Class One Tundra by VMGontheRocks

[VMGontheRocks]

Originally Posted by ToyZuki

Look at the dinky interiors. Really light weight, and they have a few good options.

That dash is essentially a Dinky dash, it's vacuum formed just like Dinky's stuff but was made by someone else, forgot who.

I took the delrin plates off the truck, grabbed the stand offs and the silver sharpie.


Lined up the standoff with the half circle sharpie mark.


Completed the circle and then went and drilled the holes.


Decided I should tap out the standoffs to 3mm, no sense in using 4-40 hardware when I can use 3mm.


Stand offs installed.


Another shot.


Installed back onto the chassis. If I had to do these again I'd make them a little longer so that I could screw them in with both lower link screws.


Installed the cab! I think I'll use pan head screws, but these will do for now.


A couple under body shots.




Looks like I need to shave a little more off the standoffs, look closely at the bed and you can see I'm pushing the cab out a bit with the standoffs. By my measurements I need to remove 1/16" from each standoff. Nothing a file can't fix!


Decided to bend up the start of a slider and get a feel for how it looked. Bending these at midnight I messed up my bends and made it too long. I wanted the slider to end right before the back of the cab. Kind of like the way this looks though, might have to bend up both and see which one I like better.

[VMGontheRocks]

A little change from my original plans. I'm going to run a Tekin FXR as my ESC and use a Holmes Hobbies Mini BR-XL as my winch controller. The main reason for this is I have a lot of drive time on a C1 truck that also has a FXR and instead of trying to fine tune one of the Mini BR-XLs before Nationals I figured I'd just copy the settings from that truck and use it on this truck as well. In the future I may switch back to the Mini BR-XL as I would like to try it out.

Trying to get a feel for where to lay out my electronics. Looks like the two ESCs will fit nicely in the front on the servo cross members. I'll fab up a nice little lexan sheet to mount them on.


Now where to put my RX. Luckily the R2106GF is tiny and looks like it will fit right below where the ESCs are. I'll have to carefully run all my wires to it to avoid the spur gear.


And then the BEC, looks like it will be able to fit right next to the RX on the other side up against the servo.


How it will look once I get it mounted!


Next I needed to come up with a place to mount my battery.

Option one is to mount it right next to the t-case. In order to get it low enough to clear my interior I'll have to trim down my body mount.


Option two is right next to the motor.


I'll probably play around with both and go with whichever one works with my interior.

Finally, I had to rotate my motor a bit to get the motor wire tabs away from the driveshaft. This is a simple fix but one that should be noted to avoid any motor wire rubbing when installing a ToyZuki motor mount.

[BadWagon]

Man it's a good thing your electronic components are small. Not a lot of room in there.

[War Pig]

Looks great! You'll have this thing running in no time! Makes me want to shave some weight off all my trucks.


Just kidding.

[VMGontheRocks]

Originally Posted by BadWagon

Man it's a good thing your electronic components are small. Not a lot of room in there.

Yep! I specifically picked them for the fact they are small and are lightweight.

Originally Posted by War Pig

Looks great! You'll have this thing running in no time! Makes me want to shave some weight off all my trucks.


Just kidding.

Thanks Tim!

Plan is to get it all wired up tonight.

Then get it to a usable state by the 13th for the WARCRC comp. I'm not sure I'll have it painted by then, but I'd at least like to have the bumpers and bed done by then.

My two least favorite things of building scale trucks are mounting the body and wiring all the elctronics. With both of those almost done, it hopefully should be smooth sailing from here on out.

[VMGontheRocks]

Used a piece of scrap styrene and some blue 3m tape to mock up the floor height.


Mockup of battery location mount.

After some finagling and body fitment, I decided that it just wasn't going to work and decided to move forward with mounting the battery on the skid. However to do this I need to flip the transfer case.

Current installation.


Transfer case removed.


Removed the four screws from one side of the transfer case. Removed some drive shafts as well.


Transfer case assembled with the top shaft reversed.


Drive lines reinstalled.


Installing the transfer case back to the skid.


Battery now fits nicely between the chassis rail and transfer case. I'll make a nice simple lexan battery mount.

[VMGontheRocks]

My progress on getting the electronics all set.

First step, desolder all the wires from the FXR (all the leads were too short for what I wanted too). I must say one underrated aspect of the FXR is how easy it is to solder new leads to the posts.


Cut my battery leads nice and long (I want to plug and unplug the truck from a tool box in the back. Since I'm also using an ESC for my winch controller I stripped a little area of wire to solder into the FXR posts.


Middle of soldering, I'm not sure why this pick appears so dark. I swear I'm not soldering in the dark..


And here it all is wired up ready to be installed:


Needed to whip up a quick electronics plate. Using some lexan I had left over from make my seats. It's about 1" wide and 2.75" long. Bends will be a .25" from each end.


These hand seamers are really nice for bending lexan. ~$10 from harbor freight.


Finished product:


Mocked into place between the two Toyzuki servo mounts.


Decided to make another little mount for the Holmes hobbies mini BR-XL to allow it to fit a little better:


And the hand mockup of everything:

I think I'll mount the BEC under the lexan plate as originally planned and mount the receiver on the servo for an easier access point compared to my previous pictures of it below the lexan plate.

[VMGontheRocks]

Needed to trim the rear fenders ever so slightly to allow the Growlers to clear.

Used the rubber fender flare as a template and marked the new line. It helps to have a buddy mark the line as you hold the flare in place (thanks Justin!)


Marked the otherside.


I used a dremel with a sanding wheel.


I took it down really close to the line.


Then I used one of these nail file/modeler file to remove the rest of the material.


Left side done.


Right side done.

[VMGontheRocks]

Batteries for Nationals have arrived. Just have to swap the plugs on them. Will be swapping them out every two courses in C1 and C2 and will be swapping them out after every course in C3.


Rebuilt the front shocks with 30 WT oil and some proline scaler springs.


Rebuilt the rear shocks with 30 WT oil and some proline scaler springs.


I'm thinking that I may have to do some future shock tuning. Its also something that I don't really have a whole lot of experience doing.


Wiring is an absolute mess on it right now, but I got the winch ESC programmed and everything checks out. Just need to heat shrink the holmes esc and shorten a bunch of wires. Not looking forward to that.

[VMGontheRocks]

Made a simple little battery tray/mount last night.

I drew a piece of .030 thick lexan that was 4" long and 1.25" wide.


Grabbed a pair of straight lexan scissors and cut out the piece.


Then I laid it down on the skid lining up the edge of the lexan with the edge of the pocket in the skid.


I marked the two rear most holes with a sharpie. Note: most people probably don't have the middle two holes in between the Axial transmission bolt pattern.


Grabbed my body reamer.


Put two holes into it.


Getting a feel for how the battery will sit on the plate.


Marking the end that I will bend up. Ended up being 5/8" from the end.


Grabbed my hand seamer and bent up the plate. The hand seamers have come in handy the past couple of weeks.


Grabbed two countersunk 10mm screws and two nuts.


Bolted on the mount.


And all finished. I will need to add some velcro to the mount to keep the battery in place.

[BadWagon]

Very tidy

[VMGontheRocks]

Originally Posted by BadWagon

Very tidy

Thanks! Well the wires aren't yet


What I got done last night:

Finally mounted the brass standoffs back on to the delrin plates to mount the body.


And installed onto the chassis.


Bent a piece of brass 3/16 tube to match the front bumper profile.


And another view.


Bent up another piece to be the lower piece to act as fairlead mount of sorts.


The pieces scattered on the table.


Then decided I didn't like the way that looked and started over.

This is what I came up with,


And by then is was time for bed. Hoping to get this finished up tonight.

[VMGontheRocks]

Welp, I went on one of my build sprees to get it driveable for the comp tomorrow and barely took any photos

Here's how the front bumper turned out. Still needs a lot of finishing and two more pieces of tube. Also would like to get it flusher with the body. But it's a bumper and will work for tomorrow.

I'm excited to drive this truck for the first time, seeing as I've been building it since October. I'll report back after the comp.

[VMGontheRocks]

Didn't break anything!

Managed to get 2nd place at the comp yesterday, would've got first if my scale points were maxed out (they will be).

The first course I hit two gates (one was a tough gate that everyone hit) the other one was due to my rear end sliding into the gate. I'm used to driving a short wheelbase truck in c1 (~9.75) so the longer wheelbase will take some getting used to.

Time to keep working on it and then take it out driving next weekend and get some more wheel time with it.

[VMGontheRocks]

Not a whole lot of progress lately as I've been focusing my time on getting the C3 tundra running as well. Then I can scale them out.

I have the aluminum front motor mounts from ToyZuki. But since then he has released a new G10 version of his motor mount. The new G10 mount is about half the weight of the aluminum one.

So here's a little how to on the new G10 motor mount:

The new G10 motor mount does require some assembly, but it is a straight forward assembly. An added option with the G10 one is that it is reversible which allows you to put your motor on either side of your chassis (some creative link bending or drivers side upper link required to run it on the passenger side).

Lets get to the install!
First place the 3 supplied 3x16 bolts through the first plate


Next drop the center spacer on.


Followed by attaching the supplied mounting hardware (the hardware may change in the future as ToyZuki finds better and/or lighter ways to produce these mounts).


Last plate!


Thread your bolts into the factory motor plate.


Pop the bearings in!



And your ready to install in your chassis! If you wish to take on the challenge of setting it up with the motor on the passenger side, it will be assembled the same way, but the plates will all be flipped over.

I'll probably eventually switch over to this mount but probably not until after Nationals.

[MIKO]

I like the look of the front bumper, should be a good looking front end!

[VMGontheRocks]

Originally Posted by MIKO

I like the look of the front bumper, should be a good looking front end!

Thanks!

It needs some more work to get it to where I want it to be, need to clean up the joints and possible move the tube over a bit (I think its a tad off center and it bugs me).

[VMGontheRocks]

Ran it through the ringer at Cap Sante Saturday. Probably tried a lot of lines I'll never see in C1, but I had just drove comp crawlers all day so I was a little ambitious.

Things I liked:
Balance
steep climbs
Throttle control/low end (highly impressed with the FXR - Holmes Puller 400 pairing)

Things I didn't like:
shocks are too stiff
SSD axles suck and drag on everything

Things I will be changing:
I think I'm going to add wheel weights
adjust shocks either with a lower weight or lighter spring
switch back to axial housings

Couple of pictures out at Cap Sante (I left the bed off for easier access to the battery:






So this happened, I'm not sure how that got spliced like that, but I will be adding a protective sleeve to that and look into securing it a little differently.


Started the process of switching over to Axial housings (I was a little pissed about the severed servo wire and the SSD axles dragging so the pictures are a bit lagging)


I took one of the SSD axles and an axial axle housing and lined them up and the pumpkin of the SSD axle definitely hangs lower. I'll have my brother help me tonight and take a picture of it, but I was pretty shocked.

[Highmark]

Interesting to hear about the SSD housing. I had a similar thought (I was worried about the hard edge at the bottom of the diff cover) and went with the axial housings because of that.

Everything else looks killer.

[VMGontheRocks]

Originally Posted by Highmark

Interesting to hear about the SSD housing. I had a similar thought (I was worried about the hard edge at the bottom of the diff cover) and went with the axial housings because of that.

Everything else looks killer.

Yeah, I'm pretty bummed about it. The hard edge from the diff cover also causes problems. I'll take a pic tonight of how scratched they are. I think if you took a dremel to it you could get it a lot closer, but I'm not wanting to put that amount of effort into it.

Thanks! It's slowly coming along. Next three nights are devoted to working on the National trucks. Been a bit sidetracked between crawler comps, building some stuff for others and putting a SCX10 together for someones wife.