I was really interested in making this 4Runner a TRD Pro edition, so the
first thing I needed to do was address the wheels and tires. The
picture on the left shows what you'll find on the real thing. On
the right you can see some SLS printed TRD center hubs which are made to
use with Gmade wheels.
These are the plastic beadlock wheels which came with my Gmade Komodo
which happen to look a lot like Toyota TRD wheels. They've been
sitting unused for years after I upgraded my Komodo to Proline aluminum
wheels, so I figured they would be perfect for this project. I had
a set of even older Proline BF Goodrich All Terrain T/A tires that I
was using on a LEGO model which were also perfect. The pictures
above compare the wheels before and after installing the new center
caps. Also compare to the real photo above. If you look
closely, you can also see that I used real scale lug nuts instead of cap
screws. I got those from Locked Up RC.
Above are a pile of Element Factory Team upgrades including steel pivot
balls. On the right you can see that the pivot balls have been
installed.
I also got these 3D printed TRD Pro emblems for the C-pillar. I
painted them silver which looks pretty bad with the white so I'll
probably go back and make them black.
I decided I wanted to add the optional servo winch as well, but there is
no place to install a fair lead without some modification. I
carved out a spot in the front bumper and then installed an aluminum
fair lead as shown. This looks OK, but the downside is that the
body cannot be completely removed from the chassis since the winch cable
passes through it. I just extend the cable way out to remove the
body and access the battery.
Here I've installed the powerful Reefs RC servo winch
which comes with a real braided steel cable. The final installed
winch is shown on the right.
