Freeze's Savage Flux "Frostbyte II" build thread

[Finnster]

Originally Posted by Freezebyte

Between that pic and your idea of racing your CAR against a boat on the water, you officially classified as insane Reno.

Racing a boat over water with a car? Clearly insane. Like Willy Wonka nuts.

Driving a revo in snow? Not so much.

Seriously, this Feb when we had all that snow in the NE (4ft?) I was out with my Revo jumping into snow banks, etc.

It was awesome. You can build huge jumps easy with the snow, and I had soft drifts to land in. I had to pull the revo out from under the snow. I just had a regular Neu lipo and a totally unprotected v2 MMM.
No problems. Now I would do more with the MMM to be safe, but still.

When I was done, I'd knock most of the snow off, leave it upside down the garage to melt the rest (so an water drained out of the elecs), I dried everything off well w/ an air compressor and sprayed wd-40 over all the metal bits for rust protection.

[reno911]

Originally Posted by Freezebyte

Between that pic and your idea of racing your CAR against a boat on the water, you officially classified as insane Reno.

I'll take that as a complement. Thank you sir.

I just enjoy Radio control, when I get bored of a certain style of bashing, racing, I am always thinking of the "what next" and that just happens to be racing a boat on it's own turf.

[Muggydude]

http://prolineracing.com/bodies/dese...and-slash-4x4/
???

[Bondonutz]

Originally Posted by Muggydude

http://prolineracing.com/bodies/dese...and-slash-4x4/
???

+1, secrets out. Good lookin' bod, have one myself on a Slashy.
SHould look nice sitting on the XL Flux, curious to see it painted.

[thzero]

Be interesting to see, but I still say IMO its gonna be too short! It'd probably look nice on a standard Flux or X!

Originally Posted by Bondonutz

SHould look nice sitting on the XL Flux, curious to see it painted.

SC8 body sitting on the Savage XL. Only real issue here is the short front bumper of the Savage.

[_dV]

The Desert Rat can look mean with the wheel arches cut out a bit. http://www.rcnitrotalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73809. Note the topic says Slayer body but it is a PL Desert Rat.

[thzero]

That doesn't look too bad!

Originally Posted by _dV

The Desert Rat can look mean with the wheel arches cut out a bit. http://www.rcnitrotalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73809. Note the topic says Slayer body but it is a PL Desert Rat.

Part 14: Body prep, painting and decaling


At long last, were to the part that basically makes or breaks the look of any RC car, the painting and decaling of the body. This was once again by far the hardest part in the entire build. Trying to figure out and visualize how I wanted my truck to look. Getting a balance of stand out looks along with keeping it realistic within my painting abilities, sticking with the theme of the project while still allowing for some new creativity and something different then what i've seen on other MT bodies. Needless to say, it took me right up to the laying the first coat of paint did I finally decide how I wanted "Frostbyte II" to turn out.



First thing were gonna do is wash the body. This helps remove any oils, dirt, dust and anti aging that will be on the plastic that will reduce the paints ability to stick. I also lightly scuff up my bodies with a scotch brite pad as this roughens up the inside texture somewhat of the body and gives the paint something extra to grip onto






You can easily see the light scuffing from the scrotch brite pad, this will further help keep the paint on the body and not flake/chip off




Next up and the absolute hardest part was figuring out what design I wanted to do for "Frostbyte II's" body. This took an insane amount of thinking, visualizing and trial and error




Eventually, I concluded that my $10 worth of paint masks simply weren't going to yield the results that I wanted. Which means its time to grab the painters masking tape and do it the long, slow custom way.




Even with my "helper" this was by far the most time consuming task, preparing and hand carving out the custom mask for my paint job that I had dreamt up in my head.




After God knows how long, the masking is ready and we are ready for paint




This is it, no going back now!

[Jahay]

i loved my desert rat body! It is now absolutely destroyed after the bombardment of terrible landings, but it looked damn good whilst it was new ;)

Only prob i found was that, if you do not have a wide enough offset, your tyres will hit the arches when the suspension is compressed. So you may have to cut some of your arch out or widen your stance....

Cant wait to see this painted

Part 12: Swaybar and tire upgrade


Well im back from the Labor Day weekend road trip and was pleased to find my newest package from Amain had arrived in the mailbox. Seeings how I still had enough energy to do little bit of work on "Frostbyte II" before running outa steam and dealing with Tuesdays work load, I decided to do a few easy mods and get them out of the way to make ready for the final step, body paint and prep.



I decided it was time to upgrade both visually and functionally from my zip tie mod on my first Flux that kept the bumper supports from swinging out and letting the hinge pins come loose.





Thanks to Team TCS having such great prices on stuff, I decided to go ahead and get the Savage Swaybar kit, with nothing more then the intention of using the hingepin caps.




Just a few easy turns of a screw driver....




And wallah! No more zip ties! Looks better too!





Due to the original tire/wheel combo from being A: Damaged from a bad jump and B: Having crappy traction all around, I placed an emergency order from Amain to go with the firsts "Frostbytes" tires, HPI GT-S's along with a great price on some Mugen 5 spoke rims.




I also decided to go ahead and install HPI's firm foams to help reduce sidewall flex with the bigger and heavier GT-S tires.





$9 on sale for decent quality and looking MT wheels? Sold!





Seeings how I already posted my tire and wheel prep steps earlier, I decided to just skip it here and show you the final results.





With repairs finally complete, we are ready to begin the final step of my "Frostbyte II" build this week, the prep and painting of the body! Stay tuned, were nearing the end!

[reno911]

I am kind of excited Freeze to see the final product. Especially since you are taking on the task of a SC body. Such a larges large bodies are not my forte, I get scared painting them since there is so much to them. I imagine though since the amount of detail you have put into this MT thus far that the body will look great.

Part 13: Body trimming


After a long, boring and hard search to find just the right body that I wanted for my build, I finally found it on a google image search, ending up in a random nitro forum that i''ve never heard of. It was like the "aaaahhhhh" angel music when I saw it, it was exactly what I was looking for to give "Frostbyte II" the sleek and yet powerful racy look I was seeking. Some of you guessed it after my teaser pic last week and you are correct, its a Proline SC Desert Rat Clear body for the Slash.

http://prolineracing.com/bodies/dese...and-slash-4x4/



Amazingly enough, I was surprised at how well out of the box the body looked on the Flux XL chassis, but I felt it needed a bit of smoothing out in the line flow department.





Not to much to say about this part except measure, double check, triple check and then cut/drill





Once I cut off one section of trim, I used it as a guide for the next side to help them match as evenly as possible





There, now that looks slick, mean, fast and powerful, all in one body and we haven't even painted yet! I love how the lines are a nice flow of curves and straight edges, its a personal preference of mine which made finding the right body with the right look so hard for me. Ironic considering this was made for a Slash but hey, ingenuity always wins out.










I'm very pleased with the body after the trimming so I think its pretty much done. Earlier today I placed my order for some special masking decals at my LHS after deciding on a rough idea of what I want the paint job to look like and I hope to have them by Friday and have the painting an decaling completed by the weekend if all goes well. Stay tuned in folks, same bat time, same bat channel!

[Jahay]

The slash body fits very well... when i had it on my DB-17 chassis, it was a little too small :(

Cant wait to see this painted!

[thzero]

Liquid tape... no bleeding.

[E-Revonut]

Very nice! After seeing this build thread I have began thinking about getting a Savage. I have had several E-Maxxs but they only hold my attention for so long before I get bored with them. After I snapped the chassis in half on the last one I replaced it and sold it. I miss my MT basher I have a few basers right now but they don't fit the bill. A vxl mini revo is fast and that makes it fun, but grass is damn near impossible and the smallest obstacles stop it in it's tracks. A slash thats just plane boring. I also have a rc18t, haven't used it in awhile but I won't make the mistake of getting rid of it again cause I missed my last one when I got rid of it. I have never missed my E-revo that I sold about a year ago as it didn't handle like a MT and it didn't have the ground clearence I craved. Guess it's time to save for a Savage, mine will prolly just stay stock until I brake something though.