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the-sofa-king

Howdy all, thought I'd share the TF2 trail truck I've been slowly tweaking over the past few years. So a couple of relevant facts I feel are pertinent before getting started: 1) my uncle owns a small roofing business that I've worked for a couple times in the past, and 2) I seem to have developed quite a kink for recreating real cars from my life as RCs over the past several years, as evident by the 3 different RC clones I've built of my own car .

Anyways, on to the Trailfinder. It started life as a humble RTR (I know, I know, get it out of your system). Here's the oldest picture I could find of it without booting up an old phone. As you can see I didn't waste much time before getting it filthy.


And here's how it got so filthy. Conquering its very first dirt pile!


So when I first got the thing I didn't have any specific plans for it. I mostly just wanted a full scale rig to tinker with after feeling like I'd reached the limits of my 1:18 Gelande. So I started with the basics: removing the helper springs, filing the corners off the leafs, swapping to those reverse mount rear leaf perches to prevent the leafs from binding, etc. I also played around with the axle-over-spring look for a bit.


I really liked this look. I still think about swapping to a smaller tire and going back to this stance.

But I'm also kinda scheming about maybe picking up a second TF2 to do so with, I dunno...

I digress. So at this point I had done enough homework to know if I wanted more travel out of my suspension, it would be cheaper and simpler to just go 4-link than to do the whole revolver shackle/z-box deal. I also knew I wanted to give the body some sort of theme, and at the time the plan was the Pizza Planet delivery truck from Toy Story. So I got it some 4-links and longer shocks and bought and painted the bed cap. I also replaced that garbage plastic bumper it came with with the metal one.


It was at this point that I discovered RC4WD made a ladder rack to fit the Mojave body that looked just like the rack on one of my uncle's Rams, and I immediately knew what I had to do with my Trailfinder.


Now, my uncle's never had a 3rd gen Hilux in his fleet, but I'm not necessarily trying to recreate any one truck in particular, more just build a rig that looks like one of his trucks took a stray round from Rick Moranis's shrink ray.



So step one, paint it black. Step two, paint it white.


I really liked the look here after some sanding between coats of white. Looked like something out of the Borderlands video games.



Masking for step 3

Orange.



Anyone else feel like they need a cigarette after this part?


Came out fairly well for a rattlecan job.


Looking better after correcting some mistakes around where the two colors meet and putting the rest of the body back together. Also added some scale ladders I found on eBay, and folded a bed box up out of some scrap aluminum trim coil.





Enter Player 2! Got a stupid deal on this thing on Black Friday last year and couldn't pass it up.


Only problem is now I've got two rigs and they're both 4-linked.

Can't have that!


By this point not only had I collected 2 sets each of the Teraflex z-boxes and revolver shackles, but I also upgraded to a lipo battery, and installed a winch as well.

Added the basic LED kit



And now to add some more flex


Gained one metric tire of flex at both ends.



Next mod was equal parts form and function


The Hank Hill edition battery killswitch from Powershift RC