F150 Baja Trail / Race Truck

[Mad Ax]

Here's a blast from the past.  An F150 that I built way back in 2007, when I was still fairly new to the Tamiya scene and these were still available NIB for a pretty low price.  Back then the scale crawler scene was only just about to get going, so I had the slightly sideways idea of building this as a scale truck instead of the race truck that it's supposed to be.  It's stayed with me for all these years, and now I have a reason to dust it off and give it a refresh, so for the first time ever it will get its own thread, detailing its history and setting out its plans for the future.  Well, I hope I haven't done a build thread on this one before, anyway - it's been around for so long that maybe I have..?

Now bear with me here because there's a lot of history to get through, a lot of photos and not a lot of time, so it could take me a while to upload all of this.  This could be a slow-burn thread to read over the next few weeks, maybe.

Let's start with a photo.  Since I wanted this to be a trail truck, I painted it a flat, single colour.  I was very nervous about painting back then so I didn't do anything fancy with the caged rear end - I just painted it black.

These photos were taken at a place called Stockhill, which was about a 40 minute drive from where I used to live.  It's got some great terrain and was a popular proving ground for my early Tamiya builds, back when I was single with no responsibilities and I could just get up and go out at 8pm on a July school night and not come home until long after sunset.  Back then I was also enjoying a little bit of photography, so I took dozens of photos of this truck to try to make it look scale.  There's over 200 images in this album if you want to go check it out, I'll only show the important ones on this thread:

https://tcphotos.net/album/ePel

This was definitely a Golden Hour photoshoot, I couldn't have hoped for better weather to show off the truck's body before it got all scratched up on the trails.

 

[Mad Ax]

In this photo you can see water on the screen, so this must have been after its first soaking.

A little dirt makes it so much more scale.  

[Mad Ax]

A few months later, the truck got some mods.  Manta ray shock towers and cheap 100mm with soft springs gave it more suspension travel and a taller stance.  In October of 2007 I took it to Ham Hill - I can't remember if this was one of our Tamiyaclub meets or if this was a solo visit - back then I had the freedom to drive an hour or more to Ham Hill whenever I wanted.  This was a Sunday afternoon, so it could have been a solo or a planned meet.

The Manta Ray shock tower mod is a genuinely good one for this truck - the tuck on the rear end it just about perfect, the tyre just about clears the body.

[ThunderDragonCy]

I remember seeing these photos before. Love the look and stance of this truck

[Mad Ax]

10 hours ago, ThunderDragonCy said:

I remember seeing these photos before. Love the look and stance of this truck

Some of them are posted in the showroom entry, but I decided to start a build thread for a more in-depth showcase of the modifications and usage.

More to follow later  

[JimBear]

Right up my alley, @Mad Ax. Looks great - what PS colour did you use?

[Mad Ax]

These photos were taken back in November 2007, and show the details of how I made the body posts fit with the Manta Ray shock towers.  I think I used 2-part epoxy to glue the posts on.  I didn't think it would work but actually it lasted a very long time.

[Mad Ax]

These action photos were taken almost exactly 1 year after the initial photoshoot, in the same location - just 3 days separated them from being exactly a year apart.  I took 159 photos, all of which are in the album linked above, if you want to go look at dozens of out-of-focus action shots.  These are some of my faves.

Pic dump warning.

At some point in the car's history it got a Novak FiftyFive crawler motor and party balloons over all the electrics, as I often drove it submerged, although I have no photographic evidence of when this occurred.

[Mad Ax]

So, where are we now?  Well, the car has had very few photos taken since then, although it has evolved.  It got a 2.4GHz receiver, so it lost that daft antenna, it got a different front bumper that came from a different project that I bought, and it got the lugs snipped off the tyres to make them better for crawling.  This was totally a thing back in the day, when soft, sticky crawler tyres weren't a thing.  This mod gave a little more bite to the tyre.

It also had a locked rear diff.  This was a thing for crawling with a TA02T - the standard truck has a ball diff in the rear and a gear diff in the front, but you can tighten up the ball diff and move it up front, then lock the gear diff with epoxy and stick it in the back.  This helps traction on the loose stuff a lot, but makes it terrible for spirited driving.

It also got some HPI Vintage wheels, which totally look the part but I suspect these were only added because I stole the stock wheels for something else and it had been sitting around on its belly for a decade.  At least this way it could go on display.

Also - and I only found this out yesterday - at some point, it got UJs all round.  I don't remember doing this, but it was probably a result of breaking too many dogbones on crawler duty.  The locked rear diff is too hard on the stock plastic-ended dogbone, and I remember eating a couple of them back when it was my go-to crawler car.

So - why the new thread?  It hasn't had a battery in it for probably a decade.  I've had proper crawlers for that long, and never saw it as good track fodder for a bash-worthy truck because the Novak 55 is too slow.  The only thing I briefly remember is running it near a local stream during a dog walk, and that would have been at least 7 years ago, probably longer.  I only remember it because I broke the motor mount landing from a jump - a common problem with these.

Well, 2 reasons.  First, I've been going through a lot of my old stuff recently and looking for Quick Wins that I can get up to spec, or at least, get a project plan listed out, so I've got something to do if I get stalled on another project.

Second, the whole Club 380 thing has got me thinking a lot about the joy of slower cars, and things I can run around my garden without having to feather the throttle.  I'm planning on going to a Club 380 meet in May, and I mentioned to the organisers that a 4wd truck class would be great, especially for these trucks and for the sporty CC01 variants like the Pajero Rally and the VW Touareg.  380s may overheat running these heavier 4wd cars, but a stock silvercan should be about right, I think, and the scale look of the cars should make them perfect for the whole realistic racing scene.

There's another little thing here too - staying active during my lunchbreaks, instead of staring at the TV or just working through.  These kinds of simple restomod projects are great for getting me on my feet.

So, during a lunchbreak 2 weeks ago, I pulled the old green Ford out of storage and dusted it off.

Here's how it looked.  It probably still had the same dirt on from the photoshoot in 2008, above.

The shell has survived remarkably well - a little flaky paint between cab and bed, but no major splits or cracks anywhere.

The paint is starting to come off these old BFGs but that just makes it look more authentic.  I'm pretty sure you can't get these any more, and the decals look awful and don't stay stuck, so I want to keep these as my runner tyres.  I love the aggressive look of the cut lugs

Under the body, it was a mess.  The Novak FiftyFive looks to have been wired up with cheap automotive wire and even cheaper crimp connectors (gold plated motor plugs were a thing of my dreams in 2008) and the ubiquitous TEU-101BK ESC was been wired up to a LiPo cutoff system.  Wired being the operative word, since there are literally wires everywhere - it's a total mess.

Also the balloons over the ESC and (long-removed) Rx have degraded and turned into acrylic paint.  But, to my surprise, it's complete - apart from a missing battery clip (my LiPos are too big for it anyway) there's nothing wrong with the truck - throw in battery and receiver and it will run!  Even the motor mount was fine, so I guess I must have replaced it at some point.  I thought it had a broken dogbone too, but that's probably just an automatic memory, since it pretty much always had a broken dogbone.

I wanted to know how well it would go with a silvercan, so I found an unused one, stuck in a receiver, and went for a test drive in the garden.

 

[Mad Ax]

In brief - it was great!  OK, the grass was just starting to show the first spring growth, and the tyres wanted to come off the rims, and the locked rear diff made it harder to drive, but it's still a good fun backyard basher.  Fast enough in the straights, looks very scale in the corners, and no nasty handling traits.  I think the taller stand and softer shocks help it lean into the corners, which makes it look more realistic, but lack of pace on long grass and lack of grip on the patio stones meant it didn't want to roll over.  I'm sure it will be much more fun once I've trimmed the grass down.  I plan to be pretty aggressive with the lawn this year to get some more home running in.

So - a plan has been hatched!  I want to get this car back together with the diffs as they should be, tyres glued, modern ESC and modified tub to accept a shorty battery.  Plus some more scale updates to the body, along with a race livery.

Then I'm going to demo it as the Club 380 meet and see how well it runs on the grass track, and how it compares to the 380-powered buggies, to see if Club 380 want to open up another class for scale racing trucks.

More pics to follow!

[OldSchoolRC1]

One of my favorite Tamiya kits! ....And always a good read scrolling through a Mad Ax thread.

[Mad Ax]

The following day I had some time to kill, so I decided to start tidying up the truck.  The wiring was in an awful state and there was all that horrid vulcanised balloon to get rid of, so I decided to strip the whole thing down and give it a very light clean.  I don't want to remove all that vintage patina.

I keep some soapy water in an old window cleaner bottle in the workshop, mostly I use it for damping down the spray bench to prevent dust before painting, but it's handy for all sorts of things, including an impromptu body cleaning.

Why clean it?  Well, I didn't really want to clean the body, because I like the dirt, but I decided that, if this was going to be a race truck, it needed a race livery.  In fact my project list has a Team Bluegroove body in the future purchases section, so I can give it a more racey paintjob, but it isn't necessary.  This isn't supposed to look like a proper big-sponsor race truck, this is supposed to look like something a bunch of paycheque racers cobbled together in their shed with bare minimal sponsorship from wherever they could get it - 10% off the plugs if you put the sticker on your truck, kinda thing.

I wasn't really sure about this when I first did it, but it's grown on me.  It's got a certain basic appeal.  I half-considered masking off some parts and putting some yellow stripes on, but it works OK without it.

[Mad Ax]

I also decided to start making an aluminium sump guard.  The stock bumper doesn't look entirely bad with the standard shock towers, but once you add the Manta Ray towers there's too much gap under the body.  I filled a lot of it up with custom arch liners (I need to photograph that) but never got around to making a proper sump guard like the real truck.

I didn't want to add too much weight to the front end, so I went with 1mm sheet.  It might not stand up to heavy abuse, but I'll see how it goes.

I had to do a lot of this by eye, and make little trims and adjustments as I went to clear parts of the suspension and chassis.

Very rough cut.  The final thing will be a V-shape, not a huge ugly rectangle.

It still needs a brace against the shock tower to secure the upper part and give it some rigidity, but that's sort of how it will work.  Cutting it to size now that it's bent will be a challenge, though!

[Mad Ax]

I didn't have much time to work on the truck after that, as I was away with work and also racing in the BRCA Sportscar Endurance warm-up round, but I had a little time after work on Friday night.  I didn't want to get messy cutting and filing the sump guard, so I decided to look at the diffs.

Here's the truck on the stand.  Brief view of the rear body mounts.  I'd love to cut out the back of the truck and build a custom cage, but brass will be too heavy and plastic may be too fragile even for gentle silvercan racing.

As I mentioned before, as standard these trucks have a ball diff in the rear and a gear diff up front.  However I had swapped them around, torquing up the ball diff in the front for added traction on the trails and locking the rear with epoxy.  This is no good for racing, so the diff had to come out.

Evidence of glue leakage visible.  It took a lot of effort to crack this open.

Eventually I had to position my pliers thus and hit it wi'ammer

Eew.  That hasn't been opened in 18 years.  Crystalised epoxy.

[Mad Ax]

I managed to clean up the diff casing without too much trouble.  I guess it's nylon, which has that sort of self-lubricating property and always feels slightly greasy.  The gears were another story.  They probably need a long soak in something like IPA.  This tub has already got 2 sets of diff gears soaking from previous dismantlements - the IPA has probably long evaporated leaving nothing but a stinky dusty solution, but the magic had been worked already on some of the gears so I was able to clean them up.

Once the gears were mostly clean (this sounds trivial but was about 90 minutes with a small flat-bladed screwdriver and scalpel) I added some grease, sealed up the diff, checked there were no bad tight spots, then and span it with the drill to bed it in.

Then I opened it to see the grease had gone grey.  There was still some nastiness on the teeth that came off easier after a run, and it all went back together again.

[Mad Ax]

Here's the ball diff in the front.  Note the cracks in the bulkhead - I hadn't noticed these before I pulled it apart.  I've got a new A parts tree on order for a different car, maybe this one will get a new bulkhead.

Gear diff installed.

Ball diff installed.

And all back together, the way Tamiya intended.  Well, sort of.

[Mad Ax]

Today is the 1st day of the new Spending Period, so I placed an order for an aluminium motor mount, steel 17 tooth pinion, 1060 ESC and some new bullet connectors for motor and battery.  I should have a bit of workshop time on Sunday, so if it all arrives on time, I might get it reassembled and maybe get the new battery tray made and installed.  Would be good to get that sump guard on, too.

Then it'll be ready to race!

[MadAnt]

Sweet! Love some of these revivals.

[officepizzaparty]

looks soo good with that simple livery

[Nikko85]

On 4/1/2025 at 9:27 PM, Mad Ax said:

The following day I had some time to kill, so I decided to start tidying up the truck.  The wiring was in an awful state and there was all that horrid vulcanised balloon to get rid of, so I decided to strip the whole thing down and give it a very light clean.  I don't want to remove all that vintage patina.

I keep some soapy water in an old window cleaner bottle in the workshop, mostly I use it for damping down the spray bench to prevent dust before painting, but it's handy for all sorts of things, including an impromptu body cleaning.

Why clean it?  Well, I didn't really want to clean the body, because I like the dirt, but I decided that, if this was going to be a race truck, it needed a race livery.  In fact my project list has a Team Bluegroove body in the future purchases section, so I can give it a more racey paintjob, but it isn't necessary.  This isn't supposed to look like a proper big-sponsor race truck, this is supposed to look like something a bunch of paycheque racers cobbled together in their shed with bare minimal sponsorship from wherever they could get it - 10% off the plugs if you put the sticker on your truck, kinda thing.

I wasn't really sure about this when I first did it, but it's grown on me.  It's got a certain basic appeal.  I half-considered masking off some parts and putting some yellow stripes on, but it works OK without it.

I think the livery looks great!

Personally I would remove it from the black on the tail gate, but it looks awesome.

 

 

[Mad Ax]

1 hour ago, Nikko85 said:

Personally I would remove it from the black on the tail gate

I see what you're saying, and I think you're right.  After all, it technically isn't a tailgate, it's a roll cage with something under it, so it wouldn't have those kinds of decals on.

I might re-think the back end.

Some parts arrived today, I was waiting for Workshop Sunday to get them fitted but managed to get a good run at it on my lunchbreak.  The other options were hanging out the washing or cleaning the kitchen.  That's all well and good but this truck's gotta be ready by the last week in May, dangit!  I have no time for chores!!

Photos probably tomorrow.

[Mad Ax]

Updates!

My start-of-month spending splurge arrived earlier this week, so I took a lunchbreak in the workshop to get everything fitted.

1060 ESC, Xtra Speed motor mount, 4/5mm battery posts and a steel 17 tooth pinion.

I decided to remove the rear gearbox so I could see if it would be possible to fit a short LiPo in here somehow.

Kinda looks like it'll fit?  Needs some ribs removed, though.

Ribs removed.  Less sensation, more battery.

Also had to grind away at that little bulb.

[Mad Ax]

That's better.  Perfect fit now.

I was planning on making some kind of clip to stop the battery coming out, but actually, the battery posts will stop it coming out.  I just need something to stop it sliding the other way.

It went out of focus, but I cut away the battery hole to allow the LiPo in.

Reassembled.

New electrics loosely stuffed in for a test run.

[Mad Ax]

Ready to go

Yes, the battery posts stop the battery sliding out.

OK!  More work to do, but as a proof of concept, it works - and saves me so much manual fabrication!

[Mad Ax]

Today was Workshop Sunday, and after getting a few other jobs out of the way for the UK Scale Nationals in a month, I was able to turn my attention back to this truck.

First thing I'd noticed during a test-run in the week was that the servo saver gets stuck.  This is a common problem with Tamiya servo savers on modern servos, where the torque required to stop the horn coming loose will flatten the plastic and jam both halves together, preventing them from springing back to centre after a knock.

I didn't get any detailed photos (I probably should have) but a 0.5mm shim under the large plastic washer was perfect to add some gap between the halves and keep the servo saver doing its thing.

Then I tied up the wiring a little.  I have opted not to go the full gold-plated bullet route on this truck, since it doesn't really warrant it, but I still wanted it tidy.

After that, it was time to look at the battery tray.  I had deliberately left this outer rib in place, not just for extra sensation, but also so I had something to put my closing panel against.  This is an offcut of styrene sheet.

Made a brace

Cut it to shape