Truck of Many Wheels: G6-01 King Blackfoot

[Mad Ax 9313]

Next I added some black 1mm styrene to form a block shape

Fit is good and hides the air gap

well, kinda.  I could have measured better here, but I anticipated the block being way too big and needing chopping down, not sizing up.

Added some square section offcuts inside to add robustness

[Mad Ax 9313]

Then glued on some angled section to hide more air gap.  Also Dremel'd around the shock tops, although I wish I hadn't as it wasn't lined up quite right and looks daft.

I also figured it needed a bumper.  I went rummaging through my spares drawer and found the stock stinger bumper from my SCX10 G6 Edition

Amazingly, the G6-01 doesn't have the same bumper attachment, despite having almost the same name as the SCX10 G6 Edition.  So I had to get creative with the drill press

Also some Dremelling occurred around the edge of the bumper as it was catching the wheels on full lock.

[Mad Ax 9313]

Final thing looks pretty epic, I think

[Mad Ax 9313]

Still to do:

With so much styrene on this truck already, it seems a shame not to go the full pig and fit an interior.  So at some point I'll do that.

Also it makes sense to add lights, at least up front - so that's another little thing to think about

Then there's the untidy back end.  I have some plans to add a 'feature' back there

I also started to cut up some rubber sheet to make a load bay cover, but I'm not sure if I'll continue with that.

I would like a custom roll bar - I don't want the standard KBF bar, I think the shape of the truck with the many wheel image would suit a full-length bar, so I'll have to think about making something.

Finally a lot of bits need painting in black - the main body is fine but all the underspray underneath looks a bit rubbish.

[Frog Jumper 3661]

You need to fit a 1/10 scale hot tub in the bed...

 

 

[Mad Ax 9313]

After having something of a disaster with the Grand Hauler tipper truck and something of a disaster with the CFX-W, I figured I wanted to do something that might not go entirely wrong.  So I dragged the Truck of Many Wheels off its resting place on the shelf and glued on the tailpipes that I'd painted last week.

Hopefully these won't get too bashed about during running as the truck doesn't really get raced alongside other cars and it has never backflipped.

Made from Evergreen styrene tube, sprayed with satin black then topped with chrome effect.  I didn't bother to tidy the tubes up much as they are only a small part but they look quite bad in the closeup photos - chrome paint really brings out all the defects  

[Mad Ax 9313]

I had a spare evening before Christmas so I wired up a lighting kit for the Truck of Many Wheels.  My daughter loves to chase it around the garden but this time of year it's often dark before I've got time to go play, so I figured some lights would be worth adding.  The SCX10 bumper has space for 5mm LEDs as well as the 5mm LEDs in the headlights.  I didn't bother with taillights here, although maybe I'll add some later once I've figured out what to do with the back end.

My camera battery was flat at the time so I didn't get any photos, but you can imagine what my studio looked like with the solder station stretching off the too-distant plug socket and the parts boxes overflowing with LEDs and resistors and connector pins sitting open on the desk and rolls of wire getting tangled up with everything.  Here's some pics of the finished, installed product:

[Mad Ax 9313]

After that I decided to finish my work in closing off the underbody space so it doesn't look so lame (also so it gets less splashing inside the screen).  First I cut out a piece of 0.5mm plasticard and trimmed it to fit behind the mock engine cover.

Then I figured, if I'm going to run all these competition trucks, I should probably employ some drivers to drive them for me.  Fortunately I knew a guy who was briefly a pro racer in a Buggy Champ re-release, but he lost his ride in a major crash that destroyed the car and has been languishing in a dull cubicle job ever since.  He was really excited to be offered the chance to drive for me again, so he came straight over for a fitting.

So I had to get busy making a floorpan for him to sit on.

I glued it in with hot glue, which might not be entirely NHRA-legal but if I spray over the glue so it looks like welds it'll probably pass tech.

[Mad Ax 9313]

After that he jumped right in to work out the seating position.  This is a vintage race truck based on a heavily-modified factory chassis, so the left-hand driving position is retained (unlike the central position of later tubular race trucks).  He's a competitive guy, so he insisted on the seat being set way back for weight distribution and angled slightly to the centre.

Once we had his position worked out, I fitted the firewall.

And here he is - strapped in and ready to go!  There's no racing in these parts for who knows how long, but let's hope we can get some practice and demonstration runs in to keep him interested.

I still need to work out what to do about the tubular headers but I've got some new tools arriving Sunday to hopefully help with that.  Then I need to get some sponsors sorted out in time for the summer season so this rig can be properly decorated.

Watch this space!

[Aerobert 2144]

Cool Truck and fun to read. Will stay tuned.😎

[Mad Ax 9313]

After tidying away all my Revival stuff from last week and clearing down the workbench, I thought I'd make the most of the fact that I don't actually have any strict RC deadlines right now, so I grabbed the old Truck of Many Wheels to give it some more updates.

The first thing that was annoying me was the lead for the headlights.  It's always the same with headlight installs - make the lead long enough that it's convenient, and it gets in the way of wheels and transmissions.  Make it short enough to not be in the way and it's impossible to plug it in when putting the shell on.  So I thought I'd try to make some instant contacts on the front body posts.

I started with these springs.  I think they're from a Grasshopper, cut down.

The body fits and is firmly sprung over the springs.

[Mad Ax 9313]

Next trick was to solder on some wires, and also clamp and solder the open bottom of the spring so it doesn't wind around the R-clip.

getting creative with clamps

other side

I had some 4mm stainless washers that were a good fit, my intention had been to solder the wire onto the edge, but I just couldn't get the solder to take.  I may have the wrong kind of flux as I think it should be possible to solder to stainless steel.  Instead I wound the wire around the washer and soldered it in place.

[Mad Ax 9313]

I used some tyre glue to stick the washers to the inside of the body

but I had a real hard time getting the body on.  It turns out that little bit of space taken up by the wire wind on the washer makes it too small to go over the posts.  I tried a few things but ultimately had to give up - I either need to get some bigger washers, or some copper washers that I can solder to easier.

Still, it works in theory at least:

[Mad Ax 9313]

After that debacle, I had a couple of hop-ups to install.  Used CVA dampers and steering turnbuckles.

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the four dampers without springs are the correct size and the others are the smaller body (I think they came from an M03).  I didn't notice this to begin with but it's OK as I had another set of the correctly-sized dampers sitting in my shocks box built and ready to fit.

Here is one such damper side-by-side with the stock friction damper.  At this point I had already opened the damper to remove the enormous spacers from inside (I'm not sure what these were previously installed on but whatever it was didn't have a lot of suspension travel).

The first two dampers I opened had the 3-hole piston in place, so I refilled them with fresh yellow (soft) oil, fitted the heavy springs from the kit and put them on the front of the chassis using ball studs.  Then I got four fresh, hardly-used (maybe even never-used) dampers from the shocks box, but they had the 1-hole piston in place which felt far to stiff, so I opened them up, drained the immaculate yellow oil into the bin, spent a short age ineffectually stabbing at the e-clips with two screwdrivers and finally had 3 out of the 4 rebuilt with 3-hole pistons and new yellow oil.

It was at this point that I noticed how soft the yellow + 3-hole combo actually is, and how stiff the stock G6-01 springs are.  Basically it was like not having dampers at all.  That would never do.

So everything came off, this time the oil got drained into an empty yellow oil bottle (I actually emptied one during this process), and rebuilt again with the 1-hole pistons that were on there in the first place.

Only interesting thing to note here is one of the older dampers (the ones already installed with the 3-hole pistons) had a piece of bent wire to hold the piston on.

These must have come from an older car that I got in a trade.

[Mad Ax 9313]

Et voila.

I used ball studs front and rear, and for the middle lower mount.  The upper mount is difficult to get to with the car assembled (what's with those screws that look like they bolt the upper mount against the battery tray when in fact that all seems to be one piece..?) so I used a long self-tapper with a brass sleeve over it.

Sticking with the stock springs, it seemed to balance best if I used a medium-large collar on the middle spring set and no collars front or rear.  That gave a bit of sag when lowered onto its wheels, although I might need to tune that (perhaps opting for thinner spacers spread across all 6 shocks) once I can run it in anger.  Possibly having more preload in the middle would cause the truck to squat under power-on and dive under braking.  I can see suspension dynamics getting a bit tricky when you've got another set of wheels involved!

[Mad Ax 9313]

After that I started on the official Tamiya turnbuckle hop-up.  These aren't essential by any stretch but I saw them while checking out a big order some time ago (I forget when exactly) and decided to throw them into the basket to sweeten the postage deal.  Besides, it's nice to be able to dial in some toe out without having to pop the balljoints off.

I didn't bother to add any boring photos of turnbuckle assembly, but I captured this one showing the state of my workshop after I slipped trying to install one of the turnbuckles and it pinged across the workbench and disappeared.

I saw it go in this kinda direction. I pulled out the wheeled unit (it's actually a serving trolley from an airliner, I inherited it from my father-in-law, where he got it from is anyone's guess) because I thought it had gone behind it

Eventually, after taking some stuff out of the trolley, I spotted it

[Mad Ax 9313]

And finally, installed:

I took the bare chassis out to dial in the steering and check the suspension, and I thought it went pretty well.  I didn't expect to notice much difference with the oil shocks, given the wheels are already pretty bouncy and heavy and the truck isn't the lightest either, but it actually felt much more planted.  It would bounce over big obstacles like the 2x4 plank that makes the brace on the bottom of the swing set and also a pretty good low-speed kicker jump for monster trucks, land square and drive on instead of bouncing a second time.  Transitioning between grass and patio it was completely planted.  I'll withhold full judgement until I've been out on some proper big terrain, but it certainly feels like a much more solid handler now.

[taffer 948]

On my g6-01 runner I haver trf springs which are softer than stock and under turning it still lifts the rear wheel, I'm thinking of diff putty to lock up the rear slightly if I ever take it apart in the future......

[Mad Ax 9313]

@taffer I was thinking exactly the same thing.  Generally traction is great with 6 wheels on the ground but on a grippy surface it'll lift a wheel and spin.  I didn't want to take the entire thing apart yesterday, but it's on my potential list for another day.  It will also help the garden running where it sometimes gets hung up on long grass.

The CVAs in their non-spacer arrangement are very slightly longer than the stock shocks.  On full extension the lower collars touch the lower arms, so that's about the limit of downward travel without fitting longer eyes, but that would probably limit upward travel which is important for jumping (or more specifically, absorbing the landings afterwards!)  There is probably something in the official G6-01 hop-up shock instructions about adding a small spacer to stop the collars touching the arms.

The stock springs are surprisingly stiff but then again it's a heavy rig, and there is some sag when I put it on the table.  I'm not sure I'd want to go much softer than it already is, at least for bashing.

[Mad Ax 9313]

The next thing on my List Of Things To Do was make a roll bar.  I've been thinking of adding a roll bar to this truck for ages but I felt the standard bar didn't work well given the chunky look of the truck and the unconventional profile.  But fabricating something was never going to be easy, especially for someone like me who isn't really very good at plastic once things get technical.

Here's a standard roll bar that I found in my Scale Stuff drawer.  At first I thought it was from a Landfreeder because it has the crazy front light assembly, but the Landfreeder parts are chromed.  The Desert Fielder has non-chromed parts but doesn't have a roll bar, maybe the part is included on the tree anyway?  Not sure, if must have come from something NIB...

It sort of fits if squoze in the right direction.

This poor part has been in the original plastic packing for however many years it is since I bought whatever car it came with.  It's now been out of the pack for 20 minutes and already I've taken a hacksaw to it.

This here is Evergreen 232 round tube.  It's a tight fit over the stub of rollbar that I left.

[Mad Ax 9313]

Other end cut off and temporarily put in place with a long grub screw to locate it into the standard holes for the rear tailgate (which I don't have - long story...)

This is also a tight fit into the tube, although I feel I should have left a little bit more plastic on this part as it doesn't go in very far and doesn't leave much to glue to.

To get the end to fit neatly I had to grind out the end of the plastic tube with a Dremel attachment.  I used a small pointy grinding stone, which will do plastic quite nicely if the RPM is low enough.

There

[Mad Ax 9313]

I had put some plastic sheet over where the tailgate mount screw hole goes, which would be a pain getting a screw in, so I used my Dremel attachment to make an access hole.

For some reason I can't stop looking at this photo

No turning back now

Yeah!

[Mad Ax 9313]

Even tubes as fat as that would need a crossbar on a 1:1 installation, so here is such a thing

I use a mix of Humbrol glue-in-a-squeezy-tube to get started, as it stays in place and helps the parts to stick, once it's started to cure I dab around with Tamiya cement to help melt the plastics together.  I get the feeling I'll need a stronger solvent to make these joins hard enough for bashing.

[Mad Ax 9313]

Obviously there's a fair bit more work to do here and I'm going to have to find a way of gusseting at least the lower mounts, as I don't think there's enough material to get a good strong glue bond.  IME Tamiya parts, despite being labelled as ABS, don't tend to glue well.  I don't know much about ABS but I guess they're a harder, more resilient form than the Evergreen, Plastruct etc.  but at least this was showing signs of dissolving, with the black starting to leach into the white.

I'm going to leave this a week to properly cure before attempting to unscrew the bolts and remove for gusseting and finishing, but for now I'm pretty pleased with it.

[Mad Ax 9313]

Belated update!

It was 14th August when I briefly came back to the Truck of Many Wheels rollcage.  The glued product felt quite sturdy and didn't fall apart when I picked it up, which is probably a Good Thing, but ultimately it looked like it had some weak areas, along with some areas that just don't look very nice