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Nothing special here - just another Mad Ax project thread, which some thoughts, musings, insights and ramblings about scalers, GMade, pandemics and life in general.  This thread might get way more interesting in the future but right now it's just a handful of photos and a few things that might be worth knowing if you're thinking of getting a scale rig in this sector.  Although the BOM is now a few years old and the chassis had been updated, so possibly this thread is too late to be of use to anyone.

Well, who cares?  Read on.

I've been wanting a BOM ever since they came out.  For a long time I refused to look at the new Eastern breeds, but when the BOM appeared I immediately fell in love with the chunky body, aggressive half-cage and chunky tyres.  I even loved the boxart.  In fact I loved both box arts - there are two 'factory' schemes, both red, one with a white panel down the side and one with some white stripes.

Last autumn I figured it was time for a new dedicated scale rig.  I'd been running my SCX10 G6 edition for years and although it was still running well, it was starting to feel a bit tired.  Also my updates to make it into a more scale-looking rig with the Proline Cherokee body had compromised its true climbing potential a little, and to be honest, I was just looking for excuses to buy something new.  I really loved the look of the BOM, it seemed to tick every box, I wanted something to be a dedicated rock-climbing truck with loads of articulation and a realistic but aggressively-modified body, and so I bought...  An MST CFX-W.

OK, it was a bit of an impulse, after hovering my finger over the BIN button for so long, to switch at the very last moment and buy the CFX-W instead.  I just happened to find one in Europe and it had the right body too - the J45C Land Cruiser clone.  And so last year's scaler build (mostly undertaken as we went into our first winter lockdown) was with the MST.  I even got the opportunity to get it muddy during a brief window of non-locked-down-ness before Christmas, before festive excess and emerging variants put is back into a third lockdown.

But the BOM never left me alone, I was still in love with its looks, and capable as the MST was, I still wanted to have it in my fleet.  I figured it would probably remain a distant dream, something to want but never to have.

And then a couple of weeks ago I got a message to tell that my daughter and I had been in contact with a confirmed covid case, and we had to spend 10 days at home in case we were contagious.  That meant I needed to take some time off work, but I couldn't go out and enjoy the summer weather or take my daughter anywhere interesting, so I'd have to find plenty of things to keep us occupied at home.  Now, I already have plenty of projects, but most of them require the workshop, which isn't really child friendly, at least not for a pre-schooler.  If my daughter behaves well during the day then she gets a bit of iPad time before dinner, and building a kit is a great way to spend that time.  I can sit next to her, be on hand to help with her games and try to add some context to them, involve her in conversation and show her what I'm working on, but still do something I want to do.

So, before I could stop myself, I'd hit the Buy button (with expedited delivery), and Modelsport got busy boxing up my latest purchase.

It arrived nice and early on Friday morning, but as chance would have it, my wife also got pinged by the Test & Trace app and had to isolate with us, so she handled the childcare, which freed me up to do some actual paid work, so it would be Saturday before I got around to building the kit.

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Nice, looking forward to seeing what you do with this. I've had one for a few years, but it's not been out much. It has been pretty tough though, only wing mirrors being broken while being rampaged through a forest by 6 & 8 year olds. Enjoy the build :)

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First impressions:

It's a big old box full of plastic bags.  Yep, this is modern RC kit building.  Not cardboard dividers, no blister packs, no separate wrapping for the tyres.  Everything bagged up and stuffed inside wherever they'll fit.  This is a good thing, I guess - less space means more boxes in a container which means less overall shipping and warehousing.  I'm not entirely sure it needs so many heavy plastic bags though, Tamiya use a much lighter plastic around their trees and much less packaging around their screw bags.

It's really big.  I mean, more 1:8 than 1:10.  One of the main attraction points for the BOM is its that F150-inspired body, which will fit really nicely in my collection of Ford trucks.  It really just needs a Ford badge on the grill.  But it's not going to look quite right sitting on the shelf next to my Landfreeders, because it's so much bigger.  But this isn't actually a problem - the full-size 1.9 tyres are dwarfed a little by the body, so although it's got just as much tyre as my other scale rigs, it doesn't look so much like a monster truck.  Perhaps this is why the BOM always looked so good in pictures - it seems more in scale with its own wheels.

The shell is thin.  This was a surprise, especially after building the CFX-W last year.  While there were some thinner areas around the J45C's steps, it was mostly a solid and chunky body.  The GMade body is thin enough where the arch extension meets the door sill that it's already got some flex marks from transit.  I'm not sure how long it will last.  Maybe the flexibility will help on the trails, but I have a feeling it will bend and split over time.  Oh well, time will tell, I guess.

There's a lot of plastic bags.  No, I mean, a lot.  I know I said this once already, but it's such a big point, I thought I'd mention it again.  Tamiya bag up their hardware into screw bags for a set of steps.  GMade bag up their hardware by size.  So, all the 3x10mm round-head screws are in one bag, all the 3x12mm rouund-head screws are in another.  Oh, and all the 3x10mm wrench head screws are in another, and the 3x10mm countersunks are in another.  All the 3mm e-clips are in one bag, the 4mm e-clips are in another bag.  The single 3x4mm grub screw for the pinion has a bag all of its own, the 3x3mm grubs get another bag.  There are a few single screws that have their own bag.  I get that this is nice for locating and identifying things - sometimes Tamiya will but 3x10 and 3x12 in the same screw bag and even after all these years I'll still mix them up if I'm not paying attention.  But with so many different screws, nuts, washers, bolts, clips, grubs and pins, there's literally tens of little plastic bags kicking around.  Then sensible thing would be to empty them all into parts trays and put labels on them, but I don't have nearly enough parts trays for that.  So I end up on the sofa surrounded by little bags that have been carefully cut so as to (hopefully) stop the contents tipping out and going between the cushions (plus all the hardware is black, so it's real hard to see on my brown sofa and purple carpet).

I don't tend to do a lot of build photos (I'm not trying to compete with step-by-step build threads, nobody wants to see the inside of my house at that resolution) but I thought I'd capture a few key elements as I was going about it.

First up is the body.  I spent a few days thinking about paint schemes, from multi-coloured comp rig designs to single-colour utilitarian style - I've been watching Katla on Netflix and it has some really cool Icelandic trucks, including a 6x6 F150 in plain silver/grey.  The BOM would look great in silver, grey or even gunmetal, especially with a flat utility tray on the back instead of the cage, but in the end I found myself drawn so much to boxart that I just had to go with red.

I skipped the Tamiya red - I've actually gone off Tamiya colours a lot recently, some of the newer ones are good but a lot of their basic colours really are just that - there's no life to the colour.  If you paint a car red, it might as well be the same red you get on a plastic toy.  Tamiya's base yellow is sickly and weak no matter what it's backed with, and their white makes everything look like a washing machine.  There's a reason full-size cars don't use primary colours, which in turn is the reason why there's such a huge range of names for car colours: burnt umber, tahiti blue, arden blue, flame red.  Whites are either creamy (like Ford's classic Diamond White) or have some blue or pearl in them so they don't look like appliances.

With that in mind, I grabbed down a tin of Fire Red that's been sat on the shelf for so long I can't even remember when I got it.  Not in this house, that's for sure, and I've been here since 2013.  But the nozzle was clean, so I guess I never used it before.  I did some test-sprays on some scrap lexan, including backing it with silver, gold and black.  Silver and gold came out nice with a subtle warm orange to the final colour, but since I wanted to apply the white decals I figured the cooler finish from the silver backing would work better.

As usual the camera doesn't really capture the colours perfectly - the final shell has a bit more depth and doesn't look so much like a plastic toy.

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Then I employed my favourite trick of cutting off the overspray film to hit the arches with some satin black automotive paint, which sticks really well to lexan.  This gives a neat rubbery finish just like a real arch extension.

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On Sunday 18th, in the middle of what we in the UK call a heatwave (it was like 31* most of the day), I did something I never, ever do.  I had spent most of the day working on my Revival runners and finding yet more problems to fix (see other thread updates coming later this week for details), and with that done, or rather put to one side while parts orders arrived, I started building the BOM on my workbench.

Normally I reserve these kinds of box builds for those lazy days in the house with my daughter, but it was too hot to spend time inside, I had the workshop doors wide open to get some air flowing but I was shaded from the sun inside, the kids were playing in the gardens opposite and generally it was really nice to be away from the house, pleasantly warm and not sitting in the sofa position for a change.  So, I unpacked the endless GMade parts bags and got to work on the transmission and chassis.

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It's a neat design with some curious features.  GMade opted not to go for the full-up-front motor installation of some rivals (SCX10 III and CFX-W spring to mind), instead putting the battery tray there.  But in a nod to scale realism, they didn't plonk the motor right where the seats are supposed to be either.  Also the servo-on-chassis design is a cool feature usually reserved for the less-capable scale realistic rigs, this will be my first factory servo-on-chassis build.  In this shot you see the battery tray and transmission.  The offset drive flanges are another neat feature, as is the counter-rotating transmission - front and rear propshafts rotate in opposite directions, which is supposed to reduce torque twist, and will be a very welcome feature if it works.

The modular design is strange, but works well.  Lots of different parts all come together in unexpected ways to form a rigid chassis.  It's an inspired design, but a teardown could be a lengthy job.

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This underslung box is nicely detailed to look like the transmission sump on a full-size truck, but it's empty.  It has a hole for servo wires to fit, so is obviously intended to house electrics.  It doesn't have a rubber gasket or sealing plug for the wire hole, so I wouldn't trust it to house sensitive electrics without some additional waterproofing.  This isn't the main radio box, though - that comes later.

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Any particular reason you went for the old GS02 version instead of the new GS02F?

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There is one interesting area worthy of attention, I think, and that's the motor mount.  It's a slightly odd design.  The motor bolts to a plate, which then slots into the transmission and is held in place by the pinion and spur enclosure.  This in itself is a neat feature - many scalers leave the pinion and spur out in the open where they can get battered with stones and grit and muddy water, or suck in the myriad electrical wires that we like to run all over our rigs now.  But there's no actual screw holding the plate in place - just the tension of the gear cover and a little grub screw.  I know there were issues with noisy transmissions on some early BOMs and I'm not convinced this is the most robust design, especially if running a 55T motor on 3S.  Time will tell how well it works.

There was one other issue during assembly - the front axle wouldn't turn smoothly once the spool was tightened down.  It would rotate OK around 3/4 of the turn, then meet a stiff point.  The problem had to be with the crown gear or the plastic case that it bolts onto.  If either the gear was badly formed or the adapter was warped, the gears would tighten up at one point and bind.  A close inspection revealed it was actually a the cast metal lug that forms the centre of the spool, which had some flashing around the mating face from the mould.  It wasn't much but it was enough that the gear didn't fit flush and ran with a very slight wobble (invisible to the naked eye).  I cut the flashing off with a scalpel (well, the blades are cheap...) and used a file on the roughest bit, and now it's much better.

7 minutes ago, sosidge said:

Any particular reason you went for the old GS02 version instead of the new GS02F?

Good question, and not one I can easily answer, especially when you consider the GS02F BOM is only £5 more expensive and has quite a lot of new features.  One answer would be stock - I could get the GS02 ordered next day but the GS02F would have taken longer, and I wanted this for an isolation build.  My isolation officially ended last Tues and my daughters ended yesterday so if it hadn't arrived until now it wouldn't have been an isolation build.

I seriously considered the Buffalo kit, which has the GS02F chassis, but I'm still in love with the BOM body.  I'm very tempted to put some money aside for a Buffalo at a later date because the new chassis looks cool.

Another issue would be the overdriven front axle.  I get that this has its place on the toughest climbs, and if I was building a rig purely to win competitions then I'd probably incorporate that, but I don't really like features that are out of place on a road rig.  I don't actually know if it's possible to build the 02F transmission with a 50:50 bias.  Actually I considered a variety of rigs for this build, including the Element Gatekeeper, and it was the overdriven front axle that put me off of that one also - I didn't want to pay for next-day delivery if I was going to have to spend extra and wait longer for the parts to convert it to 50:50.

There are so many cool new rigs in the scaler / crawler sector that it's so hard to choose, and sometimes it's not even about having the best, it's about having the one you want, and for some reason that I can't really quantify with a practical explanation, this is the one I wanted :) 

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I have the GS02F and although the BOM body looks awesome there are some big compromises with the rear suspension, it's OK 90% of the time but does do odd things at the limit. I'm going to convert mine to a standard rear end shortly, just have to decide on which body to build it with.

I had the high points on my axles but not enough to make them jam up, I minimised it as much as I could by making slight adjustments to the screws holding the ring gear to the locker. A machined locker is available as an option. After one run under power the whole transmission is exceptionally smooth so no need for anything else on mine.

You can build the GS02F and Element without overdrive, but yes, optional parts are required in both circumstances. To be honest I haven't yet noticed any problems on the trails with the overdriven front (I have an Element too), the trucks aren't ever going fast enough or generating enough grip for it to be an issue.

They are both very capable trucks, I'm running both basically stock apart from heavier wheels and Pro-line tyres, haven't broken a thing yet despite them rolling down various rocky hillsides.

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12 minutes ago, sosidge said:

By the way, the body is an 89-92 Ford Ranger copy, not an F-150.

Thanks for this - I often get confused over the whole Ranger / F150 thing - as long as it's a Ford it fits ;) 

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This came just in time. I recently acquired a GS02F Buffalo that I haven't had time to crack into yet, but I'm very excited to do so. However, building a non-Tamiya kit is outside my comfort zone, so your write up will surely help warm me up to it.

Looking forward to future posts!

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1 hour ago, DeadMeat666 said:

building a non-Tamiya kit is outside my comfort zone

There's not too much to worry about here.  GMade instructions aren't as good as Tamiya but I would say they're marginally better than MST, which can feel a bit cluttered, with lots of stuff in a single step.  The hardest part is rummaging through 30-odd little plastic bags to find the exact screw you need to complete the step.  If you have a parts tray you could at least make life easier by stacking all the 3mm wrench screw bags in one bin, all the 3mm round heads in another, all the 2.5mm wrench screws in another etc...

I'm all out of parts trays (actually that's not true, I have a couple, I just haven't emptied them from my unfinished King Hauler build from years ago!) so I didn't do this.

The parts trees aren't quite as easy to identify - instead of A, B, C they put the full part number against the tree in the parts diagram, then refer to that on the page.  Since they're all long codes that occupy roughly the same number range, it's not always easy to work out what they're saying.  But then again the parts are so easily identifiable just by looking at the pic, I haven't really needed to use the part numbers at all.

Nobody will beat Tamiya for instruction clarity but these are far from the worst I've seen :) 

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Good fun build that one. Rear suspension had me scratching my head more than a few times. Four arms and associated ball joints to align and get on the correct place. Shocks not as nice as even CVAs though. Found it very hard to get a consistent feel. 

Never a fan of box art paint jobs, way too predictable for me. I went for Tamiya’s Camel Yellow and am really pleased with it. 

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On 7/26/2021 at 1:28 PM, Mad Ax said:

Then I employed my favourite trick of cutting off the overspray film to hit the arches with some satin black automotive paint, which sticks really well to lexan.  This gives a neat rubbery finish just like a real arch extension.

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That looks amazing!!!!!! After you have cut the film around the arch do you mask it again or is the film pretty resistant to bleeds after cutting?

Also is it any particular auto paint or will halfords black or similar be ok? Ive got some semi gloss black in their silver tins (not sure if its acrylic or enamel but it smells nice) which i might try on a mini shell ive got to paint at some point.

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11 hours ago, Superluminal said:

That looks amazing!!!!!! After you have cut the film around the arch do you mask it again or is the film pretty resistant to bleeds after cutting?

Also is it any particular auto paint or will halfords black or similar be ok? Ive got some semi gloss black in their silver tins (not sure if its acrylic or enamel but it smells nice) which i might try on a mini shell ive got to paint at some point.

The overspray film is actually really good at resisting bleeds, at least against the brand of paint I use.  I can't remember for sure what brand it is but I'll check when I'm up in the workshop later.  It's not Halfords, but it's a particular satin black effect paint that tends to lay on very thick.  The downside with painting on the outside is that it can scratch off, I wonder how long the arches will last on my BOM body.

12 hours ago, bikerclubby said:

Good fun build that one. Rear suspension had me scratching my head more than a few times. Four arms and associated ball joints to align and get on the correct place. Shocks not as nice as even CVAs though. Found it very hard to get a consistent feel. 

Never a fan of box art paint jobs, way too predictable for me. I went for Tamiya’s Camel Yellow and am really pleased with it. 

I read a while back when these first came out that the rear suspension in particular is a bit loose, I think it was Matteo who recommended adding thicker oil.  I didn't do this on mine yet but it already feels very soft and lacking in damping.  It's one of those fun things to do that doesn't cost anything :lol:

I don't usually do boxart - of the 50 or so cars in the fleet, I think only one of them has a boxart paint job.  But the red really sang to me on this truck.  I looked at hundreds of photos for inspiration and saw some great ideas but nothing pulled me as much as the red did.  I still haven't decided if I'll apply the single white panel decal or the white stripes.  The body is on the shelf behind me, begging me to cut off work early and finish it ;)

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Anyway, the build is pretty much done and I have a few more photos of the process and interesting things to point out, however I got back from the Iconic Revival at just after 10pm last night and I have something like 700 photos to sort through, resize and upload, so I might not get around to updating this thread for a while :o 

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Here's that quick update I promised!

A mostly-completed chassis.  I haven't bothered to glue the tyres yet as I'm not sure I want to keep that wheel / tyre combo.  I think the pair look awesome but I don't know how well these tyres actually perform.  I can't really justify the cost of a set of beadlocks at the mo but then again I can't justify the cost of another crawler ESC either, so for now it's going to be a shelfer.

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This is a cool thing.  Cut two pieces of foam to fit over the receiver box outlet, rub grease over them and screw them together.  I haven't actually greased these yet because I have more electrics to add later.

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Receiver box, bumper, rock sliders and floor panels added.  The main thing you get with the later GS02F chassis that you don't get with this one is arch liners.  I'll have to buy some aftermarket liners later, or fabricate something to fit like I did with my CFX-W.

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The rear cage is a work of art.  The CFX-W cage feels a bit sturdier, but basically it's a moulded plastic tray with some hoops going over it.  The BOM cage is made up of many smaller parts, screwed together to make this structure.

There is space in the cage to attach a spare wheel, but naturally you don't get a fifth wheel or tyre in the kit, so you have to source your own.  I know some beadlocks are sold in packs of 5 but I've never found tyres sold the same way, good crawler tyres are sold by the pair and are usually expensive, so it's a significant outlay to get a matching spare.  But there again I have a few sets of stock wheels and tyres that would do as a non-matching pair.

There's also supposed to be a fuel tank mounted in the cage, but it's not currently fitted as I want to paint it properly.

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The cage slots into the back of the chassis with no fuss.  There's no clips to hold it in place, only the pins that hold the cab.  This should make it very convenient to take off on the trails.  Lift-up bodies are the future, I tells ya - especially for bodies like this that end up with hundreds of LED wires running through them.

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If I ever decide to ditch the cage on this truck, I'm tempted to use it as a spaceframe cab for some kind of mud buggy.  All it needs is some lexan side panels and screen.

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I started decaling the body today - pics to follow tomorrow when it's lighter.  I'm not sure about the quality of GMade decals.  The window trims went on well and look good but the white side panel is a semi-transparent, so the body colour and little bubbles show through it.  Perhaps I was supposed to paint the panelled area white.  Also there's some white bleeding under the black borders, which looks a bit odd.  Otherwise it's been a mostly painless decaling job.

I'm going with the boxart fat white panel as per the box photo above, but I'll be printing some custom decals to put my own spin on it.  More to follow :)

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Another great thread MA, I’m enjoying the text detail and photos.

Well written in your style of easy to understand and nicely detailed way 👍

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Can't see the pics as usual, but enjoy reading along. Sounds like a great build! 

My BOM was by far my best wheeling truck. Only added SSD knuckles and some weight in the front receiver box and it pretty much went anywhere, and looked good doing it. Kind of regret selling it, I'm debating picking up another.   

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That is quite an endorsement @OldSchoolRC1 given that I think you have had quite a few trucks, including modded ones?

It looks as though the inner fenders are coming available this autumn but you might need a couple of sprues.

Fenders

Fittings

Looking forward to seeing the body mounted on the chassis. I have always liked the look of these trucks and your stickers designs make your vehicles unique. 

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Those links look like they're for the newer 02F chassis.  I'd guess the inner fenders might fit but the fittings might not as the battery goes where they go on the 02.

I'm looking at getting some other genuine GMade parts - for example the roof box and light bar look great on this cab - and might add the fenders to the order to :)

More to follow soon - body is now mostly decaled and fitted but I still have to decide how I'm going to paint the fuel tank.

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Ah, I was forgetting that the 02F has some significant changes to the 02. Looking at the manual, the front inner fenders are braced using a part from that fittings sprue.

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