Desperado for a less ugly body!

[frizzen]

Thanks man! I'm a bit of a modeler, though my skills have a ways to go still. Anyway, I went as a total "Budget Beater" for the body, needed to prove you can do a little bit of magic for nothing more than time. (So far my cost beyond the body kit for this is $0.00)

Body mods to "Desperado" used: Paperclips, sheet styrene, necklace chain, jump ring from end of necklace chain, thread, little Epoxy, little CA... There's going to be a thread wrapped drum, a coil spring out of a clock, and a plastic rim off a McToy pullback to finish off the winch. If you've got any questions about doing anything shown on this truck, please ask!

Yeah, I figured a winch would be trick as hell on this ride. I've seen some ZZ-M's that just dangle chain with a hook, I've seen some that have it motorized but ruin it with a giant spool on front, but I've yet to see one that looks scale and works pretty close to correctly... So, gotta do it. (Plus somebody bet I couldn't when I mentioned the idea)

An Exocage huh? Alright, you're gonna make me go hit another Radiohack to get more of their truck bodies before they're all sold out aren't you? You bully.

[frizzen]

I was going to go with some stainless MIG welder wire, but the paperclips I had were closer to the gauge I wanted. "Make truck strong, like bull!" Plus everybody has paperclips! Almost did an exocage for this ugly mother, but thought it might be over the top, guess I ought to start a mockup.

Yep, totally. I'm not laying cable, I'm just trying to winch myself out of here. Some people have done 3rd channel for the winches, I'm not sure how they did it, nor do I plan on doing it anytime in the near future. Mine is gonna be a little different. Low-Tech, a brass hair spring providing retract tension for cable. Can't use it to winch up stuff but you use it like a "dead rope", hook onto other truck, both of you put in gear going same direction, both trucks are able to move past obsticle. Works best when they're geared pretty close to the same, but my 'fastest gear, fastest motor truck' can pull my 'lowest gear, lowest motor, crawler gear truck' up the 2" edge of my keyboard that way, so it should be enough for the micro trails.

A tiny servo winch would be ideal, but you'd have to swap in a Propo RX board with a 3rd channel, and go to a 3 channel TX, modify your servo to act as an ESC instead of Servo... Definately possible, but a bit over the top for the amount of $$$ I'm dropping on these.

Any pics of your ride?

[frizzen]

Definately not gonna try to weld at this scale, I was saying I was going to use the thin welding rod instead of paperclips (bend and glue).

NKOK was a tank steer, right? Man those are some guards! So you like roll up next to the cat and place one of those bumpers on it's side, up and over? What's flash? Love to see the course, I've been thinking about building one, though it'll be hard enough you'll have to buddy winch part of it.

Check out my other truck body customizing project. http://www.tinyrc.com/forums/showthr...threadid=21624

[frizzen]

So, who wants to winch themselves out of here?

[frizzen]

It 90% works.

Let's look at the naughty bits.


Winch drum on bumper, just for scale looks. I *HAD* to have a winch on my rock crushing Winch Bumper! But I'm not enough of a poser to slap on a fake winch, so...

I have an inner winch drum which is the REAL one the line actually spools from, there's going to be a spring retract so I don't have to pop body off to wind it back in like I do now.

You can also see the bottom of my bed, the rear LED routing I had to use, even how I attached my rock sliders to the rockers. You can't see how I "lowered" the headlight LEDs so they shine through headlight under the silver bar (instead of above where they were blocked partially by my brushguard).

So, how'd I do it? The winch line itself is 3 strands of 6 strand "embrordery floss", the wrappings on the spool are the same, but twisted tightly and carefully laid. The spool was a red plastic tube off a can of "Electrosolv". The winch hook was a split jumpring off a steel necklace I got out of a $0.25 gumball machine thing, the recovery points were links of that necklace chain. The inner-drum for winch was a rim from a pullback McToy, I just cut the rubber off and it's a perfect drum with guides. Hair spring is out of a broken alarmclock.

I've still got to shave down my cable spool support bracket a bit, find a nice thin screw that'll fit up center of brass spring, some other hardware, little glue. Then I'll see you on the trail!

[frizzen]

Just a few more random pics, some of these are probably shots I've already posted...


Proof of ownership


Big rock crushing bumper and a sturdy winch.


Nothing but the taillights.

One on the rocks.


Always ready to help others.

[Michael.mt2k]

Beautiful work, as usual, Frizzen!