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taliesin

Hummer Trail Truck

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Last year I bought an XB Hummer just before the Rock Crawling Nationals in Helena, Montana. I thought maybe it would be possible to make it into a trail truck but after seeing the actual rock crawlers and the XC-01 trail trucks at work I just gave up the idea. Figured it just wasn't going to work, so why bother.

I added oil shocks and a TEU-101 ESC immediately, but otherwise, it was just stock. It was fun to drive, but was too fast to really be scale and it just got stuck if you tried to climb anything.

Today I finally pulled the rear diff out and crammed it full of Blue Tack / poster putty and put an Axial 55T motor in it. WOW! What an improvement. I wish I had done this a year ago when I first got the idea to make it into a trail truck. It can really climb now and the speed is very realistic for the vehicle. It still gets stuck once in awhile, mostly high centered, but it generally drives like a real full sized 4WD truck now. It finally can handle the terrain that I had in mind when I bought it.

Total cost = about $15 and 20 minutes to disassemble / reassemble. Not bad at all.

I hope the putty holds the diffs locked, but I honestly can't see how it would get out or allow anything to move. :)

Made for a very happy afternoon of scale 4-wheeling. :D

Now for some better tires.... Suggestions welcome.

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I too have a Hummer, but I swapped the front and rear diffs around ending up with a locked gear diff in the rear and a ball diff up front. Its still running a silver can so she is a bit fast still. I had some Hilift wheels and tyres sitting around doing nothing, sprayed the wheels satin black and wallop!. It could do with a minor body lift, but she will climb really well with this combo getting places some 4 linked scalers struggle with :)

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The chassis is actually quite capable and is scale for a Hummer too, being fully-independant like the real thing.

There are some more things you can do to the chassis.

First up, you can fit the shock towers from a Manta Ray - these allow you to fit 100m shocks. You'll get longer suspension travel. Ideally you want some very soft springs and soft shocks so the suspension moves nicely over rocks.

See my showroom for details of how I accomplished this on my F-150 (which is currently in parts waiting to become a Subaru Brat): http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_model.a...3&sid=15729

The body mounts are glued on with superglue - this will give you a body lift to cope with the higher travel on the suspension.

You can also do away with the chassis tub completely and replace it with a sheet of aluminium. You mount the front and rear upper gearbox mounts to the plate, then bend some aluminium to make braces down to the lower gearbox mounts. It gives you loads of clearance under the middle of the chassis, which is the weak point of this truck. I've never done this, but seen it done on a scaler forum (can't remember which one).

There are all sorts of good scale tyres on the market now.

Ax

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@ Mad: did you cut the wheel wells on your F-150 to make them bigger? id love to make mine a better trail truck, maybe a light trialer (since im heavy in to trials with the moto and bicycle). could you PM me with some of the most important things you did to it?

i might have to put my original can in instead of my extremely hot 17T that i tear around with right now. now i just need the friction plates for the rear diff, kinds stripped out the ball cups and the plates. know the best place to find the plates that has reasonable price and shipping to the USA?

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GGTrialer - I didn't have to cut the shell at all. The Manta Ray shock towers give much more suspension travel, but because they are taller, the body must be mounted higher. I chose to glue the original body posts into the Manta Ray towers, although there may be other options.

Because the TA01 top and bottom arms are not of equal length, the camber angle becomes greater as the suspension is compressed. This causes the top of the wheel to move inwards, so it actually slides neatly under the arch without fouling the body at all (I found in stock trim the wheels fouled a lot).

I have since dismantled my F150 to make something else, but I have a spare TA01 chassis and might rebuild the F150 again, since I loved its looks so much.

If you're into trialing then I highly recommend a crawler motor - I use the Novak Fifty-Five - it runs off a stock speedo, gives massive runtimes and provides buckets of torque. I was using cut BFGs when I last used the F150; they're not the best tyres for crawling, but they look good and gave enough grip for the motor to snap a driveshaft on its last outing. I'm now using universals!

:blink:

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