All right, some of you may have already seen my LCRC in my 1:1 scale fj40 build up called the "split pea buildup". I am not going to use many words in this buildup because lets be honest, we all want pics . The base is the Tamiya CRO1 chassis and I just started building my own goodies to fit the frame rails. I used brake line for the tube work and the metal joints are held together by either brazing with silver rod or by mig welding.
THE FIRST FEW PICS WERE NOT TAKEN BY ME, THEY WERE BORROWED FROM THE INTERNET. I AM ADDING THEM IN JUST SO YOU CAN SEE HOW THE BOX COMES AND THE INITIAL SETUP OF THE CRO1 BEFORE ANY MODIFICATIONS ARE DONE. My CRO1 was set up identical to these borrowed pics before I modified it, unfortunetly I am not a good documenter during a buildup
Completed rolling chassis without electonics or bumpers. Notice the cantilever shock system, this system is a major compaint of people whom run this rc. It is overly enginered and alot of people, including myself remove this setup and run a more traditional coil over setup.
Notice that those are real beadlock wheels and putting in all those little screws is a PIA.
Other problems with this setup that are commonly encountered are the drive shafts. The RC comes with a 55 turn brushed motor which in its stock form is strong enough to twist the drive shafts, and break them. Tamiya obviously knows about the problem because they include extra shafts in the kit.
There are numerous aftermarket options for these rigs and stronger shafts as well as suspension upgrades are easily obtained
Here is a pic of the chassis with installed electronics and the body mount points in the stock position. Also here is a view of the motor and transmission attached, in the last pic you can see the plastic splines on the driveshaft which are prone to failure
The body is made of lexan. It needs to be cut to shape and painted to suit your likes. (the inside of the body gets painted, not the outside). Here are some detail shots of the body just how it comes out of the box
The annealing lines you see in the pics are not at all evident after painting. With the detail of the body this thing can be made very scale
So now we get to where I start doing my own thing with the CRO1 to turn it into my RCLC. Things I hated about the CRO1 was the goofy looking plastic front bumper. In my opinion no landcruiser should ever have a plastic bumper. I also wanted to build a custom exo-cage for it that could take massive abuse yet still keep a scale appearance.
Every CRO1 I have seen, or did see when I built mine looked all the same with different paint. I wanted to do something very different so I made mine into a convertable by cutting the lexan hard top off.
Without a roof to hide all the electronics I also had to build a custom interior for my rig and build an integrated cage that would provide protection for the inevitable roll overs.
One of the things I wanted to accomplish with building my cage was I wanted to make sure that I could still have easy access to the electronics and that everything was bolt on
Below is some pics of the front and rear removable cages I built for my
RCLC
Now here are some pics of the two cages installed on the frame. In this pic you can also see that I made some custom shock mounts because I wanted to lower the ride height of my rig to give it a little more realistic stance.
also you can see in these pics my custom interior:
- I built a storage box for the back half out of styrene. I also built a dash, and the center console out of styrene. Lastly the seats are actually cell phone holders which are shaped like recarro racing seats.
The wheels are aluminum beadlock wheels made by a company called vanquish. They are cool because I can add little weights to them to offset the top heavy nature of my RCLC
some more for ya. In the last pic you can see the cool little winch it has, it isn't functional but it definatly adds to the additude of the rig. Also notice the little D-rings I have on both front and rear bumpers
Its time for some body shots. As mentioned earlier I cut the body down to show the interior. To accomplish this I superglued a rim of wire around the top of the body to provide structural support after the cutdown. Many rolls later and it is still working great
Ok so you ask how does it wheel. Thats the cool part this thing is a blast to drive. First here are some pics of the testing stage to try to optimize my suspension
So you all get the idea, I am happy with how it turned out. Other than the bling bling wheels some other extras that are on this rig which are not stock is the motor and speed control. This rig weighs around 13 lbs and the stock motor didn't have as much oomph as I wanted so I upgraded to a NOVAK brushless goat crawler motor and that was an awsome improvement
Also I switched out my stock drive shafts for some metal ones from RC4WD and upgraded my shocks to some coilovers from ST racing concepts. In the pic
you can see that I doubled up the springs at each corner (a hard and soft spring each) to compensate for the added weight
I hope you enjoyed this build and if you have any questions fire away. This with all the upgrades this is a very expensive toy but it was a blast to build and is a blast to drive
Sweet!!! I have one from Xmas but I am collecting all metal parts before the build up. I never built a RC before so cutting and painting the body will be the hardest and I'm concerned that I might mess up the body.
. The base is the Tamiya CRO1 chassis and I just started building my own goodies to fit the frame rails. I used brake line for the tube work and the metal joints are held together by either brazing with silver rod or by mig welding. 
