Man Kat 1

[shannwah]

I had started a Jeep body for my Losi Micro crawler and was going to put it on a Blade SMC chassis........but then I figured.....every man and his dog has a Jeep, i want something a little different. I've recently been inspired by a few millitary/Dakar style truck builds I've seen and thought time to get in some of that action. I couldn't find any plastic model kits of the right scale or that grabbed my attention, so you know how it is.....if you can't buy it...make it yourself! Cue the styrene!

This is kind of what I'm basing it on.




Here's what I've done so far.

[shannwah]

Have made a bit more progress. Doesn't look like much...mounting the front shocks turned out to be a real PITFA, trying to mount them on the chassis without binding with the links or the servo. Wheel wideners are on the way from CrawlerX.

[nigelpheron]

[indyrado4]

Why havent I thought of building one of these? I love those crazy things!

[Mastah Kyler]

you made all that with just styrene? and i thought it was hard to bend the tubing!

[shannwah]

Slow progress!!


This side was done first, not as good as the other side i think. Normally there would be a spare on this side, but the way that I mounted the chassis didn't allow the room. I have seen pics of 1:1 trucks that don't have the spare here either so it's still relatively scale!







Still needs work on the wheel arches.

[Smokem]

nice, looking good

[shannwah]

My first go at bending styrene heating it with a flame. I first tried some strip, then square tube and finally ended up using rod.

[shannwah]

Spent a bit of time doing an exo cage.

[nigelpheron]

Hey fella, nice gussets.

[scale4x4]

very nice work so far!

[shannwah]

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Got the rear axle mounted. Used Mini T links. Doesn't articulate quite as freely as it should. The trouble is that because I've made my own chassis and linnk mounting points, both sides are not identical. This has played havoc with the link geometry......at this scale, every millimetre of intolerence shows up in volumes! It took me so much tweaking of the link lengths to get it to move freely and it's still not great,, but should be good enough. At one point I did contemplate ditching the stock chassis under there and throw the cab on top of a Blade SMC chassis with leafs, but it's come out OK in the end. We'll see what happens.

[MGCrawler]

Nice styrene work! Stick with what you got, sounds like you got it sorted out anyways

[stroker613]

Here is one my buddy built and my beast

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

[shannwah]

Is that top one a micro? Looks pretty good.


Decided to get it ready to add another axle and go for 6x6!




and started work on the box for the back. It will be held on with magnets for easy access to the battery.

[MattTheGenus]

free bump for you any updates?

[shannwah]

Been a bit slow lately....I ran out of plastruct and there was some kind of delay with the importer so none of the hobby shops or craft shops or anyone had any! I ended up getting some from fleabay, so had to wait for shipping. But back in business now.

Got the roof on, holes for LED's done and started finishing of some of the finer details on the cab. I used a single piece for the roof and scored and bent it without snapping completely to get the 3 sections. It worked out really well as I didn't have to worry about matching up the joins across the top of the roof (which I most certainly would have got uneven otherwise!) This way it's turned out super clean across the roof.



Have to finish filling in all the gaps and tidying up the rough bits....more like this....

[nigelpheron]

Still watch'n.

[shannwah]

More progress.......

[shannwah]