building my own crawler

[buju]

[Neeley]

Hats off to you Desmond, you've put a huge smile on my face this evening....

[buju]

thanks Neely , its people like you and the forum that keep me going ....

had a couple of things break , like just after this pic the one mount for the front diff broke off , fixed and strengthened now , Im slowly "tuning" this "toy" to make it better still , been playing with springs to get better articulation ....will post up some vids when Ive got it sorted to the max it can go ....

[crunky]

i got to hand it to you, that is a very cool looking truck, great job using what you had to make it happen.

[buju]

Well , the old body is gone , it was too heavy and also too top heavy , it was made of thin steel but still weighed in at 900 grams , thats almost 1 kilogram , or 2.2 pounds. So I built a new body from a plastic waste bin ( dont laugh now...) , mounted it lower and it weighs Very little .... i also made stickers (at home) of all the manufactures that Ive used (yes incl B&D) , with less weight it performs much better , less rollovers and steeper climbs .....

[C*H*U*D]

NICE! You never fail to amaze me with the stuff you make .

[Big Mike]

Desmond, you are the king of resourcefulness.

Where others only see a trash can, your imagination takes off from there. Incredible.

Bravo!!! Keep it up man!

[caymin last]

Bliksem boetman! I like it, You have taken 'scratch built' to a new level, I know how resourcefull S.Africans are, but this takes the cake. Good job.
Baaie kopkrap ne'.

[Karadjas]

WOW you made that body out of a trash can????

I admire you determination and resourcefulness, like everyone else

[buju]

Thanks guys , I really appreciate it ,

Well you know its not that difficult , this is basically how i did it:

make a basic drawing of what you want , now try to imagine it in 3d , make some scale drawings on paper or cardboard , cut them out and tape or fold them together to make the 3d body , make adjustments to your paper body as you would like it , lay it out on the plastic and cut out. to bend the plastic without breaking it use a soldering iron to scribe a line on the inside of the fold , try to go about half way through the plastic without going through it , now while its still warm bend it and hold for a +- 1 minute , always bend slightly more than you need , IE: if you want a 90 deg. bend then bend the plastic 110 deg. , when you let go the plastic will come back to 90 deg. angle - simple.....
use a plastic that is bendable , plastic that is to rigid or brittle will just crack and break.

To make decals / stickers is also easy:
find what you want on the web , copy to your pc , use a graphics program to re size and print it on plain paper , now use clear varnish and paint it over your print , do 1 quick cote (chemical varnish will cause the ink to run if you cote it too thick ) and when dry do another , cot both sides , now cut it out and use a thin layer of household glue to stick it on - easy - done....

[ctrwannabe]

i like the new body man good work keep it up!

[dave56bug]

Looks good, but where do you put your garbage now? :-P

[buju]

Ive finaly made a blog of this build , for those interested you can view it here:

http://buju357.blogspot.com/2010/12/...k-crawler.html

[rockn]

WoW What a great Build I live the way you up grade threw out the build wish there where more build on here like this, Cant wait to see what next

[Canadian Crawler]

I must say buju, as a guy who started out building custom crawlers this was a thrill to follow along with, great job. All in all what was the total cost of the build?

[honcho1.9]

wow is all i can say, very creative man,

[crawlhog]

built not bought totally amazing you deserve a big hand you brought back alot of memories THANKS

[buju]

Originally Posted by Canadian Crawler

I must say buju, as a guy who started out building custom crawlers this was a thrill to follow along with, great job. All in all what was the total cost of the build?

total cost was +- 150 USD , as some of the parts I had to import it did bring the cost up.

Im now busy working on a independent suspension crawler with a single motor.
the biggest problem with independent suspension is to get lots of movement / articulation.

[Cordwood]

This was pretty fun to readstark start to finish for the first time. Great build.

Where did the trash can body go? That thing was pimp!!

[buju]

Originally Posted by Cordwood

This was pretty fun to readstark start to finish for the first time. Great build.

Where did the trash can body go? That thing was pimp!!

its on the shelf , I took the rig to work to "show off" , but I worked with a bunch of non technical people who couldn't appreciate the work that went into the build and when they saw the body they thought it was just something I quickly slapped together. then my brother in law gave me the jeep body , now when I bring out the rig i get the "wow - did you actually build this thing" comments.

just goes to show - looks are everything .......