Radio Control Dukes cars

[Jim85IROC]

2 minutes ago, RogerDuke said:

Thanks for sharing this Jim. It is really awesome and made me think......They did a lot of different things with the General in 7 years but never made a body out of glass. It would have been fun to watch it jump a creek. 

This is just how unpainted lexan bodies come. It'll be painted once I finish all of the other modifications.

[Jim85IROC]

Free time has been sparse lately, but I managed to get another police body printed.  The next step is to do all of the sanding, filling, priming to the individual pieces and then glue it together and do more sanding, filling & priming.

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by Jim85IROC

[RogerDuke]

It's always fun to watch another project get started. Thanks for sharing it. 

[HossC]

I have my fingers crossed that the paint goes on smoothly this time.

[Jim85IROC]

50 minutes ago, HossC said:

I have my fingers crossed that the paint goes on smoothly this time.

It's later in the year. The humidity is gone and I'll be painting inside. It should go a lot better.

[Jim85IROC]

I recently picked up the brushless Kyosho Charger VE on the left.  When I reprinted Rosco's police car, I sized it specifically to work on the Fazer chassis.  I'll swap the General Lee stuff over to the brushless chassis and use the brushed one for the police car.  I also grabbed a set of black & white General Lee decals for the gray body, because why not.

[RogerDuke]

Great pictures. Thanks for sharing them. I especially love the reflection of the General on the front fender of the grey Charger on the bottom picture. It almost looks painted on. Very artistic...edit: except it looks like a 10 and not 01.

Edited November 4, 2022 by RogerDuke

[Hobie Hartkins]

WOW! Those are nice! Thanks for sharing them!!   ( They look real!!) 

[Jim85IROC]

Decided to sticker up the gray body. I love how this looks!

[HossC]

It looks good. It reminds me of the special edition 1:18 diecast cars that were made in black but had all the regular decals.

[Jim85IROC]

Got a new video up that compares these two Chargers, specifically the differences in the bodies:

 

[Jim85IROC]

Lately free time has been at a massive premium, especially since deer season started, so progress has been minimal.  I haven't had time to work on the 3d printed police car at all, but I have made some minor progress on the RJ Speed General Lee, specifically the body mounts on the WL Toys chassis.

Here's a shot of the chassis with all of the electronics reinstalled and the front & rear body mounts fabricated:

Here's an up-close of the front & rear mounts, both of which were made the same way:

The mounts are both made from 1/16" Kydex sheets.  In the past I've always worked with 1/8" Kydex, which is extremely durable and rigid, but heavy.  Because this car already weighs more than a real Dodge Charger because of the massive aluminum chassis, I really need to cut weight wherever I can or that 390 sized motor won't stand a chance of surviving for long.  The problem with such thin material is that it's not very rigid, so I had to do more than just a right angle bend like I would have done with the thicker stuff.  To make these stronger, I had to cut the "wings" on the sides and bend them over and tie them together with screws.  Hopefully that's more clear in the underside pics:

Here is the body set onto the chassis with the new mounts:

One of the issues that I've run into is that the body doesn't sit as low as I had hoped, so I need to rethink my attachment ideas.  Originally I was just going to go with the standard body post method, since that's the easiest, and it would make it more like the Kyosho "hero" car that this will be standing in for during jump scenes.  I could bend the kydex down more and still fit the body posts, but the body sits right where it should as-is, so I think that instead of fooling with the body posts, I'm going to just go with velcro mounts and call it a day.  From the beginning, the plan has been to add a lip to the bottom of the chassis to attach the bottom of the body to the chassis with velcro anyway, so what's a little more on the top?

Here's a close up of the mounts through the body:

The next step is to trim back the mounts, as I don't need them to extend as far from the shock towers.  After that, I need to locate and cut out the wheel well openings, and then the 3d design & print work starts for the body.  I'm trying to accomplish as much of the "in the garage" work as I can before it gets stupid cold, because I'd rather sit inside in front of the computer during that period.  This means that I also need to make some real progress on the police body soon, or I'm going to have to spend a fortune on propane to heat the garage every time I go out there to work on it.

[RogerDuke]

Thanks Jim. It's so cool to see what it looks like through a clear body. I wish they would done have done that once on the show with the real General. 

[Jim85IROC]

Finally, some progress on the RJ-Speed General Lee build!  I haven't been able to touch it in over 6 weeks, but between Christmas vacation and messing up my back last week, I've had a lot of time in my desk chair in front of Fusion 360.  I modified the Kyosho General Lee front end to fit the RJ Speed body, and I also created a whole new rear taillight assembly from scratch.  Right now these are still in draft form and are printed at a high layer height with no sanding/smoothing done.  These are just to make sure things fit and that I'm happy with the overall design before I take the time to print & detail the final set.  Even though these are drafts, I like to paint them just so I can get a sense of how they're going to look, plus they photograph & video much better than just having all black pieces.

 

Here's the fully assembled rear taillight assembly:

 

Here's the piece taken apart to show the individual sections.  This was done so that I can paint & detail the pieces correctly, plus it gives me the ability to use a transparent taillight lense that I can put an LED behind if I get ambitious down the road:

 

The front is essentially a re-scaled & re-angled copy of the one I designed for the Kyosho body:

 

And the individual pieces, again so that I can paint & detail the assembly properly:

Edited January 1 by Jim85IROC