TA01 / Manta Ray Truck Conversion

The truck base was an ebay Manta Ray chassis with no wheels, rubbish body, but it did have a full set of ball bearings, all the drivetrain bits and all the suspension bit (except one missing shock and one bent one). The basic conversion bit was as follows:-

>>>HPI SS MT deep truck wheels (give quite a bit of offset but need wheel nuts to be secured using thread loc because nylocs don't go on far enough) and tarmac tyres (I also use a set of mini pins on occasion)
>>>HPI MX-1 Hummer style body. A good match for wheelbase and quite narrow (I wanted to use a narrow touring body, something different like a Merc M-Class, but these were too wide and interferred with wheels)
>>>Rear body mount. A pair of TC3 body posts fixed to an aluminium plate that is bolted to the wing mounts.
>>>Front body mount. More TC3 body posts fixed to a couple of aluminium plates with spacers (this is probably a bit over-complicated). These are bolted to the back of the front shock mount.
>>>Homemade adjustable rear upper suspension arms (the standard ones seem to give a lot of camber, this was scrubbing the inside of the rear tyres, the new ones are shorter).
>>>Stock silver can motor with 17 tooth pinion.
>>>Futaba radio gear and Mtronics ESC. (fixed with velcro so I can swap it to other cars).

+++I also made some other changes and hop-ups:-

>>>Traxxas shocks (they were the cheapest I could find on ebay!). The travel of these was shortened (especially the front) and I removed a couple of coils from the fronts to soften them.
>>>Carbon propshaft. Huge improvement over stock one.
>>>Rear ball diff (The original gear diff broke).
>>>All metal driveshafts (Top Force?). The original ones with the plastic ends were bent.

+++The finished truck looks pretty good, although the body could sit a bit lower on the chassis. It is great fun on-road or off-road and flies nice and true over ramps. It understeers a bit on tarmac but a one way front diff would fix that.

From ebay junk to budget truck After an hour on a building site. Great fun! Shortened Traxxas shocks front and rear Manta ray chassis is easily converted Front mount is only tricky bit

Comments

BiggusDitchus

22-Jun-2004

Great looking truck, nice shell.. Cant help feeling great minds think alike with those wheels and tyres.

mud4fun

14-Jul-2004

I see what you mean, nice truck! I'm going to do something similar with my Manta Ray chassis too. They are quite good performing chassis and can take pretty hot motors. Just the daft plastic motor mount that lets the whole thing down. The blue with white stripes looks very sporty. Nice work. I like to update my old buggies to keep up with the modern stuff (not hard when you consider the rubbish buggies Tamiya produce now compared to the 80/90's)

BeetleRacer69

5-Oct-2004

Nice conversion dude, that's the type of thing I like doing. See my show room if you want.
Cheer's
WILD ONE

8-Oct-2004

Nice car!!! Loocks better than tho original Manta Ray!!!

momin

28-Oct-2004

i really like this mate

12-Jan-2005

hi what an awsome looking truck conversion im looking to get a manta ray chasis meself hopefully i will have some luck converting it too, really gr8 job

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