My SCX10/Clod First Timer Build! (Help needed!)
Update: Help is needed with electronics positioning- If you don't want to read, skip to my latest post! Thanks!
The first thing I want to say is that I am completely new to RC, RC trucks, scale stuff, crawling stuff. Basically everything. I will tell a short (edit: kind of long :shock story before I get on to the pictures.
About a month ago, a friend brought his HPI drift car to work and let me play around with it. I had RC cars as a kid, but more of the radioshack stuff, nothing like this. It was amazing! I knew I wanted something like it. I started researching, looking at pictures, forums, and reading all that I could. Cars have always been my thing (I have a modified '83 Volvo 240 Turbo as well as a Subaru BRZ), so I started to look at RC trucks instead of cars. I was thinking that it might be more fun since I don't have a 1:1 truck.
Fast forward to me finding rccrawler.com. I went to the local hobby shop and asked the owner for recommendations. He pushed me toward a Yeti or Wraith. Why am I here in the scale section then, you ask? Well, silly me, I hadn't done enough research (completely my fault) so I went in asking for a crawler. I ended up buying an Axial AX10 Deadbolt (RTR), and here she is:
I took it out for one drive and I had a blast. I immediately got home, hopped back on the forums, and smacked my forehead. As I started looking around at all the videos I had been watching, the threads I had been reading, and the builds I had been inspired by, I realized that I had the wrong truck.
I started searching for how to convert my AX10 to an SCX10, and I found a few things, but nothing with the full information or parts list for a newbie like myself. I was also waiting for my account to get approved here on rccrawler.com and it was taking forever (it got approved a few days ago, actually).
My final decision was to swallow my mistake and buy the SCX10 Dingo Kit. I have never built an RC kit before, but I was willing to give it a shot. It has instructions, right? 8)
and with that, I powered at it for the next 11 hours. (I'm sure you guys know what these steps all look like)
and then my first time painting an RC body:
and then, after some hard lessons learned about cutting lexan, tada!
I got stuck several times with the manual listing the wrong parts, and also being slightly out of date for the instructions on the transmission (it was saying to use a spacer that definitely did not fit). I also had the other seemingly common mistake, mis-aligning the driveshafts. I lined up the notches when putting them together, but I didn't see the step that said to align the pins with the notches :roll:.
Fiddling around at work (I know, outdoors is much better):
and then, back to the forums! I wanted to start on a body I would love right away. The dingo body is cool, but I wanted something I could really make look real. I had seen all of the sweet bowties (and tons of awesome non-bowties!). Crew cabs, long beds, beautiful paint jobs, rusty paint jobs. More research led to this order from RPP Hobby:
Just getting a "rough" idea of what it looks like
I set out to fill out my tool collection a bit for the upcoming project:
and picked up the sweet scale bed box and a cheap LED kit:
and then I jumped right in, again. I watched a few videos about working with styrene before starting, but sometimes there's just nothing like experience to teach you!
For the blower mount in the hood, I made the template out of cardboard as you can see above, then transferred it to styrene. The styrene piece is a bit too small though. Below, I try to fill it with body filler, but it's tricky and not obviously the desired result. That's my first lesson- to make the piece a little too big, then shave it down to fit, rather than going a bit too small and trying to fill it in.
and I took that lesson and applied it to the sunroof fill-in:
Much better this time. A bit of bracing from beneath (more was done after this picture):
and then I saw a video about using scrap styrene to fill gaps, which I used here: (With great result!)
Motivational posing of parts:
Using styrene rod, filled in the side screw holes and then bonded the lower trim to the body:
More motivational (for me) posing:
Update: Help is needed with electronics positioning- If you don't want to read, skip to my latest post! Thanks!
The first thing I want to say is that I am completely new to RC, RC trucks, scale stuff, crawling stuff. Basically everything. I will tell a short (edit: kind of long :shock story before I get on to the pictures.
About a month ago, a friend brought his HPI drift car to work and let me play around with it. I had RC cars as a kid, but more of the radioshack stuff, nothing like this. It was amazing! I knew I wanted something like it. I started researching, looking at pictures, forums, and reading all that I could. Cars have always been my thing (I have a modified '83 Volvo 240 Turbo as well as a Subaru BRZ), so I started to look at RC trucks instead of cars. I was thinking that it might be more fun since I don't have a 1:1 truck.
Fast forward to me finding rccrawler.com. I went to the local hobby shop and asked the owner for recommendations. He pushed me toward a Yeti or Wraith. Why am I here in the scale section then, you ask? Well, silly me, I hadn't done enough research (completely my fault) so I went in asking for a crawler. I ended up buying an Axial AX10 Deadbolt (RTR), and here she is:
I took it out for one drive and I had a blast. I immediately got home, hopped back on the forums, and smacked my forehead. As I started looking around at all the videos I had been watching, the threads I had been reading, and the builds I had been inspired by, I realized that I had the wrong truck.
I started searching for how to convert my AX10 to an SCX10, and I found a few things, but nothing with the full information or parts list for a newbie like myself. I was also waiting for my account to get approved here on rccrawler.com and it was taking forever (it got approved a few days ago, actually).
My final decision was to swallow my mistake and buy the SCX10 Dingo Kit. I have never built an RC kit before, but I was willing to give it a shot. It has instructions, right? 8)
and with that, I powered at it for the next 11 hours. (I'm sure you guys know what these steps all look like)
and then my first time painting an RC body:
and then, after some hard lessons learned about cutting lexan, tada!
I got stuck several times with the manual listing the wrong parts, and also being slightly out of date for the instructions on the transmission (it was saying to use a spacer that definitely did not fit). I also had the other seemingly common mistake, mis-aligning the driveshafts. I lined up the notches when putting them together, but I didn't see the step that said to align the pins with the notches :roll:.
Fiddling around at work (I know, outdoors is much better):
and then, back to the forums! I wanted to start on a body I would love right away. The dingo body is cool, but I wanted something I could really make look real. I had seen all of the sweet bowties (and tons of awesome non-bowties!). Crew cabs, long beds, beautiful paint jobs, rusty paint jobs. More research led to this order from RPP Hobby:
Just getting a "rough" idea of what it looks like
I set out to fill out my tool collection a bit for the upcoming project:
and picked up the sweet scale bed box and a cheap LED kit:
and then I jumped right in, again. I watched a few videos about working with styrene before starting, but sometimes there's just nothing like experience to teach you!
For the blower mount in the hood, I made the template out of cardboard as you can see above, then transferred it to styrene. The styrene piece is a bit too small though. Below, I try to fill it with body filler, but it's tricky and not obviously the desired result. That's my first lesson- to make the piece a little too big, then shave it down to fit, rather than going a bit too small and trying to fill it in.
and I took that lesson and applied it to the sunroof fill-in:
Much better this time. A bit of bracing from beneath (more was done after this picture):
and then I saw a video about using scrap styrene to fill gaps, which I used here: (With great result!)
Motivational posing of parts:
Using styrene rod, filled in the side screw holes and then bonded the lower trim to the body:
More motivational (for me) posing:
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