Truck of Many Wheels, pt 1
Build thread to follow sometime later (when I have time!)
I got this Konghead chassis at the 2017 Iconic Revival for an absolute bargain price. Somebody was selling loads of NIB never-run cars and this was one of them. The builder (who wasn't the seller, incidentally) had done an appalling job on the body and the chassis had been thrown together with minimal care (and no bearings), but at least it was a complete kit, with servo and the ubiquitous and brilliant Probe WP ESC, all ready for a stripdown and rebuild.
So naturally it sat on my shelf in a box for over a year while I tried to figure out what to do with it. I had various ideas, from building a custom body and making an Argocat-type thing, to chopping up a buggy body to make some crazy moon machine. The best idea was inspired by a 6x6 crawler that I saw at the G6 event in May this year, which had a HPI Graverobber body painted in matt grey. It looked stunning. Unfortunately the G6-01 is a little too short to make good use of the Graverobber, so it was back to the drawing board.
So my next plan was to cut the cab off an old King Blackfoot body and build a tray back out of plasticard. I didn't really want a full crawler rep - more of an oldskool mud bogger. The stock tyres work well for that look. I've been putting off starting it for ages (too many other things on the go and a workshop that's too untidy to work in), until last night when the decks were clear and I could get started.
Upon plonking the KBF body on the chassis I saw that the cab was going to be too long to fit without cutting into the doors. That's the drawback of the diminutive G6-01 size. And if I was going to have to cut into the doors then I might as well cut into the rear panels too and at least see how it looked.
I trimmed the rear panels all the way to the top of the arch moulding, so that there wasn't an odd-looking bulge where the old rear arch was. That was actually a little too high - I could have cut less and still had no interference.
I had to do a bit of trimming around the front arches to make wheels turn, but I can now get full articulation on all wheels without any rubbing. However, if I were to cut another 5mm all around off the front arches, the body would sit 5mm lower. There's enough space on the rear to do that without the wheels rubbing. I'll think about that later.
Body is now stripped right back to the plastic and is ready for some mild repairs and paint prep. Not decided on a colour scheme yet. Kinda like it in black (actually the KBF livery works well I think) but I've got a lot of black cars, maybe I'll go for something different, or maybe I'll revive my decade-old black and yellow theme to match my Emaxx.
Also the chassis still needs to be stripped and rebuild with bearings.
This will be a runner - not sure whether it'll get more use crawling or just bashing, but it'll definitely get run.
If you liked those pictures, you should see these...
Truck of Many Wheels, pt 2 - body fix
Comments
Tamiyastef
Nice work! Let's hope the new G6-tr variant Tamiya is making looks like this.
Mad Ax
I'm quite excited to see what Tamiya comes up with, but I don't think it'll be 1:10. I really wanted a 1:10 car and was happy for it to be something silly. I think this will be about as silly as it gets!
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