Toyota mini-truckin - WPL

[frizzen]

A while back a guy needed some WPL axles for a custom Dodge Tradesman van, but a set of axles alone with some metal guts weren't all that much cheaper than a whole C24 kit. Ok, guess I like blue a little better and could become something later.



I like the looks of the late 70s early 80s Hilux well enough, but had a much LOWER plan in mind than wpl did. It may or may not actually need those axles under it? Make something acting like a Z-rack, throw a couple extra servos. Started trying to shrink the wheelwells back toward stock size.

Then while talking to my wife about what i was thinking, she said that's just not Radical enough! Well if you're gonna call me out, i guess you're getting a red one.





So...
- Yes, i did spend WAY too long trying to get my VW Split-window truck raised back to a stock-ish height, and ultimately it's now bagged/juiced.
- Lowriding rubbed off on me again.
- Yes, i "can" buy and assemble something from a kit, but something odd happens anyway.
- Yes i do see the irony of raising a low truck, and lowering a high truck.
- Too many projects is almost enough. The answer is always N+1

Blue isn't a TOYOTA, it's now a YO truck. Fairly simple goals. Lowered, minor body mods, it's going to act like a 3 stage Z-rack bed dancer, some paint with graphics. 1980s or early 90s styled. I'm not trying to tuck 22s or lay door.

Red is a Convertible truck that's going to get smoothed out, tonnau cover, spoiler. Probably going to do a scissor lift, bed spin, and dump. She REALLY wanted Spin for some reason. Not too sure much else could happen, wifes giving ideas on it? Not a 'Truxarossa' body kit though.

Some inspiration
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc9hhS...ature=youtu.be

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YIneYj...ature=youtu.be

https://www.reddit.com/r/rccars/comm...eo_in_comments

Why? I don't know! He's on third, and i don't give a darn!

-----
Changing one answer:
"Why?"
Back when we were doing events, they kept calling us "Mini-Truckers". No one i saw drove an actual mini-truck.

[frizzen]

Frame under red gets the 4-link inverted, and some chop for maximum slammed.

Got the Red bed hollowed out, tonnau cover and fwd bulkhead installed

Turns out a "Beef&Broccoli with hot & sour soup" 2ch camera gimbal that comes with pair of mg90s is a perfect self centering fit onto a WPL frame crossmember, little bit of solvent. 'Dump' is easy.





For 'Sides' it's going to get more interesting, but i can tuck servo under the lifter arm to run something.

Wanting to try to keep a drop-bed with truck cap option on blue. Which may turn into way more brasswork than i was hoping. May have to do a mounted truck cap

Also i'm looking for ideas on a shorter adaptable street-ish looking wheel setup.
Wpl B/C crawler tires are 2.65" / 67 mm
Wpl D suzuki truck tires are 2.15" / 55 mm
Wpl D drift tires are 2.18" / 56 mm

[Tommy R]

This looks interesting! And kudos on the Abbott and Costello reference!!

[jerry56]

These are 50mm
https://store.rc4wd.com/Dirt-Grabber...es_p_4943.html

[frizzen]

Thanks tommy. With a lot of customs ya either get it, or not. I think this is one that can't be explained. 'Whose on first' seemed to fit.

Jerry, those look promising. Still might be a little more sidewall than i'm hoping for? I was looking at the Losi Micro 'scaler' wheels i had, but wasn't sure about beadlocks

I'm slowly narrowing things, but it looks like the Wpl D-series cheap 'steelies' can probably be made to tuck. Still won't be dragging chassis with them, but probably fit and get some steering.

I think the inverted 4-link will work pretty well on one. Probably going to run dual n20 gear motors in it

I'm probably going to try locked Leaf springs on the other that's likely to get custom 2wd axles?



I also learned that the Wpl axles with the D steel wheels are going to be a great fit for another Nylint conversion i'm not ready to move with yet. (U-haul Maxi-mover)

[jerry56]

LOL... Nylint collectors all just felt a disturbance in the force LOL... the U-haul is much sought after. And yes the WPL axles are a perfect fit for the Nylint/Tonka trucks.

[frizzen]

"Good, good, late the hate flow through you!" (I still don't go for collector quality cars to ruin with awesomeness, this one looks like a cross-country rental truck that's been in use since the 70's)
-
Axle and wheel narrowing surgery has got the wheels pulled in to around 4.750" wheel hub to hub. This is about the limit of narrow that's 'easily' possible with wpls, so this is about as low as the truck can go.



This gives the trucks a "Stock-ish" height. I was aiming more toward "laid the f- out". Got another plan though for later...



Atleast now the hood is not much higher that the crawler tires it came with.

https://forum.retro-rides.org/thread...i-truckin-pics

[jerry56]

ahh... you used the new D series tires are they a whole tire or like a Bruder, just the front face. I guess I should get a set just to see. The size looks right... Looking at that link you really need a small tire...

[trilliwilli]

This is something else for a change. I hope that the end result will still have some dignity, some of the cars on the retro-rides site you linked are just vulgair and non driveable.

I’am not a big fan of extreme make over, but Chip Foose knows how to make a car brutal and subtile at the same time. His C/28 pickup truck is a nice example of a very nice custom truck.

[frizzen]

These D- wheels are a plastic front face and treadwidth with a glued on tire. The inner sidewall just hangs out in the air. They're cheap, rubber tread, narrower that the C- wheels, and stamped steelies look ok on a lot of stuff.

Also grabbed a set of the chromed mesh D- wheels, but they're drift tires so it's basically unusable!

The plan is these trucks will be drivable and have some Dignity, but still be fairly ''Look at Me''. I mean if it can't drive anywhere, why is it even RC? Able to steer, Low but not dragging. Decent enough approach and departure angles to clear bridge transitions and power cords. I already had to fight through undriveable low with that VW Split truck conversion, it had to get ''hydraulics / air-ride".
I've actually never liked Foose.
---
I dunno whatever i do, it's still gotta have a little more dignity than a...
Superfly
https://youtu.be/2JtzHhf3hXc

Or a Slab with Elbows
https://youtu.be/2tpcpDgeTwU

I don't know. I'm... it's... i'm just saying...it could still be a LOT worse.

[frizzen]

So the C24 trucks (bed) have the Round headlight 4 block grill, and the C14 trucks (flatbed/truggy) get the Square headlight 6 block grill. They don't interchange. To tie into chassis the6 block grill needs a winch bumper, 4 block grill is integrated into body kit that bumper snaps into.
Obviously i now absolutely *NEEDED* to convert a truck to newer style. Because reasons?



Both axles were narrowed pretty extensively earlier. It's not quite enough for one plan.
Front fenders lost the lip on flare, shortened shocks.
Rear bed sides bent outward, bed floor just removed.

If ya really work at it... you can get wpl axles, these wheels, with inverted 4 link bars, to lay on the trans housing. Think of it like chopping Dana-60s to the width of a Toyota axle, and trying to put wheels back into the fenders. There's a 3d printed dual-gearmotor skid plate someone designed (that was stolen by china and available as a kit) which would give belly clearance again.

That servo gimbal from above with the top shaved will give 'Dump' action as it sits in this picture. It could probably do it with only 1/3 of the bed cut out. So you'd have it like cab, toolbox, full depth, boxed tonnau.
It's still a dancer, not a dumptruck.

[jerry56]

Always an adventure with you ... LOL.... can't wait to see how this comes out...

[frizzen]

For what it's worth, *I* am not even sure where this is going! I do know it's gonna be 2 seperate directions.

The fun part of the front-clip swap is that it shouldn't really work. But most real vehicle Clip Swaps are like that...

That 6-square grille still mounts to hood, but has a screw tab that's supposed to tie into winch bumper, winch bumper ties to chassis mounts. So after sneaking up on tolerances slowly, you basically cut the non-fitting parts flat, glue under-bumper to body. Then hopefully remember to come back and mount the screw tab to grille, so you can sink screw hole into under-bumper somewhere not seen through bumper holes.

Info stolen from https://www.fourwheeler.com/how-to/1...toyota-pickup/
"1979-'82 Toyotas have round headlights and the '83-'85s have square. The '84-'85s appear taller because they have square-cut fenderwells versus the '79-'83s round ones. Grilles changed slightly during the '81-'83 model years."

Now Blue is a 79-82. Red is an 83. If i took one with the 6 square grille, slammed it, raised and squared out the wheelwells it'd be 84-85.

Red is going newer styled: 4-link, 4wd, big wheels, stock height. Royal metallic, stripes. Big airbrushed looking decal on tonnau if i can find something cool.

Blue is going old-school: leaf spring, 2wd, small wheels, low. Pastel, with weird line graphics on sides
--
Turns out these trucks can be either Steel or Aluminum frame rails.

[skeeter]

Nice job, Frizzy! It never ceases to amaze me what you do to customize your projects!

[frizzen]

Thanks man! Gotta try to keep it more exciting than just slowly driving laps while looking scale
I doubt i *ever* would have come up with doing any of this to a truck on my own, but stealing existing customization ideas is way easier!

*** Warning Spoiler Alert! ***

Obviously, a truck needs a spoiler.


Keeping it old-school, so we'll be running some Eagle 5-stars.

[frizzen]

I've been looking into some options for making 'Bowden cables' to run the racks cleanly.

The sleeve spring-a-ma-thing part is the big issue but these seem to be viable, going by other builds and ideas i've run across:
Rc truck differential locker cables. (Ready made option if small enough)
"Wave A" springs (made somewhere in japan, hard to source)
Teflon sleeve (many suppliers, may reduce max force)
Brass tube (for the non-bendy parts)
Guitar string spring (haven't seen it tried yet)

With pull-cables made of 'heavy braided fishing line' or 'fishing line steel leader'.

[frizzen]

Low trucks can't go around dragging really important parts on the ground. You gotta save the pavement dragging for all that unimportant stuff like frames, rockers, exhaust, body panels, oil pans...

Today we're just talking about mods that happened on Red to get a "box stock WPL crawler" down to around "stock or slightly lowered toyota" height.

Narrow the **** out of axles, radius some off the steering knuckles
Narrow a fair amount off a full set of D-12 wheel hexes.
Knock the inner sidewall off the front set of d-12 wheels.
Shock bodies get shortened below the mount screw, bottom is plated & drilled, then a few turns of spring put in and top snapped back on.
Thats enough to JUST get your tires pulled inside the fender and able to steer.

Stock trans went away. It's now got a dual gearmotor setup that tucks to less than 1/4" below frame rails.
The stock 4-link axle truss is mounted upside-down, below the axle. Kit 4link bars.
The chassis side of the 4-link bars go to the same hole in the frame above where the factory thought the lowers should go. I shaved the hanging ears off frame.
My pinion angles are bad, but i don't care enough yet to put adjustable 4-link bars on it. Maybe when i trim driveshafts

Bottom of chassis


Not tall, could run & drive like a normal truck.

For the weird gimmicky things that make me interested in doing mini truck things:

Some 0.6mm ID / 1mm OD teflon tube arrived, which seems to work pretty well with some 50lb Spiderwire stealth-braid fishing line.

I've also got some other options on the way for doing low torque Bowden Cables that can kinda look and act like hydro lines.

[jerry56]

Shortening the axles must have been a pain, I think I can see how you did it...

[frizzen]

The front axle is all in the knuckles. The outer face of knuckles were flattened. The flats of hexes were extended all the way in, and the screw hole deepened. I'd like to say all of that was done before the hex was cut way down. Everything inside of the knuckle pivot was left alone. The knuckle arm for drag link was cut away for tire clearance

The rear axle case got shortened to the outboard bearing seats. (Be smarter than i was, take the axle apart before doing that, as now one of the bearing seats isn't.) The metal shaft got both knurled ends cut off and regrooved. The plastic hex that holds wheel to axle got cut down from both ends.

This set was modified with: a Flex-shaft with a cutoff wheel, a Dremel in their drillpress attachment as a wimpy manual mill to deck the wheels, Files, Vicegrips. Lots of test fitting and getting mad it's still too wide.

These are NOT big torque axles. The hex to wheel surface are is now very wimpy. I also wouldn't trust the reduced rear hex to axle shaft connection. Do NOT do this type of mod if you want to crawl, or do high speeds, or abuse them. Cruisers only.

Metal axles could give better results, but will need better tooling than i have access to.

[frizzen]

Where's the love? Back to some work on the Blue truck. Gotta cruise before we get radical.

So here's that ''Servo gimbal glued to a chassis crossmember" first stage dump thing from earlier, with the mark1 version of a second stage. Clearly this thing has the side pivot in too close to center line, gives more of a Rotate action than the Unstacking action we're looking for on the second stage. It puts a fender into frame way too early. I'd have to limit the throw to something wimpy like 30 degrees.



Truck bed tonnau cover mounts on grey bar. Servo mounted on chassis lifts black part with white glued on. The next servo would pull a bowden cable, to pull short side of grey bar down. Bed tips aft and left.

Even at the time, i knew i actually wanted to have the side pivot stuck out over a frame rail, but kinda wanted to see if it might work "well enough" without making some cantilever structure to get the hinge way out there, strong enough, and square. (No, stop being lazy.)

We're going with a custom 'dual n20 gearmotors in C-channel' axle because i've seen it used on german builds for a while and it looked interesting. Plus it's LOW clearance. Some brass tube and solder adapts rear wheels to the D-shaft motors. Front axle isn't too spectacular either, it's just a styrene stack that holds the knuckles on my 5-stars.