RC4WD Trail Finder 2 Project

Page 1: Stock Assembly

As my very first kit build I approached this model slowly and methodically, but I failed to document it properly resulting in a minimal number of photos. We'll start with the boxes. The box for the hard body is considerably larger than the box for the chassis, but that's not too surprising given that the chassis is all in tiny pieces. The smaller bags out front are the various electronic bits that I was aware I needed so far. Of course there were some omissions since I didn't know what I was doing. The right hand image shows the inside of the box revealing the very high quality instructions.

Let's dive further into the box. Under the instructions are the chassis rails. I was really excited by all the metal in this kit, and these rails were my first exposure. I know this was going to be good. Under those were lots of other parts as shown in the right hand image. The kits even included some grease, some shock oil, and some thread lock.

No builiding yet, I'm still exploring the contents of the box (which accounts for the majority of the photos). With the main items unpacked you can see the axles and transmission along with a bunch of bagged hardware. The right hand image zooms in closer.

Here are the electronics unpacked. We have a high torque Savox servo for steering, a lower torque variety for shifting, a Sidewinder 3 ESC, a 35-turn motor, and an old Traxxas receiver I had lying around. I would eventually change this to Spektrum to use my computer radio. My biggest electronics problem was due to the height of the ESC and the bullet connectors which stick out the top. Because the truck bed sits snug down against the chassis rails, there is very little room for electronics. I had to drill some holes in the bullet connectors so I could run the wires out the side instead of the top.

Finally time to start building. Assembly starts with attaching the leaf spring mounts and hangers to the frame rails. Once you have both rails done and remember to keep them mirrored, then you install the cross members to complete the ladder frame. It is only the work of a few minutes to get to this point.

The transmission and transfer case come pre-built. As a newb, I was kind of happy about this but now I would much rather have built them myself. I did crack open the transfer case to look inside. Lovely aluminum housings on the outside and steel gears on the inside. Setting the end points for the 2-speed tansmission without a computer radio was tricky. I had to get a servo horn of just the right length and then adjust the link to just the right length but I got it to work.

I skipped forward a few steps with the photos here. The stock plastic bumpers will not be used with the LC70 body, but I installed them to get an idea how they looked anyway. You can see the shock hoops and the small scale shocks which have internal springs. The leaf springs are also installed. You can install up to 3 leaves at each corner depending on how stiff you want the suspension to be. I installed all 3 mostly for looks, but later as they broke in and I added more weight it turned out to be perfect anyway. I had one quality problem as you can see on the right. One of the driveshafts had a broken cross pin, rendering it useless. RC4WD sent me a new one, but while I waited I repaired this one with some JB Weld which lasted me almost a year or driving.

Time to start work on the body. This is essentially a complete plastic model kit which takes at least as much assembly work as the chassis. In the upper corner of the left hand image you can see the grill and front bumper. The rest of the image shows the masking I did for the black areas. After painting the black I sprayed the rest of the body in a desert tan. Then I hand painted the interior flat black.

And now we skip to the end. I used a dark gray for the front bumper and the fender flares. I painted the bed in flat black to make it stand out. The beadlock wheels were a new challenge for me and I was surprised at just how long it took me to put them together. I really like the steel construction and how real they look. At this point I've already installed a couple of scale accessories, but I would later take this to a crazy level. There a lot of little details on the body. Some are big and obvious like the snorkel or mirrors, but others are small like the door handles, side marker lights, or antenna nubs. Zoom in for a better look.

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