RCCrawler Forums

c0bra

As the tittle implies this truck began life as a boring base camp. For the first several runs of its life it ran a Holmes crawlmaster 16t paired with a 1080 on 3s. It ran fairly well for a bone stock rtr rig but was a bit boring, specially considering how much I like the gladiator.

After debating on getting a gladiator roller off eBay and building that to a trail pig, I realized why don’t I use the base camp as s test dummy to fix the 1 thing I don’t like about the gladiator. The issue being the shapeways mount for the vfd trans. Ever since installing it I’ve had issues, basically the mounting screws for the vfd NEVER stay tight. I’m not blaming the designer of the mount, more shapeways.

Now why a vfd twin? That’s easy! With getting a Phoenix chassis kit and the build for it not needing a vfd twin, why not put it in the base camp? As an added bonus this will hopefully have more room to mount electronics.

Now your probably wondering how does a vfd twin fit into a scx10iii chassis? We’ll see for yourself



Looks to me like it’s a tight fit, but there’s no clearance issues.

Now since I haven’t seen anyone else crazy enough to do this yet I figured I’ll show how different it is to a stock scx10iii.

First issue to resolve is the skid plate. Basically the sides of the skid plate don’t fit inside the rear section of the scx10iii chassis. Once they are cut down so they are flat it should fit right in. Now that’s not the only issue with the skid plate. The other issue is the mounting holes don’t line up at all and there’s no way of knowing were the skid plate is even supposed to be located on the rear rails.



So the front upper link mount will screw in to the second hole from the end of the chassis, then use a dremel to stretch out the 11th hole so you can get a screw into the rear upper link mounts. Once the rear chassis plates are modified you can put a m3x20 button head into the chassis through the slot and into the upper link mounts but don’t fully tighten. Then you can use the front rails with the sliders already mounted and use another m3x20 button on the side with the upper link, and a m3x12 or similar on the other side. Once that’s done all 4 screws can be tightened!

For the rest of the chassis it’s your standard scx10iii, in this case the gladiator version. If your converting a short wheelbase 10.3 to a long wheelbase you will need the extended rails and longer wheel wells. Part numbers AXI231022 and AXI231023.

Next steps are to figure out link lengths. So once the axles are mounted and driveshaft angles look good I will post an update!


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