Finally took the plunge

[theblazer24]

nice

looks great love the wide rims:emot147: get sum pics

 

[OldSchoolDude]

Well, I haven't made much progress with the Wheely King. I've been busy working on some alternative bodies for my sons. Of course, neither one of them wanted something that was readily available. My 12yr old wanted a Wildfoot and my 9yr old wanted a Raminator. There are some 1/10 bodies on the market, but I wanted something more size appropriate for the Wheely King and the Traxxas MJ tires. I had been kicking around the idea of making some bodies for a while, and thought I would take a stab at it. The bodies you see here will be the plugs, and I'll be ATTEMPTING to vacuum form some clear Lexan (probably PETG) bodies off the plugs.

The Ram body was by far the easier of the two. I started with a used Newbright 1/10 Ram I found on Ebay pretty cheap. This body is very close to the Wheely King size. I wouldn't call it a true 1/10 body. With my 11" wheelbase WK, the bed on truck needed lengthening to look right. Luckily I found another used body on Ebay pretty cheap. I cut the beds and put them back together so that I ended up lengthening the bed about 5/8". I also sanded off the windshield wipers from the windshield, took off the mirrors and modified the separation of the hood to the cab to look more like the Raminator. It doesn't look like much, but it's pretty time consuming. I've still got a little more sanding and filling to do, touch up where the side windows meet the body, and put a flat panel in over the bed. Then it'll be time to fill it with some kind of media (maybe plaster) to get it ready for vacuum forming. Here's some pics.

 

[theblazer24]

Well, I haven't made much progress with the Wheely King. I've been busy working on some alternative bodies for my sons. Of course, neither one of them wanted something that was readily available. My 12yr old wanted a Wildfoot and my 9yr old wanted a Raminator. There some 1/10 bodies on the market, but I wanted something more size appropriate for the Wheely King and the Traxxas MJ tires. I had been kicking around the idea of making some bodies for a while, and thought I would take a stab at it. The bodies you see here will be the plugs, and I'll be ATTEMPTING to vacuum form some clear Lexan (probably PETG) bodies off the plugs.

The Ram body was by far the easier of the two. I started with a used Newbright 1/10 Ram I found on Ebay pretty cheap. This body is very close to the Wheely King size. I wouldn't call it a true 1/10 body. With my 11" wheelbase WK, the bed on truck needed lengthening to look right. Luckily I found another used body on Ebay pretty cheap. I cut the beds and put them back together so that I ended up lengthening the bed about 5/8". I also sanded off the windshield wipers from the windshield, took off the mirrors and modified the separation of the hood to the cab to look more like the Raminator. It doesn't look like much, but it's pretty time consuming. I've still got a little more sanding and filling to do, touch up where the side windows meet the body, and put a flat panel in over the bed. Then it'll be time to fill it with some kind of media (maybe plaster) to get it ready for vacuum forming. Here's some pics.

Looks almost exactly what I did with my metal mulisha body but I took out the windows and put sum clear plastic in the windsheild area. clear pop bottles work well for throwing it together

 

[OldSchoolDude]

The Wildfoot body was a challenge. I used 2 Tamiya Blackfoot Xtreme bodies, both used from E-bay. The body was too wide and the bed was too short to look right. I needed to "scale" it down slightly. I ended up doing a ton of modifications. First I cut the beds so that when put back together it was about 1/2" longer. Then I relocated the rear fender openings rearward, so it would look like a long wheelbase Ford truck, instead of a longer shortbed. With the bed longer, the whole truck was too long. I ended up sectioning 1/4" vertically out of the cab, and another 1/4" out of the front quarters and hood. Since the cab and hood were shorter, the cab looked a little tall, so I chopped the top 1/8". Finally, the Blackfoot is too wide to look right with the WK, so I sectioned the whole truck about 5/16". Overall, it comes out close to the size of a WK body. Just a little longer, which looks better with the 11" wheelbase. A few other mods were getting rid of the goofy hood scoop, narrowing the grille, bumper and tailgate, and making a custom stock looking grille out of styrene.
For the grille, I filled the original in smooth, and added the styrene pieces over that. I still have a little more sanding and filling to do on the body, and then it will be on to making a flat panel for the bed, and making the sun visor and rear cab spoiler. I've already got a ton of hours in this thing, as well as about 2-1/2 packs of JB Kwik epoxy to hold it all together. It's been sliced and diced more than a loaf of bread (lol).

I've got 2 more bodies I want to make. One will be just a slightly longer WK body and the other is top secret. I've also got some special tires and custom rims I'll be using on my son's Wildfoot. More on those later down the road.

Here's a few pics. Remember, this is just the plug for the clear body I'll be making.

Here's a couple comparison pics.

 

[theblazer24]

Well, I haven't made much progress with the Wheely King. I've been busy working on some alternative bodies for my sons. Of course, neither one of them wanted something that was readily available. My 12yr old wanted a Wildfoot and my 9yr old wanted a Raminator. There are some 1/10 bodies on the market, but I wanted something more size appropriate for the Wheely King and the Traxxas MJ tires. I had been kicking around the idea of making some bodies for a while, and thought I would take a stab at it. The bodies you see here will be the plugs, and I'll be ATTEMPTING to vacuum form some clear Lexan (probably PETG) bodies off the plugs.

The Ram body was by far the easier of the two. I started with a used Newbright 1/10 Ram I found on Ebay pretty cheap. This body is very close to the Wheely King size. I wouldn't call it a true 1/10 body. With my 11" wheelbase WK, the bed on truck needed lengthening to look right. Luckily I found another used body on Ebay pretty cheap. I cut the beds and put them back together so that I ended up lengthening the bed about 5/8". I also sanded off the windshield wipers from the windshield, took off the mirrors and modified the separation of the hood to the cab to look more like the Raminator. It doesn't look like much, but it's pretty time consuming. I've still got a little more sanding and filling to do, touch up where the side windows meet the body, and put a flat panel in over the bed. Then it'll be time to fill it with some kind of media (maybe plaster) to get it ready for vacuum forming. Here's some pics.

Wow that wild foot body is really glued up and I think the amount of glue I use is bad:emot15: looks great though!

 

[OldSchoolDude]

Thanks. I've got a lot more to go, but it's getting there.

 

[SFC K]

Cool build and I had to give you two thumbs up for the wheel mod! That rocks! Looking forward too seeing more.

 

[OldSchoolDude]

Cool build and I had to give you two thumbs up for the wheel mod! That rocks! Looking forward too seeing more.

Thanks for the compliments. This truck actually became my son's Captain's Curse.
http://www.rcmt.net/forums/showthread.php?103081-Captain-s-Curse-Wheely-King

I also built a Bigfoot for my other son. Unfortunately the painter still hasn't come through on the body.
http://www.rcmt.net/forums/showthread.php?160391-Bigfoot-Wheelie-King-Update

I'm working on a 3rd that should be done in a few weeks.

 

[bpare207]

This puts the wheelbase right back at 11". There were a few little tricks/hurdles to overcome to make the links work. The bottom crossmemeber where the stock lower links attach has the ball made right into it. I used my Dremel to cut most of ball away so that the crossmember fits back in place snug with the Traxxas rod ends on each side. Then I just put the stock screws back in to hold it in place.

Thread's a little old, but if all of you have purchased the HPI parts tree #85632, it comes with two little hexagonal rods a little over 1" in length, with holes in either end. Instead of having to modify the existing bottom cross-member as shown, simply replace them with those parts from the tree. They are the new bottom cross-members that you'd install with the Crawler King conversion. Additionally, they could be used to extend the steering drag link coming from the center of the chassis to the front axle if you push the wb out to 11".