Many years back I bought a Tamiya 1/10 beetle and used to thrash around carparks in it. I always ran it low (towards the end without springs in the horizontal dampers to help get some camber), but for the last 10 or more years its sat in a box unused with the electrics transferred into a Tamiya mini instead.
At Christmas my brother bough my nephew a Tamiya lunchbox (always wanted one of them when I was younger) and himself a stadium blitzer (and since then a clod buster too
) so when we went to visit over Easter I dug the beetle out, reinstalled the radio gear (and put the springs back in and raised the shell ) and took it with me. and whilst it was fun, we took theirs to the beach and had a propper giggle out on the sands.
So a plan was formed, I've always wanted a Sand scorcher baja beetle, but I can't justify £300+ on a kit to thrash about, so why not baja my beetle instead.
Sounded like a great plan so I rushed onto ebay and bough the 1st cheap buggy I could find to rob for parts and a traxxas buggy of some sort for £25 delivered fitted the bill.
It arrived, was stripped of its wheels (and rear outer drive shafts) and it was duly fitted resulting in this after some shell trimming
And I sat back, looked at it and I wasn't happy. I then considered shortening the chassis on the buggy and build a sort of beetle blitzer like this
,
but that wasn't right either. It then dawned on me, the reason I loved the sand scorcher and the beetle was because they are pretty scaled and in proportion and what I'd built wasn't.
So a new plan was needed. But this time some research was needed. Thankfully I was able to find examples of people having done similar in the past so I was able to work out the parts I need to order. So today I hit ebay and have on route a set of Grasshopper wheels/tyres, the screws to build them, ballraces for the fronts, longer rear outer driveshafts (as the traxxas ones locked the suspension up) and some ally hub adapters. So for next weekend I should hopefully have the parts to get me closer to looking more like
At Christmas my brother bough my nephew a Tamiya lunchbox (always wanted one of them when I was younger) and himself a stadium blitzer (and since then a clod buster too
) so when we went to visit over Easter I dug the beetle out, reinstalled the radio gear (and put the springs back in and raised the shell ) and took it with me. and whilst it was fun, we took theirs to the beach and had a propper giggle out on the sands.So a plan was formed, I've always wanted a Sand scorcher baja beetle, but I can't justify £300+ on a kit to thrash about, so why not baja my beetle instead.
Sounded like a great plan so I rushed onto ebay and bough the 1st cheap buggy I could find to rob for parts and a traxxas buggy of some sort for £25 delivered fitted the bill.
It arrived, was stripped of its wheels (and rear outer drive shafts) and it was duly fitted resulting in this after some shell trimming
And I sat back, looked at it and I wasn't happy. I then considered shortening the chassis on the buggy and build a sort of beetle blitzer like this
, but that wasn't right either. It then dawned on me, the reason I loved the sand scorcher and the beetle was because they are pretty scaled and in proportion and what I'd built wasn't.
So a new plan was needed. But this time some research was needed. Thankfully I was able to find examples of people having done similar in the past so I was able to work out the parts I need to order. So today I hit ebay and have on route a set of Grasshopper wheels/tyres, the screws to build them, ballraces for the fronts, longer rear outer driveshafts (as the traxxas ones locked the suspension up
) and some ally hub adapters. So for next weekend I should hopefully have the parts to get me closer to looking more like 
I like the cosmic alloys espec 
