Island Tours 1:35 scale VW Kubelwagen

[LAV25]

I've been posting this up on scale, thought I'd share here as well.


Take this:



Figure out how to jam this into it:



and you should end up with something like this:



The Tamiya kit is 1:35 scale, and it looks promising so far:





That's all I've got for now, but I'll be cutting and gluing and all that fun stuff as soon as I can. Wish me luck! (just on completion, that is)

-val

[LAV25]

Did some chassis surgery, forgot to take a before pic, but faked one:



After:



Just resting on the real chassis:



Unfortunately, it's going to be hard to get it much lower, the servo horn is in the way:


-val

[LAV25]

Making progress, I might have this done except for paint today! I came to the point that I always dread.

The one where you have to commit, and do something irreversible:





It's got to become a scaler now, no more cage.

That having been done, it's looking a lot better. Still a mockup, but this ride height doesn't look horrible, just somebody's supermod:



I think I may have to figure out how to make a soft top for it though, that lump in the middle is the combined battery/IR receiver/ESC, and it's not going to go away or move.

Busy busy

-val

[LAV25]

Oh well, on to the pics. I was at a loss for a paint scheme, but after rummaging through my paint box and considering it for a full fifteen minutes or so, I decided to go for an island theme. Confession: I've never been to Jamaica, or anywhere in the Caribbean for that matter. This isn't intended to demean the tourist industry there, there was just no way I was going to do a Wehrmacht/Nazi themed custom Kubelwagen, and this was the paint I had:





As you can see, I had trouble getting the body down to a realistic height. There just wasn't a way that I could figure around the stock battery/chassis, plus the Nano has a fair amount of flex. Also, I found a pic of a 1:1 almost that high:



I had to do some chopping and filing, couldn't put the front skidplate thingy on because the steering was in the way:



The back is, well, the back. Nothing too special:



Basically, by doing the low-rent Island Tours theme, I excused my lack of an airbrush. You see, it's supposed to look like somebody did it with a brush from the dollar store and housepaint on top of an old surplus heap.

Really.

-val

[LAV25]

And about that interior. Like I said, I thought about doing a soft top for it, but the control system is IR, and the sensor sticks up from where the left side front passenger would sit. I wasn't sure if I'd still have control except from certain angles, and that's no good.

So why on earth would I have the back seat filled up? Could I make some luggage facades? Nah, that's silly.

What would plausibly fill up the back seat?

Cue the beat:







Those are the whitewall rings from a 1:24 Revell '65 Chevy pickup painted silver, with the chrome moon hubcaps inside them. You'll be able to hear this guy coming from the next island!

I also weathered the whole thing with a couple of Tamiya Weathering Master kits, used gunmetal, silver, orange rust, and light sand. When it first came out of being painted, it just didn't look right, but now I think we're good.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed looking!

-val

[QuinnR]

Thats really sweet! I got the Jamaican theme. My high school science teacher drove one of those

[bigchad]

that's a cool build

[Crawler Ted]

Took me a bit to realize this is the nano crawler .
What do you think of it overall ? I just ordered a couple .

Nice job with this rig .

[LAV25]

Originally Posted by Calgary Cummins

Took me a bit to realize this is the nano crawler .
What do you think of it overall ? I just ordered a couple .

Nice job with this rig .

Thanks! The Nano isn't without its charms, but it does have a lot of little problems that add up. Basically, no spares or replacement parts (yet?) and terrible suspension geometry. There are a couple threads here about it, and I did a more thorough writeup on Scale:

http://www.scale4x4rc.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59945

You probably won't love it, but it's quite a bit of fun in the correct circumstances. Crawling over TV remotes on the coffee table is great!

-val

[YSL]

thanks for sharing buddy.

guess what, i bought a similar scale - Jeep Willys MB by Tamiya.

and ya, i'm the guy that broke the Nanoqlo.
guess what, the LHS guys ordered the part (part number available from the Nanoqlo manual), but Yokomo Japan mentioned that the parts are not available for sale??

ended up buying a couple ultra small drill bit, super tiny screws and did some DIY on the Nanoqlo.
it's working fine now.

will do the modification later on and share with you guys.
it probably won't look as good as yours though

cheers!