More...custom...trucks! Build pics thread!!!
 

I don't mean to rag on those who want to share pics of their traxxas with aftermarket parts installed, but such a thing is not a Custom rc in my opinion. No harm in sharing, but I want to see real custom builds!

So, I am hoping to make a "custom build thread"

For a custom rc to qualify:
as few stock or off the shelf parts as possible
Cross-brand parts adapted to work with each other to create something new
Homemade parts, adapted parts ect.

To share, you don't have to be the creator....if you find something worth sharing please do!

Pics, pics, and more pics:)

Here is one example of a true custom build I found recently on ebay....a emaxx "solid axle" creation. Very nicely done.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020076http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020077http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020078http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020079



And here is one of mine, an example of cross-brand with a few homemade parts to create something different...a 1/6 scale stampede. While this truck wasn't super special, it wasn't merely a stampede with bolt on parts either. Redcat, traxxas, exceed, and integy parts were used, the suspension was modified and naturally the chassis was stretched. This I consider the weakest example of "custom". It contained just enough homemade or modified parts to be considered custom. The emaxx above is a much better example of a custom build.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020080http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020081http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020082

I've always wanted to make an RC car out of a block of wood for a chassis, but never got around to it... lol

hmm might have to get off my ass, and do some work on my one RC I started a few years back
So far its an SCT amalgamation of HPI(3 diff models), Traxxas, Tamiya, and hand made parts (I had some Axial parts on it, but threw those on my 6wd WK project, which I gotta start back up too, but misplaced a few parts :(). Reminds me I gotta order some OFNA parts for it(edit: just ordered an ofna battery box) :D

There are some guys who can build epic looking scale bodies out of wood.
And there is no reason a chassis couldn't be made out of would. No rule that says alloy or carbon fiber is the only material one can make a chassis out of.
If its hand made, looks cool and does the job then it is Custom!

here are more pics I found. If wood doesn't work for you...why not PVC pipe! or maybe just 2 pieces of music wire and some delrin blocks? Or a flat metal chassis with some welded tube to make a sand rail chassis to work with rustler parts? Or homemade 5th scale gasser (one project I have always wanted to try!)
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020092http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020093http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020094http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020095http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020096http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020097http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020098

Nitrosportsandrunner, I agree with you completely and definitely want to see more of truly custom builds. In all honesty though I don't think your Stampede "barely" qualifies. You changed the vehicle in a unique way that also changes its scale, performance, appeal and use. That to me is a custom build. Moving on, I humbly present one of my own trucks that best ememplifies the intent of this thread. My stretched chassis Erevo.

Original configuration
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020099
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020100
Yes that driveshaft is really long! Its just a couple Traxxas Axle (not center) shafts glued together. Started with a nitro 2.5 chassis that I cut in half and lengthened with aluminum angle bought at Home Depot.
At the LHS with a borrowed Baja 5T body, RPM 1/2 offset wheels with Losi Claw (2nd gen) tires that are about 6.75" tall.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020101
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020102
The tires stick out a little due to the wheel offset. Hexes are stock Revo 14mm at the time.

forgot I should probably throw these things 3 monstrosities that I did up

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020103http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020104http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020105

For the record the 1st, and 3rd vehicles were scrapped
1st had some major issues as I decided to re-use Brama 10b parts... yea wasn't a wise decision... all in all it had a aftermarket rustler bumper, DF-02 arms, RS4 MT1diffs, on-road RS4 front shock tower, Brama 10b battery hold down, servo mount, and spur assembly. It ran, but gearing was atrocious so it would trash motors as the terrible brama mount didn't allow much gearing options. Outside learning never to bother with the Brama 10b parts again I also learned a very valuable lesson in chassis construction which is brazing aluminum is insanely hard, and not worthwhile.

2nd while not really THAT custom, but how many times do you see a pede with a airplane motor strapped to its rear with ski's made from PVC drainage gutter parts, and I did have to destroy a magnum tranny case so I could mount the rear properly though while allowing the prop room to spin :D (this is still in one piece, and now has a body)
3rd... I scrapped too as the bottom wheels cracked, but most the parts live on in other things :D

edit: Just realized the 1st pic was from before I had installed the dogbones, and attached the tie-rods for steering

This was the final iteration of the 5t Revo. Instead of a single battery pack, you can see the Velcro straps for mounting one on each side. The Rollcage conforms to the body to support it and prevent cracking. Although the rollcage is tied into the stock Revo body mounts front and rear they do not mount the body. I didn't want any extra holes in the body so I built the cage to use the stock holes in the body as well. The cage is made from brake tubing (forget the size) and 18ga sheetmetal that I MIG welded together.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020106

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020107

Nitro, That PVC car is pretty darn cool. Since we can post other people's rides I'm going to have to dig out my backup drive and post some of my archived pics.

Syco, those are pretty cool creations. I was always curious about a propeller driven car setup like yours but once I heard the wine of a outrunner with a prop I lost some interest. IDK the noise just bugs me but if yours did well enough I may reconsider. I actually have a crappy chinese nitro touring car roller that I keep picturing as an airboat with wheels too. An amphibious rc car has always been something I've wanted to do. I've never tried brazing aluminum, but I have tried MIG welding aluminum. All I can say is its a royal pain to keep the aluminum squeaky clean and even then its not easy to MIG weld it. Steel came naturally to me, aluminum I'm still working on it.

syco id love to see more pics of that tank thing. I have often wished for a tank tread RC that actually was fun to drive! Ive had a brushless kyosho blizzard...but low ground clearance, narrow tracks with short treads and poor weight distribution means they don't really work that well for offroading.

Id love to build a tracked vehicle that had some ground clearance and strongly angled approach on the front of the tracks so it could climb over stuff. If it could do that and go 20mph it would be fun for sure.

The 1/5 revo is nice. A 1/5 stampede was fun to build and fun to drive, but the larger the scale the more obvious the shortcomings of 2wd become!

Maj, I agree the pvc rig is sweet. I saw that and right away started thinking what misc driveline parts I may have that could be somehow used. I would think that rig would be both strong and light with the tubular pvc pipe. Not hard to drill or cut is a bonus as well. Cheap to prototype as well.

Ill try to find more pics tomorrow. I know I have some more on my hard drive. I wanna find the stretched VW Baja sand rail thing I had made out of a broken hornet chassis.

one project I wish I had finished, was a redcat 1/8 scale moa rock crawler I was turning into a monster truck. Basically, I made a wide torsion frame. It worked good...allowing flex but not to much. I never finished, as I didn't have the $$$ for a duel motor ESC and a pair of emaxx motors. Obviously no real skill involved here, but I always like the idea of taking an rc made for one purpose (ie rock crawling) and turning it into something else (ie, 4wd and 4wd monster truck)

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020129http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020130http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020131http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020132

Actually now I'm redoing an actual RC tank, which those parts in that one I have the pick of were parts off of(they were spares I had).
Bought a cheap HengLong Tiger I(paid like $90 shipped) a few years back that I lost the AM controller to, and I've been retrofitting it with RC car parts :D Actually this was abandoned for a long time, but I restarted it thanks to Phaximus's cheap ESC recommendation a few months back.

BTW here are the other pics of that one I built with the truck body.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020331http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020332http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2020333
main issue I hit with it were the wheels I used were made for drive, and I reamed them out a bit to fit small ball bearings in so they could spin free. The plastic cracked after a few months due to the weight... It probably would have been fine if I spent the extra on the metal ones(they were like $20 a pair...). But meh I might try making a half track one day out of the gearbox's, and tracks :D

I bought one of those air hogs fasttrax rc's. the suspension is really simple and the way the ESC uses to the 2 motors to control steering is actually pretty good for a toy rc.
Given its small size, the thing can really go over a lot of stuff!
I couldn't help but think that the same design, but the size of a traxxas rustler, would be simply amazing to drive! But it is not made to look like a real tank, the treads are very tall compaired to the width of the track (not scale) and the width of the tracks is pretty good given the overall size of the model. Why cant someone build a similar, hobby grade 1/10 scale model! Id buy it :)

i have a few builds brewing in my noggin. the one that i have actually kind of started is an all steel df02. i'm also working on fund allocation for an all steel evader ext2. on top of that, i'm working on getting some new tools, primarily an oxyacetylene torch. i'll look around to see if i have any pictures of my past contraptions.

I too have always wanted to build my own gasser. I have an axle from a Toro lawn mower, a 31cc Ryobi weedwacker engine and a few other parts already. Just need some wheels and other stuff before I get started. When I do get to building it'll probably end up looking something like this. Its not mine and was originally posted on this forum so you guys may have seen it before but I really like it so here it is again.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021150http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021151http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021152http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021153http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021154

From low buck, we go to more high end. Truck is LST based, converted to brushless and 1/6 scale. The builder has access to and knowledge of machining equipment.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021155http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021161http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021162http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021163http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021164http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021156http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021157http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021158http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021159http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021160

I don't know much about this one except that its cool.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021165http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021166http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021167http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021168http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021169http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021170http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021171

Emaxx to Baja anyone?
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021172http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021178http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021173http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021175http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021176http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021177

I thought I had more pics of homebuilt vehicles that are more remarkable. But most are pretty boring or at least standard, like solid axle SCT conversions. I do have one solid axle SCT/CORR truck that is anything but standard though.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021197http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021198http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021199http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021200http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021201http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021202http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021203http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021204http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021205http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021206http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021207http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021208http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021209http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021210http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021211http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021212http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021213http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2021214

I forget some of the details but the basics are, Kyosho Landmax(?) 1/8 buggy chassis, Kyosho Mad Force rear axle, OS .20 car four stroke engines.

I like the emaxx to Baja conversion.

that solid axle SCT is amazing....what motor tho? Looked a bit odd to be a standard nitro motor. The exhaust pipes are very cool. The brace made for the kyosho solid axle is very, very nice work. If I could machine stuff like that I could do some really cool builds.

appears to be 2 aircraft 4-stroke engines.

an aircraft 4 stroke was what I thougt it may be, but I haven't ever had such a motor so couldn't be sure.

I know of airplane 4 strokes....have wondered how well they could work on a car or truck.

There was a time O.S. made four strokes for land vehicles. I believe the model names were 20fs-c and 40fs-c in .20 and .40 displacements respectively. They came with pull starts and the crankshaft was clutch friendly but I forget if it was an SG style crank or not. Either way they were able to achieve about 20k rpm instead of the 11k rpm like the aircraft versions. They used different cam shafts and valve springs to get the extra rpm. The engines work fairly well, lots of torque but down on horsepower compared to 2 stroke nitro. The .20's were intended for small block vehicles with the .40's for big block vehicles. They can be a pain to plumb as they're sensitive to fuel tank height and sometimes need check valves and pumps depending on the vehicle and the mods done to the engine. Apparantly they wake up considerably with a slide carb and different exhaust from stock. There was an individual making a performance head for these and another making conversion kits for RC10gt's. He also had one in a Revo before quitting it all. Kyosho famously had conversion kits for their 1/10 onroads and even sold one of their vehicles with the conversion kit included. I believe they had a conversion for their 1/8 buggy to use the .40 as well.

I believe the truck I posted above uses a pair of .20's but I'm not sure they could be .40's and the website the owner had for the truck was taken down years ago.

this time, I have a video of a nice custom build.

I was searching for ideas on how to make a body for my tatra (I failed at working with styrene) and found this video of a traxxas slayer cut, stretched and then a wood 1/5 car body made for it. Pretty dang sweet looking rally car was the result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbAEs_LaR70

My 1/7 ClodHummer....

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.n...00024047_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.n...29775174_n.jpg

https://scontent-a-hkg.xx.fbcdn.net/...f8&oe=54679597

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.n...76480725_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.n...48185456_n.jpg

https://scontent-b-hkg.xx.fbcdn.net/...19072359_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.n...538228b151a73d

http://youtu.be/QeAqCe7pcyc

I wish I could have found that type of hummer body, instead of the H2 I went with.My stock motors finally died, I have some rc4wd 55turns waiting to go it. I hope they work well. the stock ones were 60t, so im hoping for just a bit more wheel speed.

I love the look of that thing! It looks like a blast to drive too the way it rolls and everything.

Wood may not be a bad choice to build your Tatea body out of either. Make a skeleton out of 1/4X1/4 balsa or hardwood and then sheath it in the kind of thin plywood use in model planes or boats. The guys who build battle ships manage to paint plywood to look like steel instead wood no reason you can't do the same for your body. Building a skeleton out of wood may also help your styrene work too if you want to give that another shot.

agreed, the way that car bounces and rolls if very scale looking for a vintage rally car.

I hope to give a wood body a try this weekend. Im thinking I may try to make the shell out of wood, and add some details with the styrene (door, access panels and such)

Can't forget this guy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR-Qa8wHL9g&list=PL8C23B7A6D0E7EA31 Or even THIS GUY!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-XHWbxBMMU&list=UUzSwySUTcAAm0VfYr49ibXw

wow the steam punked RC car lol
I remember we had one guy posting stuff like that on here awhile back.

I'm going to be completely honest that gravedigger I thought was a standard 1/8th at the start till I saw it drive past an object to compare its size to.