Project 8x8

[Doggy]

Hi all. I am in this hobby for 15 years now, not active all the time.Last year after few years of pause, I bought tamiya hilux to drive around with my friend. And afer some time and talking, we discovered a world of 1/14. He bought 6x4 scania, and I bought a Bruder toy I tought I could do the conversion to RC as Bruder toys look very nice.
I bought this crane

And then these to

Also rc fork lift


Then I had to say STOP, as I had many toys that I can only watch

So started to brake it down


I see that I cant use this chassis, tires and wheels are useless, so only cabin and crane for now. As I bought 2 trucks, the main thing to do was to make chassis for them. Some calculations later showed that I need 22 wheels, 22 tires, 7 axles,... $$$$$$$$ Maybe it would be better that I just bought tamiya truck and call it a day

But I didnt

First I started doing the most expensive part, the axle. But hey, front axle is not that expensive, so I made a design for drop axle, and some wheel hubs, to see how tamiya truck tires will look on Bruder. I used my 3d printer to print out my design.







Soon after that I started looking for some small cheap open differentials, and found something fo a 1/12 scale buggy that I thought might work. Ordered it, and started to design my axle around it. Somewhere along the way a friend called me and said that he needs all wheel drive to drive offroad, rwd is just not enough he said.
So I droped drop axle, and decided to go al wheel drive. A spent some time working on the axle design, printed out 10 different ones to find the best solution.



Then when I thought I had it, friend called again and said: "My friend, we need to have remote locking to help us when we get stuck offroad!"
Ohhh, here we go again. So I did a simple locker for my bought diff.



I dont like how this version is engaged, I have some other ideas for it, but I need to find a thin cable with tubing I could use, and then I will continue with lockers. For now its on hold, but I left the axles with the place to install lockers later.
So this is the first version of the rear axle with V1 locker instaled



Then I decided to drink one beer



Then it all goes bad. I realised I dont have enough tamiya wheels to see how it will look like when I put 2 axles at the rear. So I decided to design my own wheels and print them out.
Then I realised I dont like tamiya hex, and I want scale 10 bolts hubs. So I designed new wheel and hub. Then I needed leaf springs for the rear. I tried to design and print them, and I was very supprised as they worked really good. First design was something like tamiya use, but than I realised thats far from scale, so I used some Actros photos to see how the real thing looks like. Few days, and many sleepless nights later, I had all of this on my desk.