to go with a kind of "Pro-Street" style truck.
With that in mind, and I also want it to match the boat and trailer, so I sniffed up some rear wheels that would fit the Strykers and match the leftover trailer wheels that I'm using for the front. I found some on ebay, again Jato parts, but they're 2.8s ... so it was time to work over the tires. They were 2.2's so I cut out the beads, and strettttched them over the wheels and ended up with this.
...and more or less came up with this as a roller.
The original set-up is just a motor with a pinion driving a spur on the axle ... waaaay too fast for trailer-pulling. So I dug up an old GRU that I built back in the 80's and proceeded to fit it into the chassis. I wanted to fit it all inside the body so I tried to keep it as narrow as possible. After a little cutting and milling ...
and now she's a rolling chassis with modern wheels, LOTS of rear tire ( I can mount a set of small tires on the back too)and a power-plant."thumbsup"
I zip-tied some electrics on it and got her ready for some test-runs.
She's a bit of a handful to drive, :shock: like old trucks are. Still way too fast, but I've got lower gears on the way.
So it was time to find a proper body, something era-correct to the boat's style, that will fit the chassis. The front-end is "adjustable", so to speak, but the rear-end is about as narrow as I could get it ... so after checking sizes, I found Vaterra's '68 Ford F-100, short-bed.
PERFECT! And I owned a 1:1 back in the early 90's so since I'm using my first RC car and building another '68, this is kind of a nostalgia build for me too.8)
So anyway, this is the gist of the project.
I have to admit, I'm starting to like this build more than I expected to.
It needs a lot of refinement, I know .....We'll see where it goes.
This could be fun .... stay tuned. ;-)
I want something to match the boat, old-school with some modern tech'. I'm a "work with what you have" kind of guy, and I don't have much of a build budget, so I thought back to my bygone days of RC on-roading and remembered my very first car .... and Associated RC-12 that I bought in the 70's ... so I got out the shovel and dug this out of it's grave.
The world of RC has changed LOTS since her debut. :lmao: I'd forgotten these were "Americanized", all SAE threads and heads! I had to get tools out of the garage to fit it. So to get into the modern world, I needed to set her up for new wheels, and adapt the old ball-diff to new hex-drive.
Anyone who's messed with a ball-diff knows the hubs are different from one side to the other. Here's the original axle set-up...
...and the ball-diff parts.
To get to 12mm hexes, I took some aluminum tube (slightly loose on the old axle) and drilled the old hubs, and a set of Jato front hexes to fit the tube. Then JB epoxy'd the parts together to make adapter-hubs. I found a brass hose-barb fitting that fit the outside of the alum' tube and cut pieces to beef-up the hubs. The diff-side has to "compress" the diff to adjust, so it needed to be pretty strong. I swapped the old 1/4" thread in the diff end of the axle-tube with a 4mm for modern wheel-nuts and added one to the other side to hold the wheels on.
Then for the front, I just drilled another pair of hexes (and wheels) to accept the old Associated front bushings....
... and voila, new 1.9's mounted to the 30+ yr. old spindles.
Some of the nearby "Gasser" and "Funny Car" threads reminded me how much I like drag-racing, and I had some old Pro-line "Styrker II" tires (from the 80s) that are 2" wide, so I decided to go with a kind of "Pro-Street" style truck.
With that in mind, and I also want it to match the boat and trailer, so I sniffed up some rear wheels that would fit the Strykers and match the leftover trailer wheels that I'm using for the front. I found some on ebay, again Jato parts, but they're 2.8s ... so it was time to work over the tires. They were 2.2's so I cut out the beads, and strettttched them over the wheels and ended up with this.
...and more or less came up with this as a roller.
The original set-up is just a motor with a pinion driving a spur on the axle ... waaaay too fast for trailer-pulling. So I dug up an old GRU that I built back in the 80's and proceeded to fit it into the chassis. I wanted to fit it all inside the body so I tried to keep it as narrow as possible. After a little cutting and milling ...
and now she's a rolling chassis with modern wheels, LOTS of rear tire ( I can mount a set of small tires on the back too)and a power-plant."thumbsup"
I zip-tied some electrics on it and got her ready for some test-runs.
She's a bit of a handful to drive, :shock: like old trucks are. Still way too fast, but I've got lower gears on the way.
So it was time to find a proper body, something era-correct to the boat's style, that will fit the chassis. The front-end is "adjustable", so to speak, but the rear-end is about as narrow as I could get it ... so after checking sizes, I found Vaterra's '68 Ford F-100, short-bed.
PERFECT! And I owned a 1:1 back in the early 90's so since I'm using my first RC car and building another '68, this is kind of a nostalgia build for me too.8)
So anyway, this is the gist of the project.
I have to admit, I'm starting to like this build more than I expected to.
It needs a lot of refinement, I know .....We'll see where it goes.
This could be fun .... stay tuned. ;-)