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My custom fabricated 1/5 Rc Monster truck


Drifter

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One of my other hobbies are RC monster trucks. Most of the ones I have are 1/10 & 1/8 scale trucks which I built myself by custom fabricating steel tube chassis with a tubing bender and brazing the joints to give it very high strength. About a year ago I decided to just go all out and built the biggest & baddest most scale looking Rc truck I possibly could build. It took me just over 10 months from start to finish, over 400+ hours of work, and honestly I could have bought a decent shape real truck for the amount of money I have invested into this thing, but it really is an absolute blast to drive this thing.

 

It's about 33" long, almost 24" tall and 24" wide and weighs in at exactly 50lbs. I have around 200 hours just into the build of the tube chassis itself. I built it all out of 5/16" .062 wall steel tube. Axles are custom pieces made by a guy here in the US that makes them in small batches (Hess machine makes them). It uses a Castle 800kv brushless sensored motor and a Castle XLX2 ESC. Has a pair of SMC 9700mah graphine extreme lipos for 8s power. I made everything on it myself such as the headers are steel tube with plumbing fittings bent and ground down to look like real headers. Motor mount I fabed up out of aluminum angle stock and polished. Shocks are Xmaxx shocks I stripped the color off of and polished then refit with higher rate springs. Center diff is a spool (locker) out of a Losi DBXL. Drivers seat I made out of some sheet metal and then I 3D printed some gauges and such as well as numerous other scale parts. Body I airbrushed myself, another hobby I enjoy, and the chassis I had a local place powder coat for me bright yellow.

 

Here are some pics of it. I'm not sure how this site does videos but I'll try to upload a couple vids of it running as well after the pictures. The other trucks in a couple pics are normal 1/10 scale ones I have to give a size comparison.

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Holy shit Steve, I wasn't expecting THAT! 

 

Wow, I'm honestly seriously impressed, that is some amazing craftsmanhip! 

 

You could probably sell that for a few grand, might be an extra side-hustle next to the rods. I'm surprised it's not "sponsored" by your rod shop to be honest 😄 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks bud. It is really a blast to drive. To be honest it gives you that bit sketchy feeling inside when you drive it because 50lbs going 30-35mph could cause some serious injury/damage if you're not careful 😬

 

I've actually had a few people ask me to build them ones since finishing it a few months ago but always have to turn them down. One thing is the amount of work/time was just crazy, but also the money I put into it. When I started building it I figured I'd have around $2500 or so into it, but by the time it was all said & done, I went about $1000 over that budget 🤪

 

Here's a quick vid of it testing out how it handles some jumps back in April. Took about 2 months to get all the bugs worked out of it, but now I have it running pretty good and all the little bugs are worked out.

 

 

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Latest car I've been working on. Just finished airbrushing this body for it. This car is an Arrma Felony and will do about 85mph. I've never been a fan of stock factory painted bodies so figured I'd airbrush a new body for this one so it looks as fast as it is capable of going.

 

 

 

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Yup real MPH. There's actually a guy in the UK that is building a car to hit 203mph because he's trying to break the world record of 202. Just insane stuff out there in the RC market these days. I will prob stick the speed gear in mine once just to hit 85 and see how it feels, but then go back to the 60mph gear. That's fast enough for me! lol

 

 

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