Rebuild of a Knight Hauler after a Crash

[gismow]

Hello everyone,

I'd like to start a new thread showing a rebuild of my Knight Hauler. My son had a crash with it, the bullbar is completely crashed, the front dumper has deep scars and the cabine has a damage below the front light.

Here's an old photo directly after the first build.



So I decides to give the truck a complete re-design. Working title will be "Black Devil".

The cabine will be painted in glossy black, the chrome from all parts will be removed and these parts will be painted in matt black.

The electronic parts:

The gear box is send to **** and is replaced by a underfloor motor with included gear from Servonaut.

The speed controller will be an S20 also from Servonaut.

Sound and light will be steared by the USM-RC-2 Module from Beier electronic.

The combination of motor and controller allows an extremely smooth driving also with a trailer. No bucking and - extremly important for me - absolute silence. No beeping, no high frequency sound, absolute silence.

The sound and light module is extremely flexible, all sounds can be controlled and also the light setup can be defined for everyone's wish.

So the first step was to strip the complete truck down to the frame and kick out the gear box. The new motor placed.



After that I started to modify the truck. The following optical changes are planned:
- New side pipes
- The cabeling of the roof lamps must be changed. The gap in the roof is horror.
- The truck will get a new rear end.
- The frame will be coveres by a brass plate, the saddle plate will be modified to unlock via a hidden bowden cable.
The cabine will be cleaned. The roof is glued on the cabine, the gap in the front will be closed. All unneeded holes will be closed, the defectors (???) will be glued and cleaned.

OK, enough words written let me show some pictures.

[gismow]

First modification, the roof lights. The holding of the roof lights where rebuild with brass. I wanted to hide the srews. In addition, the cables must be passed to the left side were they will go into the cabine by a hole covered by the holding.

[gismow]

Saddle plate and rear end

The new rear end and the saddle plate holder are finished. The saddle plate is modified.















The actual state

[gismow]

The side pipes will be replaced by new ones made of brass.

[gismow]

The cabine

First I bought a new cabine and started to paint with color from a hardware store but the result wasn't as expected.



Some areas are rough and the color is too thick, structures are covered.

But after having a look at the old cabine I saw, that the professional painter hasn't worked correctly. It seems that he didn't use a primer. I could pull the paint of the cabine with a cutter.





Now I had a clean cabine and I decided to start again. It was also needed because with the last cabine I forgot to modify 2 things. The holes for the pipes must be wided for 2mm because the holdings at the pipes are set 2mm too high, error in measuring. In addition not all holes were closed.

So pictures will say mor than 1000 words:















Yesterday I started to paint again, now with primer and colors from Tamiya

Here's the cabine after priming and wet grinding.

[gismow]

In addition the truck will have a special light feature. To realize this, I created a small platine with an ATMEL ATMega328 chip.It will stear a light effect depending on the speed of the truck.

[kaptain Jack]

You are on the right track! Your brass skills are excellent.Keep posting.

[gismow]

Originally Posted by kaptain Jack

You are on the right track! Your brass skills are excellent.Keep posting.

Thanx, I'll do so

[gismow]

No, the chip will control the intensity of LEDs depending on the speed signal of the receiver.

Additional details will be posted if it's ready for presentation

[Espeefan]

Nice work on refreshing the Knight Hauler up. Your brass work looks very nice. Am I seeing some sort of under chassis light tubes for a neon effect in the rear of the truck? I'm interested to see how your speed sensitive LEDs work.

[dabears]

Loving the mods that you are doing to this! I might have to use your idea for your 5th wheel release! that's clever and hides the servo etc. awesome work!

[gismow]

Hi Aaron,

thanx

The hook (sorry, I don't know the exact word) is made of 0.8mm Brass. To get a small distance from the alumunium part I soldered a 0.3mm copper sheet.

The Brass screw is shorted, because it's lower than the plastic part.

The only problem was the bowden cable. It's metal that can't be soldered. In my actual solution I drilled a hole, filled it with solder and put the cable into the hole. It's a dirty solution to "glue" it only into the hole.

I think a better solution is to make a hole, put the cable thru, move it into a cable end sleeve, crush it and cut it of. The advantage is, that the cable can easily be removed again without using a soldering iron.

[gismow]

Hi

Just a small update. The position of the stear servo wasn't as expected. In the past I only created a temporary solution with an ugly PS plate. Now I wanted a solution that hides the servo between the frames.

So I two holders of brass with a threaded pin soldered in to fasten the servo. The frame got 4 holes and the holders fitting screw threads.

Done...









In the meantime I started to paint the cabine. It's nearly finished, only the clear coat layeers must be sprayed.

[Trucker_Jo]

Very Nice

[gismow]

The painting is done and it's fine for me, I'm satisfied about the result.

[glorydays24]

Nice and wet looking. Good job.

Big John

[avel]

Nice build!

[Stuff]

looks amazing!

[gismow]

Hi...

First I planned 2 front boards, one for the standard lights on the frame behind the grill and one for the special light effect between the frame. But some tests and future plans shoed that this is no usable solution.

So I created a new board "all in one".





The board will be placed vertical behind the grill. It will look like this:

[gismow]

Hi...

Today I reached a milestone, the cabine is assembled. Let's have a look at it.