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So - there you have it!  That's what I managed to achieve last weekend.

I haven't done much since then - in fact I might box the tow truck for a while as I officially have only 7 Sundays to get my next top-secret project ready for the Scaler Nationals in October.  However there are still some quick wins that I can achieve between now and the winter building season, so I'll keep the box somewhere handy, or maybe even keep the truck out on the bench so I can do a quick bit here or there if I'm stalled on something else.

:)

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As Duke Nukem  would say “It hurts to be you!”. Er, hang on, that’s not what I meant…Great work!

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Fantastic build, all those details make it.

For the spare tires, would it not make more sense for them to be two touring car tires? 

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7 hours ago, Nikko85 said:

For the spare tires, would it not make more sense for them to be two touring car tires? 

That's a very good point.  I figured given the chunky off-roady nature of the truck, it would probably want some spares for itself and for any truck it might be rescuing, but if it's trackside at a touring race it will want some touring tyres too.  There's loads of real-estate left at the back of the rig, I might yet make another tyre rack- thanks for the idea! :)

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I got a bit more work done this weekend too.  I had planned to sideline this project while I work on my super-secret new scaler build, but I didn't finish building the vanilla chassis on Saturday and I didn't really want to spend my Sunday doing a standard box build that I could be doing while my daughter and I are watching TV.  That gave me a whole day to work on the tow truck.

First thing to think about was the front grille.  I have back-and-forthed on this since I started the project, and on Friday evening (after my 8-mile walk got turned into a 3-mile liberal soaking) I sat down to start designing the new lights in Fusion 360.  Then I realised that what I really needed was a flat plate to mount the lights onto, and I kinda needed that before I could go too far with the bucket design, so I closed down Fusion and spent 2 hours playing Wreckfest instead.

Sunday morning dawned and my time for procrastination was over.  I started the day with a stock grille and some plasticard.

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A short while later I had some plasticard shaped to fit where the stock grille goes

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I measured out some cut lines

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Then cut and filed some holes

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I glued in some modified H-section behind the grille to replicate the radiator mount bracket, and wedged it temporarily in place.  There's a lot more to do here but that's enough to get me started on the light bucket design later this week.

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Then I turned my attention to the back end.  This stock King Hauler bumper fits nicely.  I cut a very simple bracket out of 90-degree section, simple to make but I had to strip down half the rear end to get it on.

It looks a bit wide in this shot, but I need to space out the rear wheels a little so it should look better when that's finished.

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Next, and big thanks to @Nikko85 for encouraging me to rethink my V-exhaust design, I made some stand-offs to mount the stacks to the beacon frame.  I also polished the frame uprights while they were off the car.

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I honestly think that looks a lot better now

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So - that's everything for now.  The day wasn't quite over so I build the shocks for the top secret project, which isn't so easy to do in the lounge, then went out on the motorcycle for a couple of hours, heading over to Cheddar Gorge and back again.  Would have been nicer to go to the coast for fish & chips (there was plenty of day left) but with the cost of fuel these days I can really only do that once per month now.

There's still more to do here:

  • design the light buckets
  • service the resin printer
  • fabricate some steps / toolboxes (and paint them)
  • mount the battery connector behind the toolboxes
  • mount some touring car spares (thanks again @Nikko85)
  • wire up some always-on head and tail lights
  • wire up some flashing hazard lights
  • make some arch liners
  • design, print and fit some decals
  • possibly make and fit some rear fenders
  • sew up the 80s seat cover
  • mount the seat properly
  • more stuff that I'd probably forgotten about

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Wow!  No updates since July?  Really?

I guess I've been busy with the other 6x6 project, plus the Revival and Scaler Nationals and family holidays and the like.  But here we are, it's mid-October and I'm finally back working on fun projects just because they're fun.

I had some time to myself on Weds, so the dumped the tow truck on the workbench and had another look at it.

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Two key jobs on the list were sorting out the rats nest under the interior panel so there is somewhere for the battery cable to live, and adding some fuel tanks / side pods to fill in the gap.

I pulled off the interior cover panel to expose the mess.  It doesn't actually look that bad with the cover off, but with it on, all those wires get in each others' way and take up space where the battery cable should sit.

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The weather was good, so I figured I'd start by painting up some fuel tanks, which could cure while I was sorting out the wiring.  These fit really neatly under the body.  They are the little boxes that Alturn and Turnigy servos are shipped in, I keep them for parts storage but I've got a few spares.

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I buffed them up with 300 grit paper and cleaned them with fairy up liquid, then turned on the halogens (probably costing me around £10 an hour at today's prices) and gave them a few coats of filler primer.

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While that was curing, it was back to the wiring.  I moved the ESC up front to free up space, then relocated the receiver so the cable run is neater.  A bit of spiral wrap does a better job than spiralling the wires.

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Kinda better, but still not perfect

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but at least there is space to get the battery cable and connector in

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Back to the paint bench, I slapped on some quick coats of red.  It's the same red as I painted the body in.

Somewhere out there, a few YouTubers who extol the virtues of letting your primer coat cure for 7 days before adding the colour coat have suddenly come over all peculiar.

The colour looks a bit off in the photos.  My camera has an auto white balance feature, but I don't think it has a setting for "halogen lamp hotter than the furnaces of badword."

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A bit of double-sided servo tape and we're sorted.

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Since my rear bumper and my so-far-incomplete front grille has space for indicator lamps, I figured I should probably add some.  I didn't want the expense of a fully-functional light unit, and as this truck will mostly be doing recovery work, it made sense to just have the indicators in hazard flashy flash flash mode.  I thought it would be super cheap to buy an LED flash module, or at least super-easy to make one, but it turns out it's not as simple as it seams and the electrickery was just a little bit beyond me.

However, I do have a few Arduino Nanos lying around, so I knocked up a quick app on Friday afternoon to send a high/low alternating signal to a digital pin so I could use it to control the direction indicator bulbs.  For future compatibility, I also output a constant high signal on another digital pin (later I'll be able to link this up to throttle and aux channels so I can have a variable brake light output and switchable headlights).

I usually go out walking for a few hours on Friday afternoons, but the rain had entered the realms of the apocalyptic, so I decided I was safer sheltering from the water-based punishment of the almighty in my workshop and cracking on with the Arduino build.

It didn't take long to get it running on the Nano (it took longer to find a USB mini-B cable) before I was able to hook it up on a breadboard and test it out.

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In this circuit, the power output from the 1080 ESC (in 7.4V mode for stronger / faster steering) is powering the Vin on the Arduino, and it also going via a current-limiting resistor to the LED anode.  The cathode is connected to the collector of an NPN transistor.  The digital out of Arduino goes via a current-limiting resistor to the base of the transistor.  The emitter goes to the common ground.  This allows the LED to be switched with the 7.4V supply, while the 5V output from the Arduino digital pin only ever handles a low current (max current across an Arduino pin is 40ma, which is OK for one LED but won't run a bank of them, hence the need for a transistor to switch the 7.4V supply from the ESC).

I soldered the Nano onto some pin board to make a more permanent solution.

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The bonus with using a servo box as a fuel tank is: it can be opened and used for storage!

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Here I side-tracked from my plan a little, as there was another issue with the wiring arrangement on the truck.  The light bar, which has a variety of different modes, won't run at 7.4V.  It makes a clicking sound and goes off - I'm guessing it has some kind of safety feature to prevent damage.  I tried installing a limiting resistor, but it would either turn off or not work properly, so instead it would have to run at a lower voltage.

The Arduino has its own onboard voltage regulator which is more than adequate to reduce the incoming 7.4V to 5V.  I hooked the light bar up to a smart power supply via a multimeter, and measured its current in fully flash-flashy-blast mode at 5V as just over 20ma, which is low enough to run from the Arduino's 5V pin.  So the pin board also has an output to power the light bar.

The lead from the light bar wasn't easy to route, and looked ugly, so I popped off the upright and filed a slot in the bottom to secure the lead in place.

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Then I drilled two 2.5mm holes in the bottom of the upright so I could secure the lead with a cable tie.  Unfortunately 2.5mm turned out to be too small for my smallest cable ties, and getting the upright back in place is super-tricky thanks to the nuts being in hard-to-reach places, so I came up with an ingenious solution to re-drilling the holes to 3mm without having to take it off again.

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With that done, I figured it was time for a full test-run.  The ESC powers the FlySky receiver, the light module is connected to a spare channel on the receiver for 7.4V power, the light bar is connected to the 5V output from the light module and the breadboard with a full suite of LEDs (soft white, red and orange) is hooked up to the 7.4V output and the switched grounds from the light module.

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It felt like I was dangerously close to having all this ready to go in, so I turned my attention back to the wiring in the truck, where the leads are still way too long.  I don't really like fitting new servo plugs (they're fiddly and awkward) but it does mean I can trim my servo leads down to just the right length.  This rats nest had to go.

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et voila

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I also shortened the leads for the light bar power, and changed the lead for the front and rear light output to a pin terminal.

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Next - wiring up and fitting the LEDs!  I'll probably do some of that tomorrow, but I still need to design and print the front light buckets and also a bunch of parts turned up today to fix some broken stuff, so we'll have to see what tomorrow brings.

I won't be doing any 3D designs tonight, my shoulder has gone seriously stiff today, just typing up these updates has put me in serious pain, so I'm gonna rest it up tonight and hopefully be back on form tomorrow.

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On 7/16/2022 at 11:02 AM, Mad Ax said:

There's lots more to do here - including figuring out how to locate the seat against the floor (it's wedged against the back of the cab right now, which will be really annoying for putting the cab on and off), and getting the old sewing machine down to fit the seat cover properly, building a dash, making spare wheel brackets, and various other things, but it's really starting to come together now :)

Also I'm back to the drawing board on the grille and lights.  I found some tail lights that would work well on Astec Models, designed for truck trailers, but for some reason the website is borked and doesn't have any payment options.  A mail to the new owner of Astec has gone unanswered.  I probably wouldn't have let that bother me until I went to order the front light lenses and buckets from Shapeways and realised how much it was going to cost for delivery.  I mean, really?  Are they chauffeuring it to me personally in a Bentley..?  If that's what it actually costs to make the stuff then fine, put it on the product price.  I refuse to accept that it costs £20 to post a few small pieces of plastic.

Sorry Shapeways, I'll make my own, thanks.

I nearly fell off my chair when I saw the price of Tamiya parts for the light lenses and buckets I was going to use for my tractor rear lights. So instead of plastic light buckets it's ending up with aluminium parts instead... 

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PS, Loved the use of the old sock for the cab seat covering. The seat on my skidder is skinned with a bit of genuine leather from an old shoe :)

 

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More updates :) 

With the Arduino flashy-flasher working properly, it was time to install some LEDs.  I'd already started soldering up some LEDs and wire during a brief bit of downtime yesterday, but today was Workshop Sunday, and an opportunity to Get Things Done.

I started by drilling a hole in my bumper mounting bracket to pass the wires through.  Also I had to trim the plastic behind it to allow some throughness to happen.

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LEDs and wires

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There was a bit more throughness than I'd originally anticipated, so the trusty Dremel came out to remove some plastic.

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There.

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Installed.  Note: this installation came out again and was re-done, because I realised as I came to make the pluggie-innie plug for the LEDs that I'd got the wiring back to front - I'd wired it for a switched positive, when actually it was a switched ground.  That would be OK for conventional bulbs but LEDs only work one way round, so I had to swap the wires over.  That means my black wire is somewhat misleading, as it is full-time positive when the truck is turned on.

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There was also another issue I hadn't anticipated - the rear LEDs are bolted to the chassis, but the front ones will be mounted inside the shell, which is removable.  Therefore I need a separate plug for the front LEDs.  I toyed with adding an extra set of pins on the pin board, but I hadn't left myself enough spare space and that was a lot of work, so instead I added a second set of wires to the plug from the rear wiring harness.  This goes onto the Arduino board.

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That's as much as I took photos of today - I did a bit more tidying of the front wiring harness, then added a plug for the LEDs in the body, then lined up the stock Blackfoot grille again.  Maybe I will use this after all?  I'll need to cut out the light lenses and make some buckets to fit.

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This is all fascinating. The amount of detail you go into is brilliant and so educational, I'm loving all the info on wiring up LEDs and arduinos and getting them working. The wiring is looking extremely tidy, very professional. Giving the fuel tanks an actual function as storage was a good idea too.

I definitely approve of the correct technical jargon :) : "hazard flashy flash flash mode", "pluggie-innie plug for the LEDs"

Maybe you could be coaxed into a little video clip of the lights working?

Brilliant job. Keep it up.

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2 hours ago, Gebbly said:

Maybe you could be coaxed into a little video clip of the lights working?

I will probably do a video once I've got the whole thing finished off.  I'm pretty sure I have a YouTube account somewhere, although I never post to it (I took some videos of all my monster trucks running in the summer and still haven't even edited them, it takes way too long!)

To be technically correct about it, I will do a movie-picture-takey with my mobular phone of the truck doing some drivey drive drive with a bit of flashy-flash-flash going on*.

I also realised I made a slight mistake in wiring up my Arduino on the board.  My original intention was that I would later be able to wire up some input channels, so that the hazards can also be left and right indicators and the tail lights can also double up as brake lights when the lever is pulled down (no reverse lights, as this requires being able to predict when the ESC will go reversey backwards mode, as opposed to go brakey stop mode - as I discovered when attempting to make a full Arduino MFC for my big rigs, predicting that isn't as easy as it seems).  However, I have wired up all the hazard flashers to a single wire, and the head and tail lights to a single wire.  Which is less than idea.

*This phrase actually came from my cousin, while we were holidaying in Florida back in 1998.  We were stuck in traffic, and hadn't moved for a while.  We suspected it was a collision.  Our suspicions were confirmed when my cousin pointed out that he could, indeed, see "a bit of flashy-flash-flash going on".

I have temporarily parked this project while I work on my other 6x6 F150 (2 weeks of updates are still on my camera, I haven't had time to upload them yet), and I'm busy this weekend on some DIY and family stuff, and my wife might be going away the following weekend - so it could be a while before I get back to any serious RC workshop time (unless I can persuade my 5-year-old to be my tool holder again, like she was when she was 2).

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That's a lot nicer than any of my 6x6 builds, but I mainly build them for the kids to bash, (although they drive better than me) so I break em and fix em and the kids get all the fun. Lol 

 

 

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This project is nearing completion now, but is still waiting on my making the light buckets and a repair patch for the wing, plus figuring out how I'm going to open up the headlights on the original grill panel without completely destroying it.

By the time I'd brazed my Element Enduro's rollcage and helped the family put up the Christmas decs, I didn't really have that much time left in the workshop, so I pottered about and did some simpler chores, like making the magazines to go in the tow truck.  Arliss can probably expect to be parked up for hours on end waiting for a call, so he needs a good supply of reading material.

These are printed on clear vinyl then stuck onto white plasticard.  I use 2mm, as it gives a nice chunky look, like a well-thumbed magazine.

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Scattered on the passenger seat in easy reach.

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After that, I figured, well, why not get the external decals on too?  It's not like there's much more to do on this one.

BTW please don't call that number, I have no idea if it's connected but I can guarantee it's not a recovery service.

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I hadn't planned to put any graphics on the back, but I always double up my designs when I print a sheet, as my laser printer has a habit of chewing up the paper and/or failing to print in one random place, so it's better to waste a bit of toner on duplicates than to have to print a whole new sheet just to get one graphic that got missed.  Well, as it happens, this sheet was near-perfect so I had plenty of spares, and by cutting up the door panel and hood panel graphics I was able to cut together a pretty good lift plate graphic.

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The sides were looking a bit bare, so I figured Arliss would probably add some decals from his favourite suppliers, and maybe sell some ad space to some local business.

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Another great build @Mad Ax. Love all the little details like his magazines. quick question if I may - what sticker base product do you use to put in a laser printer? Looks like you've found a nice balance between not too fragile and not too thick.

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