A model I'd love Tamiya to make

[mongoose1983]

Here's something I'd love to build and run as a Tamiya RC kit:

This is a 1966 International tractor.

I suppose you guys aren't that keen on old tractors. Am I wrong?

You all have a great Sunday!

[Grastens]

To me, tractors have been 'special-interest' models - I would not buy one if I wanted an RC car, but if I wanted something different.

Looking at it, I wonder if it would be along the lines of the 3-speeds in that it becomes part of a product line that features certain scale mechanics.

[XV Pilot]

Given Tamiya's habit of re-using as many existing parts as possible, I would imagine such a model (if ever made) would feature chassis rails from a High-lift, Grasshopper front wheels & tyres, perhaps a TLT rear axle to keep the width down, and Brokeback as a driver. Quite a few other existing parts would probably also be re-purposed.

If you were a Tamiya designer with an extensive parts bin to raid, what would you use to create such a model?

[OldSchoolRunner]

Here's something I'd love to build and run as a Tamiya RC kit:

This is a 1966 International tractor.

I suppose you guys aren't that keen on old tractors. Am I wrong?

You all have a great Sunday!

Do you own one of these? What is the interest in this thing?

OSR

[beefmuffin]

If you were a Tamiya designer with an extensive parts bin to raid, what would you use to create such a model?

i can imagine this being build on a frog chassis, tilted up in the back on bruiser wheels/tires and grasshopper/frog front wheels, using a brat-style body mount in front to support a body that stays level despite the tilt in the chassis. of course, the problem with the frog chassis is that the motor sticks out from the side of the gearbox. on way to get around this would be to either make a custom gearbox that accepts a motor mounted forward of the gearbox and centrally on the chassis that uses a bevel-style pinion. or maybe repurpose a front hotshot or thundershot gearbox.

[Grumpy pants]

That's a very cool tractor, not my usual thing..but still very nice.

Didn't Lamborghini start out by making tractors?

[bromvw]

That's a very cool tractor, not my usual thing..but still very nice.

Didn't Lamborghini start out by making tractors?

They did indeed and if you have ever driven a Lambo you'd know that the gearbox seems to have being lifted out of a tractor

[MadInventor]

Here's something I'd love to build and run as a Tamiya RC kit:

I suppose you guys aren't that keen on old tractors. Am I wrong?

You all have a great Sunday!

Are you kidding ? I've been dropping very unsubtle hints on here for the last couple of years I'd really like to see one of these as a running scale model from tamiya:

6 cylinder County tractor, 4wd using 1 rear diff and dual drive shafts to the front. Ideal candidate for a niche market like the big rigs / tanks.

Loading a massive tree trunk onto a lorry using 2 tractors:

They tend to get modified and beaten up a lot doing forestry work in the UK, so a lot of oppurtunities for modifications and weathering to a basic model.

Failing that, how about one of these. Articulated in the middle for steering, so could have super strong axles as no steering hubs required on the ends of the axles. The rear axle has no suspension, so the gearbox could be fitted in the rear of the model, driving the rear axle directly (as in the clod), with an output shaft running to the front to drive the front axle. This gives super strong transmission to the back wheels with not UJs or bevel gears to chew, for towing / dragging things, and then a drive shaft goes straight to the front axle through bevel gears. The front suspension is simply the front axle floating on a pivot, as in a tractor, so a really simple model to design and build. I'd want one with a working front blade and rear grapple as well though.

Tamiya already have the tires done in the form of the juggernaut 2 tires, just need the rest of it now. Please don't make me add this to the list of scratch builds I need to do Mr T , it will take me years ......

[mr crispy]

Nah if they released that tractor it would be on a DT02 chassis

[XV Pilot]

Looking at the general proportions, you could build a good-looking (albeit highly mechanically inaccurate) version of one of these based on a WR02 chassis. I was contemplating a scratchbuild body for my WR02 based on a JCB Fastrac, which has a layout not entirely dissimilar to this vehicle.

I don't see the DT02 chassis working very well for such a vehicle, but for something slightly closer to mechanical reality (but still some way off in terms of driveline) you could base it on a pair of DT01 gearboxes joined nose-to-nose with a pivot. This would give you the solid axles front and rear, and the twin motor arrangement would simplify the centre pivot considerably.

I think that, certainly under current management, Tamiya are more likely to release such models if they can be sold cheaper and in larger numbers - I don't see them bringing out an all-new model with the complexity and price of the Bruiser any time soon for example. Even something in the High-lift price bracket may be too much to hope for. But given that they had the resolve to bring the quirky Farm King to market, and the Unimog has been around for a while now on the CR01, CC01 and now Wheelie chassis, maybe we will see another agricultural vehicle released in the not-terribly-distant future!

[beefmuffin]

Looking at the general proportions, you could build a good-looking (albeit highly mechanically inaccurate) version of one of these based on a WR02 chassis. Or for something slightly closer to mechanical reality (but still some way off in terms of driveline) base it on a pair of DT01 gearboxes joined nose-to-nose with a pivot.

i don't think tamiya would make something like this - with the pivot - in a million years! for one you'd need some crazy high torque servos to reliably steer the whole front half of the chassis, and if you try to steer without moving forward the servos would just burn out trying to drag the front wheels sideways or you'd get a fish-like wriggling motion with the front-back. then in terms of transmitting drive from the back to the front you'd need some sort of cable-driven setup so that the driveline could bend at the pivot. more realistically this would require a two motor setup with independent gearboxes. but as far as tamiya making this, the amount of specific engineering required to make this work just wouldn't match up with the very limited appeal to only a small cross-section of tamiya fans. tamiya as we know likes to reuse as much engineering across platforms as possible...or at least custom engineer something they think will have broad appeal. the only possible uses for this sort of pivot chassis are this industrial vehicle and maybe an accordion-style bus. it think it's much more likely that tamiya would do something like erich's original suggestion... but it would be a shame to just slap a body onto the top of a completely incompatible chassis like they did with the farm king. it's basically a joke. why not just put a boot or a snail on top of a WR-02 chassis and call it a day? this is the problem i think erich was alluding to with regard to the present state of tamiya design. just coming up with new bodies to slap on the same chassis isn't why we all got into tamiyas in the first place. they need to get back to the idea of the chassis being integral to the whole design and not just a table with wheels for holding decorations. they have all of their old chassis that have been re-re'd to work with in new ways. why not try something new with the ORV chassis, or even the SRB or 3-speed chassis? they need an apollo-13 style engineering pow-wow and say: "engineers, here are our old chassis designs - make something new out of them."

[MadInventor]

i don't think tamiya would make something like this - with the pivot - in a million years! for one you'd need some crazy high torque servos to reliably steer the whole front half of the chassis, and if you try to steer without moving forward the servos would just burn out trying to drag the front wheels sideways or you'd get a fish-like wriggling motion with the front-back. then in terms of transmitting drive from the back to the front you'd need some sort of cable-driven setup so that the driveline could bend at the pivot. more realistically this would require a two motor setup with independent gearboxes. but as far as tamiya making this, the amount of specific engineering required to make this work just wouldn't match up with the very limited appeal to only a small cross-section of tamiya fans. tamiya as we know likes to reuse as much engineering across platforms as possible...or at least custom engineer something they think will have broad appeal. the only possible uses for this sort of pivot chassis are this industrial vehicle and maybe an accordion-style bus. it think it's much more likely that tamiya would do something like erich's original suggestion... but it would be a shame to just slap a body onto the top of a completely incompatible chassis like they did with the farm king. it's basically a joke. why not just put a boot or a snail on top of a WR-02 chassis and call it a day? this is the problem i think erich was alluding to with regard to the present state of tamiya design. just coming up with new bodies to slap on the same chassis isn't why we all got into tamiyas in the first place. they need to get back to the idea of the chassis being integral to the whole design and not just a table with wheels for holding decorations. they have all of their old chassis that have been re-re'd to work with in new ways. why not try something new with the ORV chassis, or even the SRB or 3-speed chassis? they need an apollo-13 style engineering pow-wow and say: "engineers, here are our old chassis designs - make something new out of them."

I think the articulated chassis design is quite feasible. For transmission I'd use TXT-1 axles. Gearbox in the rear or where the engine is up front . To get the drive through the pivot in the centre you just need to use a UJ, and get the centre of the UJ pivot to line up with the centre pivot of the chassis. Not difficult as lego have done it with several of their technical lego articulated loader kits.

For the steering, forget servos, as you say, they are not powerful enough. The solution is to use screwjacks (Like hydraulic rams, but work with a threaded shaft forcing the ram in and out) connected to a 380 or 540 motor through a epicyclic reduction gearbox (Think Model Flight Accessories offerings )to minimise space used. In real life these things do not steer quickly, so the speed of the steering does not have to be instant(ish) like we are used to with most RC models.

Where you said about the chassis being integral to a design, you don't get more intergal to a design and different from the norm than this, which is exactly why I think it would appeal to people. Trying something new with the ORV or SRB chassis /3 speed chassis to me is still just chucking a body on something that's already been done, and (sacrelige), none of those 3 chassis have ever appealed to me (ORV and SRB have too many design flaws)

Having said all that, I think you're right that we haven't got a cat in hells chance of seeing T make one.

[mongoose1983]

I wasn't expecting such amount of controversy regarding a tractor here, haha.

Anyway, two or three years ago I had some extra parts and planned to do a scale version of a 70's Puller. Unfortunately, as usual I had to sell the extra parts I had to fund the restoration of other Tamiya models. For basics, I wanted to use an old grasshopper chassis, with its stock axle a bit narrowed, and a Parma Hemi scale motor. I had this tin can body shell in my mind and these are the tires I was going to mix with front CRP plate wheels and chrome Black Foot wheels:

Rear tires (these are somewhat taller, softer, and wider than stock Bruiser tires)

Front tires (about the same size Grasshopper's, they look just like front tractor tires):

Basically, I wanted to replicate in a way the Mod Tractor that Lesney/Matchbox released for their 70's SuperFast and Super Kings line of scale vehicles:

What do you think? Good or bad idea?

[MadInventor]

I wasn't expecting such amount of controversy regarding a tractor here, haha.

Anyway, two or three years ago I had some extra parts and planned to do a scale version of a 70's Puller. Unfortunately, as usual I had to sell the extra parts I had to fund the restoration of other Tamiya models. For basics, I wanted to use an old grasshopper chassis, with its stock axle a bit narrowed, and a Parma Hemi scale motor. I had this tin can body shell in my mind and these are the tires I was going to mix with front CRP plate wheels and chrome Black Foot wheels:

Rear tires (these are somewhat taller, softer, and wider than stock Bruiser tires)

Front tires (about the same size Grasshopper's, they look just like front tractor tires):

Basically, I wanted to replicate in a way the Mod Tractor that Lesney/Matchbox released for their 70's SuperFast and Super Kings line of scale vehicles:

What do you think? Good or bad idea?

#

Don't like the pink

Gear ratio in the grasshopper doesn't lend itself to putting a lot of power through big tyres. A mad bull box would give a better ratio and be tougher for more power, but you still need to get around the fact that the chassis isn't very scale for the idea, and tractors had a solid front axle.

[GregM]

Carson offers such a tractor:

[bromvw]

Carson offers such a tractor:

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Very Nice - i belive they also do a range of impliments and trailers ?

[GregM]

They do lots of stuff like radio controlled unimogs, fork lifts, tractors and construction vehicles:

http://www.carson-modelsport.com/en/products/truckmodels.htm

I'm not sure if they are toy-grade or hobby-grade, although as far as I know these models are rather on the expensive side and most use proper hobby grade radio gear.

Most are RTR, but there are also some kits like this track loader:

http://www.carson-modelsport.com/en/products/truckmodels/constructionvehicles/produktdetails.htm?sArtNr=500907111

Beware though, the English language version of the Carson Modelsport website and printed catalogue is written... amusingly. If I were them, I would hire a proper translator.