tubing brakeline, dom, chromoly what to use for extreme scale baja bug
 

I'm currently in the process of design for a baja bug to duplicate my old baja I built and recently sold. It's going to be approx 1/7.5 scale be all tube constuction and I want it usable not a shelf queen. It's going to be a long time consuming process and want it right. Power wise I'm thing of using a bullet proof savage flux diff mounted nest to a scale looking motor in the rear and hide the dog bone going to the diff in a styrelene fake tranaxle and put the motor under the rear seat. I will be running 6s power so I need the frame tuff.

Question is do youthink I have to use chromoly like the real car or dom ?

Tubing will be 1/4 inch mainly with 3/16 and 1/8 here and there to duplicate the 1 1/2 and 1 1/4 and 1 used on the real one. I need a scale program aswell to help fifure out some of the dimensions aswell if anyone knows of one.

I would really like to use this thread to help me brain storm my ideas into concept before starting the build.

Heres a short video of the real car to show you what I'm going to build. I really miss it and hope this fills some of the gap. ( I had to sell it since I moved to wisconsin from so cal and theres no desert here. LOL)

http://www.amx390.com/Videos/bug.wmv


thanks fo looking and any help would be great

Well sounds like a great project. I prefer higher end material like DOM and cromoly but it depends on your joining method. If you are brazing it all together you can't use DOM or Cromoly and are stuck with brass or brakeline. If you can weld either MIG or TIG then DOM and Cromoly are your best bet. 1/4" x .035 DOM is really strong stuff I built a chassis with it that had a 1/2t Chevy parked on top of it and it held up fine. How are you joining the tubes?

Cool bug and sounds like a cool build.
Only information I can add is the source for 3/16" 4130 tubing. Only place I could find it on the internet.
4130 Round Tubing Steel from Aircraft Spruce

welding?
 

Well I could mig weld it but even with .023 wire and good control it's hard to make the welds look scale and nice without grind all with dremal some which is really time consuming. Also once I get the main structure done and do detail x braces and such it will be to hard to get the gun where I need it to weld so I was hoping to braze it but didn't realize I couldn't braze dom or chromoly together. I figured it was like gas welding with a oxycetiline ( spelling is bad sorry) set up which I've done. What is the problem brazing this type of material?

Chromoly needs to be gas welded or tig welded to keep from making it brittle. Dom can be mig welded both are going to weigh the same at the same sizes but chromoly is considerably stronger

welding
 

I have built any offroad 1to 1 cars and most were chromoly and some dom but I know for a fact that the chomoly cars weren't brittle. I did weld some control arms with tig and I know tig is better but mig welding is thew norn in the offroads world and works with great results in the real world. I abused my years without asny problems and many other I built.

That is a great looking Baja you built there, I'm picking up a 73 std. beetle later this week to start a baja build but considering going with the
class 11 type look.
I'll keep an eye on this thread to see how your r/c build goes,