Sawback FJ 40 Land Cruiser

[patman_and_robin]

Since I was a kid I have always loved old FJ's, since I don't want the headaches of restoring one I might as well build an rc one.

I started with a virgin sawback kit and Tamiya Land Cruiser 40 Body


I had an R2 DIG trans sitting in the parts box so I decided to use it for its small size and set it up so I had selectable 2 or 4wd.
[url=http://imgur.com/sWnqf3v][/URL]

I went into this build with the full knowledge that the wheelbase was going to be all wrong. After some thought I decided to ditch the idea of messing with the leaf spring mounts and cut 30mm out of the center of the frame rails.
[url=http://imgur.com/VcfJS7i][/URL]

Wheelbase is far better now, any shorter and I would have driveshaft and clearance issues for the transmision.[url=http://imgur.com/WGOYIMF][/URL]

The front bumper gap turned out exactly as I had planned, I'd like to put an older style winch on the front (the one with a big manual brake on it) like the Warn 5687 with a servo winch to do the work.
[url=http://imgur.com/yJa3VxT][/URL]

Now that the chassis length had been taken care of I needed to come up with some body mounts. Since this is a scale (ish) build I wanted them to be stealth mounts. I glued some styrene to the front body posts and made a nice pad for some velcro, for the rear I wanted to come up with a hinge type mount. I bent up a hoop out of 3/16 rod and will soon make some mounts to give some body mounting points.[url=http://imgur.com/iJCQTYk][/URL]

[url=http://imgur.com/5vIwv0n][/URL]

Thats about all I've done up to this point, hope you enjoy the build

 

[patman_and_robin]

A bit more progress has been made, I ditched the idea of the pivoting rear hoop and decided for a fixed mount. I used the same hoop and moved it forward and braced it to match the shape and location of the stock roll bar on the FJ40s.

Once the roll bar was tacked in place I drilled a couple holes to make a styrene platform for the velcro body mounts.

An FJ wouldn't be complete without a spare tire, even though the stock ones didn't have much for a rear bumper I decided to fab one up with a spare tire mount.

Next step is paint, plan is to paint the lexan from the outside. Red body with a white top and grill. This truck isn't going to be a shelf queen so I'm going to spray it silver and copper as a base so I get some nice colours coming through it as it gets some westcoast pinstripes.