SYSTEM BLOODCLOD - Radio Controlled Monster Trucks (RCMTs)

25.07.2004 Resurrecting an old body shell

Anybody who has embarked on a project will know the overwhelming desire to pose parts together to see an end result even when the project is far from complete. I dug through my stash of decent looking shells and found this one that was painted for my original TXT racer project. Thought it was fitting to use this to see how the truck would look since I'm upgrading the juggy tranny to TXT specs and this project too is supposed to be a racer. Looks pretty good IMO!

One thing to notice in the third pic is how I've chosen to setup the suspension. The front has some added castor intended to improve steering response whereas there is zero castor for the rear. The lower links are identical in length the the stock TXT to preserve the wheelbase, but the upper link length and mounting positions have actually been optimized to maintain the same castor angle throughout the range of suspension articulation.

Now let's try some wheels

I decided to use the same shockmount design that worked so well with Project HOOF on this truck. They were milled out on my tabletop mill this time instead of the old hacksaw and file technique - works the same, but looks a tad more refined. lol!

This project saw me making multiple internet orders to tower for parts that I always discovered I needed only after each order passed. I was almost going to place an order for some wideners until I remembered that I had a set of JJ's wideners installed in my Ripper Clod! It's funny how we can forget what parts we even have. Time to test how the truck looks with the wideners, CRP wheels and IMEX pullers.

Here are some pics with the wheels and shell on.

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26.07.2004 Fixing the steering

I was using GPM aluminum knuckles on the tube juggernaut and I decided to re-use them in this truck. They not only look good, but are actually a welcome addition because of the durability they add to the truck. However, a good race truck definitely needs to steer well and one drawback of my knuckles were that the steering throw was limited by their design. In the first pic you can see the maximum steering of the knuckle which is restricted by the steering arm hitting the axle casing. Although I understand that GPM has since redesigned their knuckles to resolve this issue, I decided to mill out some of the steering arm to fix this problem. The second picture shows the milled out area.

In the last pic you can see the steering throw of the unmodified arm (left) versus that of the modified arm (right). This should give my truck the steering it requires to be a competent racer.

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