If you could take a few seconds and comment, it would be greatly appreciated. Forum is so dead lately and it's a shame that so many threads/ posts just get ignored. Definitely makes people less enthusiastic to post. Not that this project was anything exciting but still... always nice to at least know that someone takes a look. And apologies.. didn't realize how bad the pics were till I uploaded to my pc.
I'll start with the rig... Defender model ( parts upgraded or added) :
> Swapped out the HH 21t TM Sport for a HH 27t TM Sport Motor. Hoping that for pulling around approx 7lbs this will provide a little more umph. Also went with ProTek 4mm gold bullets to make changing motors quicker and easier when/ if necessary.
> Finally swapped out the oem XL5 for a HW1080. Honestly the XL5 never gave me a lick of trouble and it's been thru a lot of hot nasty and stressful conditions... never glitched or threw smoke even on the hottest Texas summer days. Just wanted to up the game with some more programming options and reliability. Running it to the rx with a Gear Head 3" extension.
> Installed a fan over the new motor as well. Plugs into a JST connector direct from battery using a homemade dual JST battery connector. I've had the fan a while. Picked it up on Amazon few years back for my Slash but going to use it on this tow rig for now.
> Rear springs- I swapped out the original firm green springs on the GTS shocks to extra firm blue #8045 springs. Also replaced the 30wt oil with an Associated 70wt to keep on the objective of stiffening the rear end. Very firm feel back there now and I think it's where it needs to be. We'll see.
I also pulled apart the diffs to inspect and add some heavy duty grease. Gears looked good and running smooth and bearings felt nice so this was a quick job... no need to tear down.
> Got a sort of freebie too I guess. Had an aluminum HR rear frame mount on hand for years that I never used but gonna use it now to assure that the rails maintain minimum tweak. Stock plastic braces were fine but again... already had the HR brace so might as well use it.
> The rear bumper ( KYX or some cheap aluminum Amazon offering) that I installed on the D110 long time ago ( lightweight, good fit and finish, impressive departure angle, and body protection) has a receiver hitch and was originally accommodating a D-ring shackle that I've since removed and instead installed an aluminum drop trailer hitch ( ball head/ hitch cup style although if this fails I may look at another option... pintle maybe? ). There's some small parts with this ball style and possibly some potential weak spots so we'll see. Looks pretty legit though.. scale appearance for the most part.
Aesthetics:
> I've added a lot of accessories to this Defender body over the years but figured I'd add a few more things to further personalize it.
> Headlights- Finally got around to removing the stock decals in favor of actual LEDs and simulated/ faux marker lights. Not much to account for here but all lights are still non-functioning... just that they look more scale and lifelike now. I also used chrome tape to simulate buckets around the LED headlights.
> Door hinges- I've had these forever, never installed. But I never had all the tiny screws needed to install. So I instead used some double-sided tape and to simulate the bolts that would mount the hinges in real life, I stole some button-head sewing pins from my wife. Painted them black and after the hinges were mounted, used a tiny drill bit to drill out the body behind the holes in the hinges. Then it was a matter of inserting the "bolts" and securing them from the inside. To do that I cut-out little foam blocks and used some E6000. Worked like a charm and the hinges as well as the faux-bolts are very secure and look legit.
> After installing the hinges, I decided to add a strip of 3M Safety Step material to mimic rocker protection along the sides of the rig under the door sills. Only thing that I did to the adhesive backed tape material was to sand it down a bit for a more rhino-lined/ line-x appearance. I did this on my SCX24 and it came out good so figured I'd do it here as well. Only thing I don't care for is how quickly you can dull a carpet blade on this stuff but no matter. Came out well and adds some more texture and three dimensional aesthetic fwiw.
> The rear of the rig was a wreck after I had tried installing a ladder a few years ago that wound up splitting the rear pass side straight up. So I had some thin scale-size diamond plate and decided to make two reinforcing mounting plates/ panels to mount the ladder to. Used small scale screws and dbl-sided tape to attach those with nuts on the inside... tiny nuts/ much tedious lol. The two largest screws that attach the ladder are secured with [lock]nuts through a strip of styrene backed with E6000. The whole thing is now solid as can be although during the process of installing the diamond plate and securing with nuts on the inside, I unfortunately tightened a little too much and caused some additional spider cracks. Not really an issue as that entire drive-side rear is now stiff as all get out but sucks nonetheless. Fortunately the hairline spider cracks aren't too visible and hopefully there won't be any additional cracking from here on out.
*** I'll note here that the reason for the ladder was to try to fill out the rear of the vehicle because it just always looked so bare with lack of accessories. I also like adding things to accentuate the whole 3D appearance of the rig and exterior aesthetic features. And the other reason for the ladder was because of the cargo rack. I always thought it looked dumb to have a cargo rack with no way to access it lol.
> Also on the rear, I decided to install a flood/ area light on the pass-side. This RC4WD part seems a bit fragile and utilizes insanely tiny screws/ nuts but it feels secure. I also "padded" the bracket a bit with a couple squares of dbl-sided tape. Looks good enough.
> Finally was to fabricate a more realistic 3rd brake light than the factory decal/ sticker. I used a Lego piece to do this and cut-to-fit a piece of reflective tape for the lens.. stacked upon a few other pieces of tape to raise it up inside the Lego piece to be more visible. Little dollop of E6000 and centered into place and this mod was done. Looks good/ legit imo.
*** I already have SSD steel driveshafts installed on this rig along with LURC c-hubs and other aluminum, brass, or steel parts throughout so although this is a fairly heavy rig, it should do well as a tow-rig. Fwiw running a HH shv500 V2 direct for steering duties.
*** Next up is the trailer.
I'll start with the rig... Defender model ( parts upgraded or added) :
> Swapped out the HH 21t TM Sport for a HH 27t TM Sport Motor. Hoping that for pulling around approx 7lbs this will provide a little more umph. Also went with ProTek 4mm gold bullets to make changing motors quicker and easier when/ if necessary.
> Finally swapped out the oem XL5 for a HW1080. Honestly the XL5 never gave me a lick of trouble and it's been thru a lot of hot nasty and stressful conditions... never glitched or threw smoke even on the hottest Texas summer days. Just wanted to up the game with some more programming options and reliability. Running it to the rx with a Gear Head 3" extension.
> Installed a fan over the new motor as well. Plugs into a JST connector direct from battery using a homemade dual JST battery connector. I've had the fan a while. Picked it up on Amazon few years back for my Slash but going to use it on this tow rig for now.
> Rear springs- I swapped out the original firm green springs on the GTS shocks to extra firm blue #8045 springs. Also replaced the 30wt oil with an Associated 70wt to keep on the objective of stiffening the rear end. Very firm feel back there now and I think it's where it needs to be. We'll see.
I also pulled apart the diffs to inspect and add some heavy duty grease. Gears looked good and running smooth and bearings felt nice so this was a quick job... no need to tear down.
> Got a sort of freebie too I guess. Had an aluminum HR rear frame mount on hand for years that I never used but gonna use it now to assure that the rails maintain minimum tweak. Stock plastic braces were fine but again... already had the HR brace so might as well use it.
> The rear bumper ( KYX or some cheap aluminum Amazon offering) that I installed on the D110 long time ago ( lightweight, good fit and finish, impressive departure angle, and body protection) has a receiver hitch and was originally accommodating a D-ring shackle that I've since removed and instead installed an aluminum drop trailer hitch ( ball head/ hitch cup style although if this fails I may look at another option... pintle maybe? ). There's some small parts with this ball style and possibly some potential weak spots so we'll see. Looks pretty legit though.. scale appearance for the most part.
Aesthetics:
> I've added a lot of accessories to this Defender body over the years but figured I'd add a few more things to further personalize it.
> Headlights- Finally got around to removing the stock decals in favor of actual LEDs and simulated/ faux marker lights. Not much to account for here but all lights are still non-functioning... just that they look more scale and lifelike now. I also used chrome tape to simulate buckets around the LED headlights.
> Door hinges- I've had these forever, never installed. But I never had all the tiny screws needed to install. So I instead used some double-sided tape and to simulate the bolts that would mount the hinges in real life, I stole some button-head sewing pins from my wife. Painted them black and after the hinges were mounted, used a tiny drill bit to drill out the body behind the holes in the hinges. Then it was a matter of inserting the "bolts" and securing them from the inside. To do that I cut-out little foam blocks and used some E6000. Worked like a charm and the hinges as well as the faux-bolts are very secure and look legit.
> After installing the hinges, I decided to add a strip of 3M Safety Step material to mimic rocker protection along the sides of the rig under the door sills. Only thing that I did to the adhesive backed tape material was to sand it down a bit for a more rhino-lined/ line-x appearance. I did this on my SCX24 and it came out good so figured I'd do it here as well. Only thing I don't care for is how quickly you can dull a carpet blade on this stuff but no matter. Came out well and adds some more texture and three dimensional aesthetic fwiw.
> The rear of the rig was a wreck after I had tried installing a ladder a few years ago that wound up splitting the rear pass side straight up. So I had some thin scale-size diamond plate and decided to make two reinforcing mounting plates/ panels to mount the ladder to. Used small scale screws and dbl-sided tape to attach those with nuts on the inside... tiny nuts/ much tedious lol. The two largest screws that attach the ladder are secured with [lock]nuts through a strip of styrene backed with E6000. The whole thing is now solid as can be although during the process of installing the diamond plate and securing with nuts on the inside, I unfortunately tightened a little too much and caused some additional spider cracks. Not really an issue as that entire drive-side rear is now stiff as all get out but sucks nonetheless. Fortunately the hairline spider cracks aren't too visible and hopefully there won't be any additional cracking from here on out.
*** I'll note here that the reason for the ladder was to try to fill out the rear of the vehicle because it just always looked so bare with lack of accessories. I also like adding things to accentuate the whole 3D appearance of the rig and exterior aesthetic features. And the other reason for the ladder was because of the cargo rack. I always thought it looked dumb to have a cargo rack with no way to access it lol.
> Also on the rear, I decided to install a flood/ area light on the pass-side. This RC4WD part seems a bit fragile and utilizes insanely tiny screws/ nuts but it feels secure. I also "padded" the bracket a bit with a couple squares of dbl-sided tape. Looks good enough.
> Finally was to fabricate a more realistic 3rd brake light than the factory decal/ sticker. I used a Lego piece to do this and cut-to-fit a piece of reflective tape for the lens.. stacked upon a few other pieces of tape to raise it up inside the Lego piece to be more visible. Little dollop of E6000 and centered into place and this mod was done. Looks good/ legit imo.
*** I already have SSD steel driveshafts installed on this rig along with LURC c-hubs and other aluminum, brass, or steel parts throughout so although this is a fairly heavy rig, it should do well as a tow-rig. Fwiw running a HH shv500 V2 direct for steering duties.
*** Next up is the trailer.
I don't always post replies since I don't have something to add and I don't want to be the "nice truck" guy.
