Sand scorcher lifted BUS -1973 T2 baywindow

[Bnkolate 14]

Hi there,

I decided to build a replica of my VW bus, a 1973 lifted type2 bay window (with a water cooled v6 engine ) into a RC model.

I purchased a reedition 2010 Sand scorcher and started the build couple month ago,

I thought it would be all about the details, trying to replicate all the work that went into my original bus into a 1/10 scale version, using a mix of old models parts, 3D printed parts and so on... 

This is where things started to be a little more tricky than I thought, the only body I could find online of a type 2 bus 1/10 (the one with the square front, not with the V front) is an ABS Body and a Lexan body found on eBay that are basically vacuum molded and lack a lot of details as a result .

Second huge detail is the wheel spacing, the bus front to back wheel distance Of the bus body is a lot smaller than the sand scorcher wheel distance... this is when I decided to cut the bottom plate and reduce the overall size of my Sand scorcher body :/ 

In this thread i’ll Show you all the steps of my work in progress, this is far from being done but i’m Planning on posting regular updates of my built . 

Hopefully this will be a good one . Here are some pictures of my (real) Bus , you can find more here

http://www.instagram.com/pacifist_northwest

. Let’s see how close I can get wish me luck. 

 

[Bnkolate 14]

Step 1: building the sand scorcher 

This part was all fun, to be honest the last tamiya model I built was 17 years ago , a ford escort 4x4 (I still have it, will post pix later) 

building the scorcher is pretty straight forward, I love the quality of the built , metal parts, feel solid and strong . 

 

[Bnkolate 14]

Step 2: when you realize the bus body is too short for the sand scorcher bottom plate ..

As you can see in the picture , the bus body (distance front to back wheel) is shorter than the original scorcher... 2 ways to deal with it, 3D print a new plate or cut and re-drill  the plate .. let’s cut it!

using a metal scissor , curing the plate was easy, but this is where things started to get messy ..

 

drilling the mounting hole back in place 

mounting back the plate

-the original box barely fit in there and I made sure the steering component will have free range of motion .(notice the plastic box is really close to the steering component ) I basically got rid of the extra front box )

 

et voilà , wheel distance fits the new body... now will everything fit , works well.. not sure   time to experiment .

 

[Bnkolate 14]

By the way, is it the right part of the forum to post this kind of build ?? 

[ThunderDragonCy 2368]

On 3/5/2019 at 8:24 PM, Bnkolate said:

By the way, is it the right part of the forum to post this kind of build ?? 

Might suit the Builds forum a little better. I doubt this forum gets much traffic. Message the moderator and ask for it to be moved.

[Bnkolate 14]

Step 3: Houston we are running out of space for components ..

well, after all that cutting etc , I wanted to make sure things will fit inside, the main issue was the steering component geometry, a pretty long rod that would basically push the directional servo to the back of the box, eating up most of the space for battery , receiver etc .. 

this is where I decided to place the servo elsewhere, could it fit between the front wheels , mmmh yeah indeed, very thought but why not . This is when I decided to get rid of the original direction mechanism and build a new one .

Then i took the front part of the box and rotated it 90 degree to protect the servo, things start to make sense (in my opinion) now I need to secure all that and make sure there is clearance for everything, it’s going to be tight .

A part of the box had to go to leave some space for the rods , oh well this is going to Be interesting  

[Bnkolate 14]

Step 4 -how will the body attach to the frame ??!

this is where things start to get messy, sorry about destroying the beetle body but I needed to come up with a plan and “recycle most of the body to make this plan possible . 

I started to cut the body to see how the wheel arches will be placed 

in the following picture you can clearly see the size difference between the original beetle body and the new chassis .

In order to fit the bus body around the wheel arches, some necessary trimming is achieved 

 

my goal is to reuse the wheels arches combined with wheels arches guards to define the final placement of the bus body . 

i used a translucent shell to make sure everything will fit correctly for the rest of the build, i’m Keeping the ABS one on the side to make the final body . 

This allows me to mark, see the fit, imagine the mounting points etc 

things start to take shape ... still don’t know how I will fix the bus body to the plate though  

[Kevin_Mc 283]

Your 1:1 is an absolute beauty - i’ve always prefered the bay windows and particularly the T3s over the splitties. Maybe i’m a philistine though. 

This is going to look great when it’s done. I’m subscribed

[TwistedxSlayer 635]

Crumbs. I've got to the end of the thread. Gutted about this. Loving what has been done so far.