Newb Buildup: All abord the Short Bus!

[LAV25]

I hope the mods will find this worthy of being in the Clod section rather than Newbie General, but if not...well, they know better than I do.


Ok, here it is! The Bullhead that I bought a year and a half ago is finally a real crawler. I’m not breaking any new ground here, I know a lot of people have done this much better than I have, but I’m pretty proud of it for a first attempt.

Specs
Stock Clod axles, ballraced with hot glue diff locking
2x 60t Atlas Crawler motors
EVX esc with single battery mod
Futaba Attack 4WD 4ch radio
RCGuy Pro Steering kit from The Crawler Store
2x Tower Pro 945 hi-torque servos from JPCustomRCs
Traxxas Maxx shocks, grey bodies, red springs, stock oil from eBay
Homemade cutting board chassis, top center link mounts, and axle stiffener/lower shock mounts
4mm allthread links sheathed in 6mm outside diameter aluminum

A lot of these things are less than ideal (EVX), but they are what I had laying around or could afford. Big thanks to the folks that helped me through this build, I’ve been doing as much reading as I can, but when I had questions someone was always quick to help.

Question threads here:
Chassis flop?
Zero Droop: Going to be a problem?

On to the pics:

The chassis was designed using Google Sketchup



and hacked out of a couple pieces of 10mm cutting board:



leaving quite a mess in the kitchen sink:



I made the top center link mounts out of the same material:



and made some axle stiffeners/lower shock mounts out of 5mm chopping board:



I originally planned to use Savage shocks, but had too many problems with sway:





So I went to a set of Maxx shocks I had laying around:



Which gave good ar-pickle-ation:



Then I gave it a tummy tuck to get the belly clearance up a bit:



It's sitting at about 11cm, which is 4.3 inches.

It crawls pretty well for what went into it, I managed to scale this rock:





But while I was at the park, I ran into this, a thousand dollars worth of 2wd no suspension truck, it has a CD, MD, DVD, three solar panels, full disco lighting kit, and lots of little characters. Different strokes I guess...Unfortunately, I let the owner drive my rig, and he broke one of my knuckles trying to climb over his rolling nightclub.



I've got a couple vids, but youtube is down for uploading right now, I'll try and get them posted later.

Questions and comments are always welcome.

[LAV25]

Here's a trio of short videos I took today, please be kind, this is not only the first time I've driven a crawler, this is the first time I've ever even seen one live, crawling is just taking off in Japan and all I know I've learned from reading this site!

The first thing I found in the park to try and drive over

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aRmrcF36Y8

The mandatory Urban Stair Climb

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0-WT33nHBU

A bit of rock, there was about a four foot drop to a small river directly behind the truck so I couldn't try too hard to get it upright. Not that I know how to drive, but the EVX is a little jerky on the start which accounts for some of what you see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7E91-6y5Zs

Thanks for watching!

[EMX5636]

Definately look good. Sucks about the hub though... I like the schoolbus body, any idea who makes that? Good job!

[PONYBOY87LX]

awesome man i dig the shorty lol i want one

[LAV25]

Originally Posted by EMX5636

Definately look good. Sucks about the hub though... I like the schoolbus body, any idea who makes that? Good job!

Thanks guys, the body is a Parma Skool Bus, got it at the LHS but if you google it this comes up first: http://www.rcplanet.com/Parma_Skool_...p/par10107.htm

It comes with window masks for painting, but I was a little disappointed with their fit to the windows as molded, and all that black was a nightmare, I decided to hand paint it in rather than trying to mask it all. In the end I don't know which would have been harder, and I had to trim the snot out of it to crawl, but hey, it's all fun!

[ussprinceton2004]

are there any 1:1 scale yellow school buses in Japan?

[LAV25]

Originally Posted by ussprinceton2004

are there any 1:1 scale yellow school buses in Japan?

Not that I've seen, did see one that looked like a melon-pan (melon bun), which was pretty Hansel and Gretel for my taste....