Oldbear and his cub's crawlers

[Oldbear42]

My son and I have been into rock crawlers for the past few years with our Axial 1/14th scale units. Fun trucks that work well enough outside and are great for crawling indoors during the winter and rainy summer days.

We had been looking at getting a couple of 1/10th scale as they work better for "natural" terrain and are more entertaining to build scale trail trucks (IMHO). A good friend gifted us his Toyota 4Runner, his son's Jeep and his nephew's pickup. They had not used them for years. All are 1/10th and fairly detailed, with the Chevy truck begin a work in progress - mostly all custom stuff.

We have been testing and tuning, making repairs and changes as we go along. I've had my 3D printer running full time making things for the crawlers (both scales). I'm printing a Rock Hopper camping trailer right now.

Here are our units as we got them. I went through the copious amounts of spare parts (almost enough to build another rock buggy). I'll be documenting our progress here as we build and change things.

 

[Oldbear42]

The 4Runner (which I have claimed) is a recreation of the original owner's RL offroad truck. I'm planning to keep this one very close to the way he built it. I will be adding an interior with covers for the motor and gear, inner fender wells that work as a battery tray and a skid plate to protect the motor. It came with a trailer that was close to his old trailer too. I'm building the offroad camper for this unit. It is a blast to drive.

I am working on magnet mounting the bodies so we can add Lipo batteries to the system - all the batteries are currently NiHM and are set up to charge in the trucks. I like having a spare for each truck so you can charge while playing and I like charging in a Lipo bag or box to avoid the fires...

I even got the Steve Irwin working again but he is destined to drive the Chevy.

 

[Speedy-Triple]

those new additions look great, They seemed to be well loved and designed, I'm pretty sure the owner is happy that they will be getting used and enjoyed.

 

[high plains drifter]

Agree 100% with the above post ^^^. Nice work and tough lookin' trucks.

 

[Gula]

I get this feel8ng that the jeep and chevy, once belonged to me. Not sure why

 

[OSRC]

Some nice looking rigs you've scored there. Really like the 4Runner!

 

[Oldbear42]

I get this feel8ng that the jeep and chevy, once belonged to me. Not sure why

They are from my friend Steve. He builds hot rods and custom interiors as his business. The work he put into the RCs shows.

 

[Oldbear42]

those new additions look great, They seemed to be well loved and designed, I'm pretty sure the owner is happy that they will be getting used and enjoyed.

They had not used them in quite a few years so they gave them to us so they could keep being used. The trades have gone the other way too - One of the many hot rods he built had axles and other parts I had gathered for various cancelled projects in my shop.

 

[Oldbear42]

The steering linkage was just a threaded rod and looked less scale. The servo arm was stock and was too short so the angle of the drag link was causing steering issues - it's tucked up into the hard body of the Jeep to look more realistic. We found an extended-length servo arm (twice as long as stock) and I covered the threaded rod with heat-shrink tubing. I might still bend the lower drag link ball-joint mount to make it not as angled. I know that steering stabilizer shocks are horizontal but I like the look of this. The bellows are just a plastic bendy straw - dollar store for the win again.

My son wanted a winch for his Jeep (like I have on the 4Runner) so his grandparents got me to order one. This collection came with a spare bumper (not sure which it was meant for) that we will be modifying to better fit the Jeep without being in the way. My son has also asked to repaint the Jeep - which it needs after I repaired a re-damaged/broken front fender. So all of this will be coming apart again. He will be getting a can of spray paint for Christmas - his choice of colour. I'm using this to teach him (12) how to teardown, paint and reassemble things.

 

[JimK]

Looking good so far! I'm looking forward to seeing all the upgrades and changes you make to these rigs. "thumbsup"

 

[Oldbear42]

We got the bumper and winch all done. The light bar is on and everything works. I even got the rear hitch mounted after a bit of reworking.