Project Old School Update

It’s been a slow go for my old school monster truck due to a recent move. All the parts have been sitting in boxes for a few months and I was finally able to free them and start building again. Here’s a little bit of an update of what is going on with this project.

Once the bed was cut off the cab, I patched it with a sheet of Styrene. That gave the back of the cab a smooth surface but after looking at photos of 80’s truck cabs I found that full size truck cabs weren’t as smooth as what I had. They have several indentations and the bottom is raised slightly in the center for chassis clearance. I wanted to get my cab as close to real as possible so I busted out my rotary tool and cut up the back of the truck. Now the back of the cab looks a little more realistic. The only thing left to do is to give each cut out a bit of a bevel. I’ll do that with some body filler and a custom made spreader.

 

I’m using a Tamiya body mount from the High Lift series to mount the cab to the chassis. I don’t want to use screws like the High Lift trucks because the screw heads will take away from the scale look of the truck. I’m going to use magnets instead. They are more than strong enough to hold the cab in place and you won’t see them. I’ll be modifying this mount to make that happen and to give me a little more room for some other items that need to be hidden in the cab.

 

The tonneau cover is held in place with magnets. This makes it easy to remove when I need to access the bed tilt mounting screws. After I figure out the roll cage mounting I’ll cover it with fabric and call it done. Just like the cab the cover that I made for the bed opening will have a cutout in the center to provide clearance for the chassis.

 

One thing that I have always liked about old school monster trucks is that they always went wild with chrome roll bars. Triple bars and stacked lights were often found on these trucks.  To make that happen on my truck I’m outfitting it with a roll bar and lights from the Tamiya F-350 High Lift. The roll bar will be sitting on top of my tonneau and need to be cut down slightly to get the top of it to line up better with the top of the cab. The lights will be stacked using custom made mounts and they will be filled with lots of LEDs.

 

Inside the scale V8 engine from RC4WD will be a Novak Rockstar brushed 35 turn brushed motor. I’m not looking to get super fast speeds out of this truck but it will need torque to get it rolling. This motor will make that happen with no problem.

 

My truck will have a scale look and why not add a scale sound to go with it. Team Associated’s ESS-ONE sound system will take care of giving that RC4WD scale V8 engine some life. This along a bunch of other stuff will be hidden in the cab of the truck.

 

When I started this build I came up with a game plan by looking  at a bunch of pictures of old school monster trucks. Not matter how many times you look at those pictures there are still unanswered questions. So I picked up this monster truck model kit to help me answer some of those questions. It will show me things like what the fire wall is supposed to look like or what type of fuel cell was used and so on.

That’s it so far. My goal now is to modify my leaf spring mounts to move the springs in a little closer, design the lower mounts for the springs and shocks and get the cab mounted so that I can start designing the bed and hood mount/tilt.