Creeper 6X6 part 2 chassis

Creeper 6X6 part 1 is here

The original post for this from 2011 got accidentally deleted while I was trying to add a link to the next part, so I am going to recreate it here for a part 2.

Here is the Venom Creeper as it is supposed to be, a rock crawling RC vehicle supposedly to compete with the Axial  Rock crawlers. It was not as successful and has since been discontinued and for a little while back in 2011 they could be had new quite cheaply. I got a couple of the kits thinking I could attempt to make a 6X6 chassis. Others had already done this reasonably successfully so I had a go. One thing I particularly liked was the anodised aluminium beadlock rings which are very sci fi in design. The other aspect to the Creeper axles that i liked is they have a switchable diff lock, which means you can either have a working diff for tight cornering or a locked diff for better traction on rough terrain. As I have little regard to the "crawling performance" of these vehicles I thought they would suit my application just fine.

 I started by designing the chassis framework on a CAD program Deltacad.

This design was then printed out onto paper twice and spray glued to some 1.6mm thick lengths of aluminium angle. All the radiuses were then drilled out, after center popping them, using the radius centers marked on the printout. Then using a scroll saw and a lot of blades really designed for wood I cut out the rest of the material that made up the holes in the truss structure. Much careful filing later I had a pair of frames that the rest of the venom assemblies could bolt to.

 What you see here in these pictures is circa 2011. I eventually swapped out the shocks and their mounting positions many times over until I had a suspension system that could hold the weight of the top heavy body without flopping to the side. The added on rear axle is connected to a creeper frame cut in half, with many spacers made from 6mm aluminium rod on my Unimat 3 lathe.

It was quite a fiddle to get it all to work without binding or fouling, especially the front wheels which are turned for steering.

More recently with the new stiffer shock setup there is not the same amount of articulation as shown in the previous photos.

I then turned my attention to the body design and did a number of rough thumbnail sketches. After choosing the one i liked ( at the time, but ultimately abandoned and replaced) I roughly modeled it in Maya to get a sense of the volumes and proportions.

I then built a wood and plywood frame as a basis to start hacking into some 2mm styrene.
However I didn't really like what I had done and it sat around till this year 2015 when I did another thumbnail sketch that got me enthused and cutting plastic.


more soon...

Venom Creeper Beadlocks

I really like the design of the venom Creeper beadlock wheels. They have really nicely machined in detail and anodising and importantly for me look pretty Sci Fi. The tyres, while they might not be the best performing crawler tyre on the market, look suitably futuristic.

Creeper Kit.

They are made of a pretty soft compound and come with memory foam inserts. The design includes an elliptical bead on the tyre and a matching elliptical groove on the thick plastic wheels and aluminium beadlock rings.
The other interesting thing to note is that they have changed the size of the cap screws which are used to secure the rings. I bought two kits  on Ebay where you can get them pretty cheap at the moment, from different sources, one from the USA and one from Australia and the cap screws are bigger on the Australian and I assume later kit, which is a good thing. Everybody complains about the tiny 2mm screws being fiddly and prone to stripping (not if you're carefull). It means that the recesses on the rings are also machined bigger and the holes in the wheels are moulded slightly bigger for the larger cap screws.

New cap screws on left, older on right.

 The recessed cap screws are also the thing that makes these venom wheels look way better than the Axial 2.2 beadlocks which just sit on the surface of a flat stamped out disc.
The other thing I found is that the Venom beadlocks clamp down on truck sized 2,2 tyres better than the Axial beadlocks as well. It was tough to get these Imex 2.2 Claw Dawgs which are made of a thick and hard rubber onto these wheels but they do just fit.

Gotta Squeeze that ring onto that tyre