Pro-Line Bug Body Installed on my TH
Hopefully these pictures work. After quite a bit of cutting, painting and assembly including 2 trips to the hobby shop, I mounted the Pro-Line Bug body onto my Twin Hammers. The picture below doesn't do justice to how long the trailing arms look now. It looks more like a small Axial Yeti, which is funny because it also drives a lot like one now too. Here's how it looks:
This picture shows a little better how long the rear end looks now. With almost no weight over those rear wheels, the rear end is really lively.
I wanted to move my battery up front, which is how I ended up switching bodies to begin with. I broke the stock battery tray, so I picked up a new one on the way home. As I sat down to install it, I started to think it'd be a good time to finally move the battery onto my GCM front plate. And by battery, I mean a 2S LiPO shorty hard case, the Dynamite 4000mah 2S, 40C. With the stock body, there was no way of fitting it.
I used the bent piece of the cage that supports the rear end of the battery tray, since I would no longer need to attach the battery tray to the rest of cage. I now had two of those pieces since a new one came with the new battery tray and I used them to create a cage for the front mounted battery. I drilled holes into the GCM shock hoops to mount one of those pieces, and the other is mounted to where the hood section of cage used to attach to the lower "windshield" portion of the cage. I had to trim both pieces a bit to fir them. I wanted to make a cage around the battery since I live in fear of my LiPO's catching fire, so I didn't want them taking a hit in a crash.
Into the stock holes on that "cage" I screwed two studs to thread the Pro-Line body caps onto. I had to drill those holes out slightly larger to get the studs in. Now to change the battery, I simply unscrew 4 big, ugly caps, pull the hood off and change the battery. I cut up and re-used the old body panels (which you can see a bit of) to keep a bit of sand out of the chassis. I installed them under the Bug Body. For battery retention, I used what was left of the broken, stock battery tray ziptied to the GCM plate. Maybe in the coming weeks, I'll come up with a better way of doing that.
The Twin Hammers handles quite differently now, as I have very little weight over the rear wheels. It drifts more, rolls less, but wants to front flip if I jam the brakes on in a turn. It crawls REALLY well, and still jumps well. It hill climbs quite well too, as instead of always wanting to backflip, now the rear wheels tend to hop up and over stuff as the front wheels continue to pull. There were lines that took me 20 tries to crawl successfully before, and I nailed them first try since moving so much of the weight forward. Descents are a bit more tricky now though. I have to anticipate the newly increased tendency to go nose down. I have a lot of aluminum up front. Almost the entire cage aft of the rear shock towers is now gone so that none of it sticks out of the rear end of the body, and I removed a bit of plastic from the roof of the cage to narrow it slightly so that the body would fit.
I don't think it looks particulary scale but I'm enjoying the difference. Any questions? PM me. Putting this body onto the Twin Hammers was NOT a straight forward, bolt on job. It didn't require an engineering degree either, but putting this body on with a rear mounted battery would be more difficult, I think. A few other mods did come into play as far as being able to pull this off, but all hardware used was stock hardware, and nothing needed to be added to the cage, just pieces taken away or moved somewhere else. After seeing this, my son wanted the Bug Body for his Yeti, so back to work...
For anyone who is interested, the mods are:
GCM front plate with shock hoops (necessary for my project)
GCM rear axle truss
Axial SCX10 shocks in front
Pro-Line Bug Body (obviously necessary for my project)
Pro-Line Super Swamper XL 1.9
Vaterra aluminum wheel hexes (12mm)
Dynamite Fuze 3300KV
Robinson steel spur gear 78t
Boom Racing aluminum A-arms
GPM aluminum steering knuckles and axle carriers
GPM aluminum rear shock towers
Traxxas aluminum steering & camber links
500K weight diff oil in front
Traxxas 2075 steering servo
Spektrum SRS4210 receiver
Spektrum DX4C radio
Spare stock battery tray (necessary for my project)
Pro-Line Extended Body Mount Kit (necessary for my project)
Hopefully these pictures work. After quite a bit of cutting, painting and assembly including 2 trips to the hobby shop, I mounted the Pro-Line Bug body onto my Twin Hammers. The picture below doesn't do justice to how long the trailing arms look now. It looks more like a small Axial Yeti, which is funny because it also drives a lot like one now too. Here's how it looks:
This picture shows a little better how long the rear end looks now. With almost no weight over those rear wheels, the rear end is really lively.
I wanted to move my battery up front, which is how I ended up switching bodies to begin with. I broke the stock battery tray, so I picked up a new one on the way home. As I sat down to install it, I started to think it'd be a good time to finally move the battery onto my GCM front plate. And by battery, I mean a 2S LiPO shorty hard case, the Dynamite 4000mah 2S, 40C. With the stock body, there was no way of fitting it.
I used the bent piece of the cage that supports the rear end of the battery tray, since I would no longer need to attach the battery tray to the rest of cage. I now had two of those pieces since a new one came with the new battery tray and I used them to create a cage for the front mounted battery. I drilled holes into the GCM shock hoops to mount one of those pieces, and the other is mounted to where the hood section of cage used to attach to the lower "windshield" portion of the cage. I had to trim both pieces a bit to fir them. I wanted to make a cage around the battery since I live in fear of my LiPO's catching fire, so I didn't want them taking a hit in a crash.
Into the stock holes on that "cage" I screwed two studs to thread the Pro-Line body caps onto. I had to drill those holes out slightly larger to get the studs in. Now to change the battery, I simply unscrew 4 big, ugly caps, pull the hood off and change the battery. I cut up and re-used the old body panels (which you can see a bit of) to keep a bit of sand out of the chassis. I installed them under the Bug Body. For battery retention, I used what was left of the broken, stock battery tray ziptied to the GCM plate. Maybe in the coming weeks, I'll come up with a better way of doing that.
The Twin Hammers handles quite differently now, as I have very little weight over the rear wheels. It drifts more, rolls less, but wants to front flip if I jam the brakes on in a turn. It crawls REALLY well, and still jumps well. It hill climbs quite well too, as instead of always wanting to backflip, now the rear wheels tend to hop up and over stuff as the front wheels continue to pull. There were lines that took me 20 tries to crawl successfully before, and I nailed them first try since moving so much of the weight forward. Descents are a bit more tricky now though. I have to anticipate the newly increased tendency to go nose down. I have a lot of aluminum up front. Almost the entire cage aft of the rear shock towers is now gone so that none of it sticks out of the rear end of the body, and I removed a bit of plastic from the roof of the cage to narrow it slightly so that the body would fit.
I don't think it looks particulary scale but I'm enjoying the difference. Any questions? PM me. Putting this body onto the Twin Hammers was NOT a straight forward, bolt on job. It didn't require an engineering degree either, but putting this body on with a rear mounted battery would be more difficult, I think. A few other mods did come into play as far as being able to pull this off, but all hardware used was stock hardware, and nothing needed to be added to the cage, just pieces taken away or moved somewhere else. After seeing this, my son wanted the Bug Body for his Yeti, so back to work...
For anyone who is interested, the mods are:
GCM front plate with shock hoops (necessary for my project)
GCM rear axle truss
Axial SCX10 shocks in front
Pro-Line Bug Body (obviously necessary for my project)
Pro-Line Super Swamper XL 1.9
Vaterra aluminum wheel hexes (12mm)
Dynamite Fuze 3300KV
Robinson steel spur gear 78t
Boom Racing aluminum A-arms
GPM aluminum steering knuckles and axle carriers
GPM aluminum rear shock towers
Traxxas aluminum steering & camber links
500K weight diff oil in front
Traxxas 2075 steering servo
Spektrum SRS4210 receiver
Spektrum DX4C radio
Spare stock battery tray (necessary for my project)
Pro-Line Extended Body Mount Kit (necessary for my project)
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