General Lee & Rosco's police car

[Zukiiholic]

Stunt Car.
Awesome...

[Jim85IROC]

Free time has been sparse lately, but I managed to get another police body printed. The next step is to do all of the sanding, filling, priming to the individual pieces and then glue it together and do more sanding, filling & priming.

[350TacoZilla]

Looking good man! the only thing I would watch out for with your stunt car is that flat chassis plates tend to bend easy which can then destroy diffs and such. Maybe a piece of aluminum angle pop riveted (or welded if you are able to) on each side of the driveshaft to kind box it in would really stiffen it up in center.

[Jim85IROC]

Originally Posted by 350TacoZilla

Looking good man! the only thing I would watch out for with your stunt car is that flat chassis plates tend to bend easy which can then destroy diffs and such. Maybe a piece of aluminum angle pop riveted (or welded if you are able to) on each side of the driveshaft to kind box it in would really stiffen it up in center.

I'll be making angled supports around the perimeter to attach the body to, which will stiffen it up. I was also originally planning to make an upper support to tie the two diffs together, but because I used such thick aluminum for the chassis, it's already got significantly less flex than the original chassis did. I'll have to see how it feels once it's put together.

[OSRC]

Speaking my language with that chassis...

On my custom chassis, I use a long link that spans the chassis, almost like a turnbuckle. Or two if I have a center trans. Works fine, there's still some lateral twist, but fore/aft is solid as a rock. Much simpler than trying t design an upper plate or squeeze an L bracket on the lower chassis.

Pic sucks, but hopefully it explains better.. Can see the turnbuckle up top.

[Jim85IROC]

Makes perfect sense. I have some carbon fiber rod here for exactly that if I end up needing it.

[Jim85IROC]

picked up the brushless Kyosho Charger VE on the left. When I reprinted Rosco's police car, I sized it specifically to work on the Fazer chassis. I'll swap the General Lee stuff over to the brushless chassis and use the brushed one for the police car. I also grabbed a set of black & white General Lee decals for the gray body, because why not.

[durok]

That's creative - using the Black & White decals - I like it!

[Jim85IROC]

Decided to sticker up the gray body. I love how this looks!

[Zukiiholic]

Looks good that way.

DOH and the Multi-Verse.

[durok]

Oh, HELLZ YEAH!

(sorry - lost my cool for a sec, there...)

[Jim85IROC]

Got a new video up that compares these two Chargers, specifically the differences in the bodies:

https://youtu.be/cehqI6XMzKc

[Panther6834]

Thought some of you might really appreciate this. In addition to the clothes I wear on a regular basis, I have a collection of old t-shirts that I refuse to get rid of - some are from concerts going back to the early/mid 80s, While others are what I consider to be "collectables" (some are actually worth something, While others are only 'worth' something to me).

I am packing, as I am moving from California to Las Vegas, and, while packing, I came across this "oldie but goodie".


~ More peace, love, laughter, & kindness would make the world a MUCH better place

[high plains drifter]

Jim, those decals perfectly complete that hell raising appearance. Love all the clean details. Great pics too.

[ScaleLifeNewbie]

I love the stealth duke boys!

[Jim85IROC]

thanks for all the compliments guys. I'll admit, the "Midnight General" looks a lot cooler than I expected. Since I want to be able to use it interchangeably with the orange body on the same chassis, I'm going to have to remove the supercharger and come up with something to plug the hole in the lexan. It was a fun side project to help keep me motivated on the rest of the work.

I didn't get pictures of it yet, but I managed to finally get the driveshaft lengthened on the other General Lee project I'm working on, and got most of the electronics reinstalled. Now comes the hard part of starting to fabricate mounts for the body, and designing the front & rear fascia inserts in Fusion 360.

[Jim85IROC]

Lately free time has been at a massive premium, especially since deer season started, so progress has been minimal. I haven't had time to work on the 3d printed police car at all, but I have made some minor progress on the RJ Speed General Lee, specifically the body mounts on the WL Toys chassis.

Here's a shot of the chassis with all of the electronics reinstalled and the front & rear body mounts fabricated:


Here's an up-close of the front & rear mounts, both of which were made the same way:




The mounts are both made from 1/16" Kydex sheets. In the past I've always worked with 1/8" Kydex, which is extremely durable and rigid, but heavy. Because this car already weighs more than a real Dodge Charger because of the massive aluminum chassis, I really need to cut weight wherever I can or that 390 sized motor won't stand a chance of surviving for long. The problem with such thin material is that it's not very rigid, so I had to do more than just a right angle bend like I would have done with the thicker stuff. To make these stronger, I had to cut the "wings" on the sides and bend them over and tie them together with screws. Hopefully that's more clear in the underside pics:



Here is the body set onto the chassis with the new mounts:


One of the issues that I've run into is that the body doesn't sit as low as I had hoped, so I need to rethink my attachment ideas. Originally I was just going to go with the standard body post method, since that's the easiest, and it would make it more like the Kyosho "hero" car that this will be standing in for during jump scenes. I could bend the kydex down more and still fit the body posts, but the body sits right where it should as-is, so I think that instead of fooling with the body posts, I'm going to just go with velcro mounts and call it a day. From the beginning, the plan has been to add a lip to the bottom of the chassis to attach the bottom of the body to the chassis with velcro anyway, so what's a little more on the top?

Here's a close up of the mounts through the body:



The next step is to trim back the mounts, as I don't need them to extend as far from the shock towers. After that, I need to locate and cut out the wheel well openings, and then the 3d design & print work starts for the body. I'm trying to accomplish as much of the "in the garage" work as I can before it gets stupid cold, because I'd rather sit inside in front of the computer during that period. This means that I also need to make some real progress on the police body soon, or I'm going to have to spend a fortune on propane to heat the garage every time I go out there to work on it.

[Jim85IROC]

Finally, some progress on the RJ-Speed General Lee build! I haven't been able to touch it in over 6 weeks, but between Christmas vacation and messing up my back last week, I've had a lot of time in my desk chair in front of Fusion 360. I modified the Kyosho General Lee front end to fit the RJ Speed body, and I also created a whole new rear taillight assembly from scratch. Right now these are still in draft form and are printed at a high layer height with no sanding/smoothing done. These are just to make sure things fit and that I'm happy with the overall design before I take the time to print & detail the final set. Even though these are drafts, I like to paint them just so I can get a sense of how they're going to look, plus they photograph & video much better than just having all black pieces.

here's the fully assembled rear taillight assembly:


Here's the piece taken apart to show the individual sections. This was done so that I can paint & detail the pieces correctly, plus it gives me the ability to use a transparent taillight lense that I can put an LED behind if I get ambitious down the road:


The front is essentially a re-scaled & re-angled copy of the one I designed for the Kyosho body:


And the individual pieces, again so that I can paint & detail the assembly properly:

[Jim85IROC]

Progress has been hard to come by, but I've gotten the wheel wells cut, masked and painted the body. I painted the bumpers from the inside, but then on the outside I used the protective film as a paint mask and trimmed away the area over the bumpers and the areas around the windows that should have chrome trim, then painted it with a chrome pen.


Once the remainder of the film was removed, it left nice sharp lines and fairly convincing chrome trim.


Body looks good.


Next I cut out the lexan to fit the printed taillight assembly. This is just a rough draft print but I'm really happy with how it looks. Once the final one is printed, smoothed and painted, I think it'll look great.

One problem that I'm running into is that the chrome paint isn't holding up well at all. Just handling the body to cut the lexan and install the printed parts has dulled the hell out of it. Hopefully I can touch it up when I'm done.

[Jim85IROC]

I was able to get the grill and taillight assemblies painted and installed.* Hoping to finish this up soon!