The 99% Spare Parts "Hoarder Hilux"

[addiemonster]

As the name suggest, this thing is almost entirely constructed of spare parts and various RTR takeoffs that were just kicking around in my apartment. This all came about when Banggood, in a move of insane over-compensation, sent me a black HGP407 kit absolutely free of charge, I can only guess as a result of a shipping error with my HGP407 RTR over a month back. (just a heads up, LaserShip is awful)

Anyway, I decided to keep the unassembled kit as a truck's worth of spares for my runner, which left me with a molded black Bruiser body and the urge to build again.

So needing to clean up around my apartment anyway, I decided as I was doing so, I would organize my stash and bins full of spares and RTR electronics and suchwhats and see if I had enough parts to build something neat using this body. The short wheelbase deffo limited it to the only 287mm chassis I hand on hand, that being a mostly-complete Gmade Sawback. It was missing things like the steering links, driveshafts, and probably a bunch of other stuff. So I kept digging and here's the breakdown of what this thing is made of from memory:

Gmade Sawback GM52000 kit
HGP407 Bruiser clone body
HGP407 interior with dashboard cut off
RC4WD Mojave II RTR dashboard grafted to HGP407 interior
Tamiya Mountaineer rollbar
RC4WD Mojave II "square eye" grille
RC4WD Mojave II rubber mirrors (on order, one of few parts purchased for this build)
RC4WD Mojave II rear cab wall and window (from my Marlin)
Axial Wildboar driveshafts
Custom-made steering links (allthread, brakeline, Revo rod ends)
Custom anti-wrap bars (using Bomber swaybar links)
3D-printed CMS perch (another new part)
Gmade Komodo CVAs (the final new part)
RC4WD 90mm scale shocks
Replaced stock leafs with some RC4WD TF2 leafs
Axial SCX10III Method 1.9 plastic beadlocks
RC4WD 4.19 Baja Claws I ordered by mistake years ago, brand new
Holmes Hobbies Trailmaster Sport 550 27T
RX and TX from Trailfinder 2 MC edition RTR
AE-5 style "Dynamite" ESC, pretty sure out of my Bomber
25kg Amazon steering servo
Motor pinion bumped up three teeth for wheelspeeeeeeed

Body still needs some details and I'm currently painting the interior. Will have a driver eventually but not picked one out yet.

[durok]

Awesome kludged build-up!

Must have been satisfying to have it all work out so nicely...

[addiemonster]

Originally Posted by durok

Awesome kludged build-up!

Must have been satisfying to have it all work out so nicely...

Thanks! I had tried to use different wheel and tire combos before settling on this. Probably have enough parts to build another truck (albeit nowhere near as cool as this one) but getting to toss this one together over the last few days has been a blast.

Tonight I got the rest of the body details done. Too lazy to complete the interior for now, will probably get back to it when I find a driver in case modifications need to be made for it to fit. I won't be using the marker lights on this body as I want to keep them as spares for my more scale-oriented Hilux builds.





Had the plates laying around from a previous project that I lost interest in. You better believe this rig is gonna live up to that.

Here's some shots of the chassis now that I've finally sorted the wiring out.



I used the RX box from my TRX4 Sport to waterproof the RC4WD RX. Servo extensions are used incase I need to swap out the servo or ESC without opening the box. ShoeGoo'd in a plate of lexan to support it.



Got a 3D-printed CMS perch from Thingiverse. Works great and the link geometry clears the leafs just fine.



Speaking of, I made my links using 8-32 Allthread rod, 1/4in brakeline as a sleeve, and Traxxas Revo rod ends, part number TRA5347.



Anyone who owns a Sawback knows about the goofy "Hotwheels" skidplate. Having seen previous reviews of the Sawback where it was mentioned that this gimmick doesn't work and can often make getting hung up even easier, I decided to remove the wheels and fill in the gigantic gaps with Plastic Weld epoxy. It's not pretty but we'll see if my approach works any better than the rollers.



I also made anti-wrap bars using the rods from a Yeti swaybar kit. These were laying around because to fit the Anti-Rock swaybar to a Bomber, you have to make custom shorter links. Turns out these are almost the perfect length for anti-wraps! Just used more Revo rod ends and bolted it right to the chassis at the rear leaf hanger and the unused AMS mount on the axles.

I'm dubious if this setup will actually do anything, but I cannot for the life of me find another use for these links so unless they hamper performance, they're staying.





And there she is! If it stops raining in NY for a few hours, I might try to sneak in a crawl this week and update with action shots out in the wild.

[350TacoZilla]

Man I wanted to do that build so bad but price of body and then even a roller sawback was just too much of a hurdle. I love the look of the combo!

[addiemonster]

Originally Posted by 350TacoZilla

Man I wanted to do that build so bad but price of body and then even a roller sawback was just too much of a hurdle. I love the look of the combo!

Thanks! I really got lucky, the body came from a free HG P407 that BangGood sent to me for some unknown reason (they haven't responded to my emails about it so I'm just going to assume it was for fudging up my RTR order a month ago) and the Sawback I got as an incomplete kit in a trade a year or so back. It was missing a bunch of parts like links and most of the screws but I managed to piece it together with mismatched hardware all over it.

Took it for a little test run today and it really needs the leafs broken in, it's way lighter than my more scaled-out TF2s so I think I need to just start smooshing it down by hand for awhile.