Who built the 1st Clod based crawler?

[bangstick]

Must be thousands of them about now but who came up with the idea to ditch the chassis create their own?

[TWINSET]

No idea, when I first got into them, there was the Clodzilla chassis or the JPS I think.

The first 'marketed' crawler I can remember was the Gecko, up until then most of the mod chassis were foor racing (TTR Centurion, JPS, Zilla III, Boss Kong)

I'm not sure if Clodtalk.com still goes right back to the early pages, but that's where I first started reading about them.

 

My first mod chassis was a Zilla III 

[bangstick]

Righto, just thought i would ask as its always interesting to know who was the pioneer of such a popular thing. Do you know how long after the Clodbuster came out people were making either racers or crawlers?

[TWINSET]

Do you know how long after the Clodbuster came out people were making either racers or crawlers?

 

No mate, haven't got a clue - I got mine maybe 5 years ago,  and even then there was a good choice, the main killer on the JPS at the time was the cost, it had CNC machined everything, whereas the Zilla was mainly channel and bent sheet.

 

Just found this over at Clodparts.com;

RokZilla is the result of ESP

Hobby Mfg's. 18 years of experience in manufacturing chassis conversion

kits for the ClodBuster. We realized that Rock Crawling is the hottest

new segment of the market and decided to dedicate a kit exclusively for

the task. Come on inside and experience the coolest Rock Crawler you

have ever seen!

So at least 18 years [] 

[Saito]

ALOT of small manufacturers sprang up in the late 80's with hop-up goodies for the Clod shortly after its introduction.  ESP was certainly one of the very first.  Performance-wise the early big-selling parts were the chassis brace and lift kit.  A few companies began making aluminum chassis (most notably, Sassy Chassis) but these were modeled after the original tub chassis.  ESP and Bennett Racing were among the first to offer a tubular style chassis initially for racing purposes.  One must keep in mind that the world of Clod hop-ups closely parallels that of the full-size trucks.  Truck-pulling was very popular at the time of the Clod Buster's inception.  Thusly, many accessories went along the lines of making the truck tougher (i.e. steel gear sets, aluminum gear cases/axle tubes suspension stabilizer braces).  In those days, you built a Clod to pull and look good doing it (tons of appearance items popped up, even a ridiculus quad shock mount, 16 shocks!) or you lightened it for racing.  ESP played both markets.  They were the first to introduce a racing suspension kit which (using only 4 dampers) re-angled the shocks for greater travel.  As trail riding and rock crawling gained momentum in the full-size realm, people began to cast their eyes to the venrable Clod Buster.  Many of the very early crawlers in my area used gear reductions from pulling Clods, long travel suspensions from racing Clods and often time a scratch built chassis.  The Clod Buster is certainly a versitile truck.

[mymonsterbeetleisbroken]

16 shocks - Nice!

Some real monster trucks back then used 12 shocks per wheel, 48 shocks in total []  - plus the leaf springs dont forget!

Did anyone ever make a leaf spring conversion for the clod?

I've seen some puller upgrades including counter weights that bolted to the front - to stop the front wheels lifting during pulling.

there was also a bunch of 1/10 scale pulling sleds to hook up to the clod.

body upgrades included aluminium rear bed trays, aluminium bumpers, giant exhaust stacks for the sides and wing mirrors. i think esp made some of those.