Gramps Indoor Mini Crawler Course Build

[Gramps]

Bought a SCX24 C10 last week and fell in love with it. I can crawl with it on my outside 1/10 scale course I've been working on all summer. But winter is approaching so it will be to cold to be outside, at least for me. Got the idea from CCxRC of building a course that sits on top of a storage shelf, so this got me thinking. My plans are to have a course that is 18" wide and 8' long.



I started my cutting an 8' long piece of left over barn siding into an 18" strip. I then cut than in half so now I have 2 18x48" pieces. Set one piece up on saw horses and proceeded to design the first half of the course. Started arranging boxes, aluminum roasting pan of various sizes & crushed up wrapping paper in to different shapes. After several attempts I finally came up with something I was happy with and decide it was time to cover it with plaster cloth before I changed my mind. Finished it up just before dinner. It's now drying though the directions say it hardens in 5 minutes & can be painted in 30, maybe if it was over something other than cardboard and paper. Maybe tomorrow I will start throwing paint on it.


Didn't try to make it scale or even look like anything. It's just a fun place to play, I hope!!


One of the 1st designs



This is the final design



This is what I ended up with when covered in plaster cloth






Next stage is to build the shelving unit to sit it on

[ed1]

there is a fb page for micros micro crawler courses

[Itali83]

That looks awesome. Great idea. I’ve tried to think of how to build an indoor course for myself and kids but always over think it. I’ll be following this closely for sure. Keep up the good work.

Ben

[Gramps]

Originally Posted by ed1

there is a fb page for micros micro crawler courses

Thanks but no fb for me

[Phildirt]

Originally Posted by Gramps

Thanks but no fb for me

Same, cannot stand it haha. Nice to see I'm not the only one not using it.

[Gramps]

Thought I would get to try it last night but the cardboard and kraft paper soaked up water and was releasing it back through the plaster cloth so it wasn't setting hard enough for me to be comfortable driving on it not to mention it felt damp. Was still damp feeling this morning so I decided to blow a fan on it to see if that would help. This afternoon I was able to put the SCX24 C10 on it for the 1st time. To my surprise the hills on the high end were unclimbable. Added a little here and there and I know I can make it up the outside with a little finesse. The other side is still drying the 1st repair attempt didn't work. Think I got it this time.

[Gramps]

Did a test crawl and being happy with the results I took it outside & began misting different paints I had laying around on it. Couple shades of tan, some gray, green, yellow & black. At some point you just have to say that's enough and stop.


While the paint was drying I went to Lowes and picked up some 2x3's to build the shelving unit that will be the base of the course. Finished that up after supper, may still dap a little paint on it too.



Set the 1st 4' section on top.








After looking at it against the wall it appears to me that i didn't think it through all the way. On the right side I am not happy with the flat area with the hole behind it. So tomorrow I'm going to swap ends & see if that looks better, I'm guessing yes.

[twade984]

Hey that looks great

[Gramps]

I swapped the 1st section to the other end of the shelf. Looks much better but it did create a new issue. Back against the wall between the small flat top and the big hill there was a big hole that was pretty hard to avoid. Yesterday I added to the area to make it passable. Today I. painted it. Much better now. I'm in the process now of working on the other section.

Here's section 1 flopped to the other end of the shelf unit.

[Bray D]

Looks great! I'll be tempted to do something similar once I get tired of pillow crawling, haha.

[Gramps]

This is what I have come up with so far for section 2



The area between the 2 ramps will be filled in with a rocky area with a bridge to somewhere over it. Still tossing ideas in my head

[Gramps]

Worked on the track some today. Spent a lot of time figuring out the V ramp. Part of it was figuring out how to get on it from the ground end. I finally came up with the idea of having a rock pile at the bottom which will create a ramp more or less.

[Gramps]

The last setup just wasn't doing it for me. So I tore it down and started over with a bunch of different size aluminum pans from Dollar Tree.

[Bray D]

Nice! Sometimes it's best to just start fresh. I like the aluminum pan idea.

[Gramps]

The above design has set a couple of days and I was still happy with it so I started covering it with plaster cloth


After about 2 hours with some timeouts to let different areas harden a little before preceding it was time to set it aside and let it dry. The plaster cloth dries pretty fast but it takes a while to get the wadded up paper and cardboard underneath dry. Blowing a fan across it will speed up the process.




This side goes against the wall






Next up will be a test run or 2 then off to painting

[austin-92]

Makes me wanna buy a 1/24 and set some space aside, good work


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Gramps]

After the new section of the course dried I put the SCX24's on it for a test. Fun to drive but wasn't very challenging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCibzy8D4M

Today I put the gully that was suppose to be between the 2 ramps back in. Also added some more rock like structures in places. Waiting for it all to dry so I can test it.

[Gramps]

Tested the modification and was happy with the outcome. Tonight after dinner I took it outside and started spraying the paint on it. Had to shades of tan that ran out after barley one coat.



Continued with the greens and grays that I had with a little black and yellow thrown in. The finished product looks pretty good in my opinion. Would have liked it a little lighter but didn't want to spend any more money on paint so I used what I had on hand.







Still want to add a little greenery here and there

[Itali83]

Very nice! Is it fun to crawl on? Looks like a good little stress reliever spot for sure.

Ben

[Bray D]

Looks like fun! I can see a couple tricky lines coming out of the smaller rocky flat area. Good work.