Marking thirty years in R/C history, the Sand Scorcher hits shelves at local hobby stores. This chassis has always held a certain symbolic nature in the R/C industry and with its fan-base.
Whether you have never built one or built one thirty years ago, this article will take you through the build process of a Sand Scorcher. First, we will get into the chassis and I will point out certain things along the way to help first time builders.
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Step #1
Assembly of the rear gearbox.
Make sure you use thread-lock where instructed.
Check the bottom shaft(BH1) orientation when installing.
Secure grub screw on flat portion of shaft.
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Step #2
Attaching Rear Arms
Use grease on appropriate parts.
Check torsion bar adjustment in step #2 Illustration.
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Step #3
Attaching Motor
Slide motor in, making sure leads do not touch case sides.
Tighten grub screw to flat portion of axle.
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Step #4
Attaching Spur Gear
Use grease and thread-lock where instructed.
Choose which gear ratio you will be running(You can change this later by swapping out pinion and spur).
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Step #5
Rollbar assembly
- You can either use the wire or tube type antenna mounts here(both included).
- If your receiver has a short antenna lead manual shows how you can use tube type antenna mounted on mechanism box lid.
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Step #6
Piston Rods
- Make four assemblies.
- Use a pair of needle nose and be careful not to loose any e-clips.
- To combat loss due to flying e-clips, I use magnetic parts trays around my workspace to hold my open screw bags.
- This way I have a better chance they might get stuck on one of them rather than in a corner of the room or on the floor somewhere.
- Tighten Grub screw on flat portion of piston shaft.
- Take note there are two short and two long.
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Step #7
Damper assemblies
Make four.
Do not overfill.
Make sure you use short rod assemblies with short cylinders and long with long.
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Step #8
Attaching Rear Rollbar.
Make sure you use thread-lock where instructed.
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Step #9
Attaching Chassis
Use thread-lock where instructed.
Install Motor wire boot.
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Step #10
Front Axles
Take note you are making one left and one right.
Use grease where instructed.
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Step #11
Attaching uprights
Use thread-lock where instructed.
Use T-Wrench to help snap ball into plate against hard surface.
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Step #12
Assemble Front Member
Use grease and thread-lock where instructed.
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Step #13
Servo Saver
Take note of direction of pieces during assembly.
Use needle nose to assist in spreading ring for easier assembly.
Use grease where instructed.
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Step #14
Attaching Front Member
Use thread-lock where instructed.
Make two steering rods.
Note direction of servo saver.
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Step #15
Attaching Front Bumper
Use thread-lock where instructed.
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Step #16
Plug in your radio equipment to zero out and setup your steering servo.
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Step #17
Mechanism box setup
Cut slit in rubber grommet to help run cables.
Use double sided tape to secure components.
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Step #18
Mechanism Lid
Make note of spring direction to aid in assembly.
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Step #19
Mechanism Box assemble and attach
Make sure rubber well nuts on chassis plate are semi loose.
Check alignment of torsion bar to groove in bottom of box.
Hold box tightly against chassis and tighten screws for well nuts.
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Step #20 & 21
Tires and wheels
Three Piece wheels can be tricky at first, take your time.
Stretch inner wheels inside tires (rear wheels make note they have directional tread pattern).
After getting front rear covers on a wheel, start with one screw and nut to secure it (Do not tighten).
Get all screws in place and tighten slowly in a star pattern to insure the bead is distributed evenly.
Pull body pin on rear axles and replace with BD7.
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Body
Now that the main chassis is together we will be skipping around a bit. I will be doing some modifications to the body and show you a few things that can be done to enhance the kit.
First, I will be adding a LED unit to the Sand Scorcher. Since the rear lights are solid piece, modification will be needed to add the LED lights. Attached to the "L" tree are some unused rear lenses. I will need to cut out the solid lens and glue on the clear lens after painting them.
Here you can see the solid lens (P7 & P8)
You can see I did a rough cut with a Dremel to remove the solid lens to make place for the clear one.
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Step #24 & 26
Step 24 exhaust and stinger.
Part of step 26 is gluing the driver's head together.
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Nose
I wanted my body's nosecone to be clean so after assembly, I glued and added putty to clean up the line.
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Interior
This kit comes with a driver figure, but I wanted more. There are lexan pieces that offer more detail, but I wanted mine to be unique. My plan involves a two-piece design. One that is attached to the body and goes as far back as the rollbar and one for the rear part of the body that will stay attached to the chassis.
So first you have the body.
Then I have to make a basic template for the interior, I chose to start with cardboard.
After doing all the measurements and test fitting/trimming, I have my template.
I then transferred the design to styrene.
After the transfer and a bit more test fitting/trimming, the base of the interior fits nicely. Download Template Here
I removed the mount from the driver figure and glued it to the bottom of base, so now I know exactly where it fits and it will not slide around while I work on it.
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More work on the interior is done.
I have decided to have my driver's head turn with the steering, so I had to mount a micro servo into his body. Since the upper torso is not that deep I need a little extra clearance through my base.
Servo mounted in his torso and through the neck
Glued a servo horn on his head, I will finalize the neck and height later.
My driver has met his navigator. The navigator will be holding a map of course, right now he just holds styrene. (Navigator is figure from Buggy Champ)
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Rear Interior
To finish off the interior, I needed the rear deck. Due to the rollbar, this had to be mounted on the chassis.
After my measurements, I created a template out of cardboard.
Transferred to Styrene and bent. I then added some primer.
Added a couple coats of black.
Some barckes I made for mounting.
Removed guard so I could get it mounted up.
Brackets are mounted.
Rear deck is mounted up.
Basic look of the interior.
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More Painting
Started some of the driver painting.
Figures mounted in interior and navigator has his map. I made a map from a screenshot of google maps (Barstow, CA) re-sized it in photoshop. After printing it, I folded it in half and glued it together so it was double sided. After it dried, I crinkled it up a bit then folded it, to give it a used look.
Rear deck with body on.
So shots of interior with body on.
Heads are almost finished, here you can see some detail on the map (Highway 15, near Barstow CA).
Some more shots with the heads on. A few more
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Body painting
Finally got some warmer weather and after some masking this is the scheme I decided on.
I used Pearl White and Metallic Blue for the main colors
The stripe is silver leaf
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Upgrades
To give my Sand Scorcher a bit more tough feel and look, I have added aluminum front and rear guards.
These guards are high quality upgrades and can be purchased on ebay through this seller
To give your scorcher that boxart look get a front guard.
Replace the rear cage with this aluminum one to give it that matching look with the front guard.
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Tires
You can add that extra bling with a toothpick and lexan paint. Just by filling up the raised letters on the tires with lexan paint you will transform the tires to a very scale finished look.
I used Tamiya PC-1 White lexan bottle paint
I find using a toothpick is the perfect the size.
Simply dipping the toothpick into some lexan paint and lightly touching inside the letters you can fill up the letters.
You can see how adding a little paint can give you a complete different look. Do not attempt painting until wheels and tires are assembled. I found wiping the tires down lightly with Tamiya thinner worked best before painting.
Before:
After:
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closer to the finish line
I cut out the driver and passenger windows so I could add some safety netting.
Got the exhaust all painted up flat black
Lighting up the bug
By drilling out the head and marker lights I was able to get LED's mounted.
and the look
By dremeling out the taillights as I showed before I was able to add LED's. I also added a license plate LED so it would be street legal in California. I lined both the underside of the license plate light cover and inside of the tailights with foil to not only reflect light but to block it from lighting up the plastic.
You can see how I illuminated the license plate.
Shot of the rear deck with body mounted
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