Originally posted by Rich Derry on September 9, 2016
Toyota Hilux SR5 // Watch it in action and read about the build.
After Proline Racing came out with the Toyota Hilux body and seeing it at AxialFest 2016, I knew one way or the other I had to build one. Once the official announcement came out I placed an order with Tower Hobbies and waited. A few days after that, Paul from Proline contacted me and hooked me up with my dream Proline build! I then canceled my Tower Hobbies order and got to googling 1985 Toyota pickups.
Included in the Proline shipment was:
Interco TSL Super Swampers mounted on their Faultline beadlock wheels
1985 Toyota Hilux SR5 Clear body, cab and bed
Starting off, I had a hard time deciding which chassis to use and what color to paint it. I’m a really big Ivan Stewart fan and have done a few Ironman Stewart paint jobs in the past and thought it would be cool to have this done in his colors and have my other Ironman trucks in the photos with it.
After staring at the rack of Tamiya paints at the LHS, I decided that the Ironman paint job will have to wait and decided to do a stock looking overland type build with a subtle stock type paint job.
Using these as inspiration I set out to figure out what chassis to put it on. I wanted to run the Vaterra Ascender chassis because of RC4WD’s new ARB diff covers but, because of the tall shock towers the Toyota body sat too high and looked like a mud truck so I opted for the tried and true Axial Racing SCX10.
The chassis isn’t too far from stock however it does have a decent amount of aftermarket parts on it:
Boom Racing aluminum shock mounts (10mm of shock height adjustment is nice), rear axle lockouts, front c-hubs, steering knuckles, and steering links
Knight Customs floor and battery mounts
RC4WD Rock Krawler rear 4 links
Custom front battery mount
I ended up painting the body my favorite Tamiya color, PS-16 Metallic Blue backed by Spaztik chrome and sealed by Tamiya black. Backing it with chrome really gives the blue some depth. I also cut out the window weather stripping from the protective body cover so that I could paint that flat black on the outside. I also sprayed flat black in the bed for the bed liner.
After the body dried I mounted up the Proline roof rack using their Hemispherical mounting pieces, this type of mount is really nice when your roof isn’t completely flat, I didn’t really need it for this roof, but I like the added height for mounting scale parts to it.
The Proline lights are super bright and look great, just wish they had an external switch but that’s nothing HeyOk can’t fix.
The Super Swamper premounts definitely saves time and fingers and look amazing, there was only one tire bead that wasn’t mounted but that’s an easy fix.
The cool part of this body and cab set is you can change up the look pretty fast, mounting up the Axial honcho bed is quick and looks great, then when you get sick of that look, mount up the bed, it’s even deep enough that you can put your tools or other scale accessories in it and they won’t fall out.
Last part of the body is the interior, usually I’ll mount up my Dinky RC interior that I’ve made to work with numerous bodies but lately it bothers me in my videos when the truck/jeep is driving by itself! I picked up an Axial Racing Wraith Spawn interior for pretty cheap, painted it up along with a motocross style head and mounted it to the body, it fits great and is only held in with a few pieces of 3m double sided tape.
Finally it was time to mount up the RC4WD tube bumper and a Warn winch with scale pull tab, you gotta get you a couple packages of these pull tabs!
I’m calling this one done…for now.