1/6 new bright ram 2500

[11xfabrication]

Hey guys new to the forum, well any forum to be exact. I have been building custom fabbed rc crawlers for a few years now and it's finally time to document it.

So here it is. A 1/6 scale Dodge ram body made by new bright. (Visit 11xfabrication on Facebook)the truck has a very basic setup. I had a 100% factory axial wraith spawn as a donor truck. So I robbed everything but the chassis and those weak suspension links and started building. I started with 1/8th in mild steel sheet and cut out as close to a factory frame rail shape as I could. I cut 2 ofcourse and bolted them to the stock wraith skid plate. From there this thing snowballed quick. I started with a main hoop and built off of that. It fit the inside of the body perfect. My thought on the cage, was to be functional, and provide it's intended structure knowing that most of the cage work will be covered by the body. My ultimate goal with the entire truck was to have it share similar handling chacteristics as a 1:1.

The suspension was pretty straight forward in the rear but this truck HAD to have a chassis mounted servo and a 3 link. I made a super slim truss and welded suspension link tabs on it. I was very fortunate to have had my geometry dialed first try. The steering was a little tricky on how to mount the servo with minimal bump steer. After 2 tries I finally landed it. I made links for steering out of all thread, some Traxxas tie rod ends, and brakeline. After completing all the steering, I quickly noticed the factory dog bone outer shafts were binding at the new steering angle. So I went to my local hobbytown and got some hd shafts with u joints which instantly fixed the issue.

I made very simple suspension links out of Traxxas tie rod ends, some 8/32 all thread and 1/4 inch brakeline. Using 5.5 inch tires and 2.2 wheels I found my wheel base by mocking up the tires stuffed in the wheel wells. The wheel base came out at a huge 16.5 inches. I made the links to fit and used stock mounting locations on the wraith skid.

So now I had functioning steering I was motivated to get cracking on the suspension. Most of the 10th scale coilovers I feel fit the scale of this truck. So I pulled some 110mm scale King coilovers and some 110mm proline scaler shocks off another build to donate to this monster. I filled them with 80wt shock oil and mounted them in various locations. I landed on a straight up and down with the front and a slant back triangle type in the rear. I set the full bump at full flex and welded the mounts up. At this point it was feeling like a truck.

I was super excited to see this thing move under it's own power. So I crudely zip tied my electronics to the truck and drove it. I noticed real quick it was very heavy. It had excessive torque twist. Between the sprung weight and suspension set up there was little to no resistance to prevent torque twist. Although I was very happy with the flex I just couldn't deal with how much it swayed. So I called up a place a hour away to look at some sway bars. I landed on a wraith front sway bar. The kit came with 3 different bars which I hoped I could dial it in. I made the sway bar mount sit almost directly above the rear axle. I drilled out brakeline to allow a "snug" fit of the provided spacers to act as bushings. Everything seemed to have fell together after that. While I had the truck down I regeared the rear axle to a lower gear. I read on this forum that it would help on torque twist. BINGO! Everything worked exactly how I invisioned it would.

More updates and pics to come guys. If anyone has any info on how to upload pics it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and happy building guys!