VKTechnic

Very nice car! Blue and gray maybe for color?

Do you have an example of some pattern that would look good on this model? And I'm adding strips on the side, kind of like this:

Very clean looking model! Great job!

Started work on the front body... ...and now I'm off to school. Slow building process ahead!

That's a nice crawler you got there. And the shocks are fine, Technyk32231. Lego can take some abuse.

Very nice mix of System and Technic for the body!

Can you maybe post some pictures to illustrate your problem a little better?

The shocks are fine, there's not enough suspension travel to severely bend/damage them.

There will be an M-Motor mounted elsewhere for gear shifting. UPDATE All functions tested and working (I guess you could say they're...functional ). Swapped out the steering worm gear and replaced it with a gear train. Takes up more space but you guys were right, worm gears hold no place in crawlers. So now it's time for the bodywork. Always the slowest part for me, and it's gonna be made even slower because of school.

Should be enough, tested it and it can go up a flat wall. Haven't done an outdoor test yet though.

Thanks everyone for the feedback, both positive and negative, rude and polite. I've changed the axles once again, this time they have 1.667:1 reduction instead of a worm gear system. Also added some gearing in the chassis and a 2-speed gearbox. Final gear ratios are 8.333:1 (first gear) and 2.778:1 (second gear). Oh, and yes I did cut an old style differential to get that clutch gear. EDIT: I also made a short video of the new axles, it can be found here.

Only problem with new wheel hubs: I don't have any

Wow, didn't think I'd get so many complaints for using worm gears. I'll go ahead and get rid of them. About portal axles: I don't want to use them because they move the steering pivot point further away from the wheel. I want to limit wheel movement due to steering as much as possible, and I don't want to set up a complex steering setup with kingpin inclination etc. As they are right now, the axles provide decent ground clearance, so moving the driveshaft down won't change much.

Looking good so far! Looking forward to seeing the finished product.

I'm not going for speed here. Remember: this is a crawler. I want a controlled climber, not a dragster

In crawlers I usually like to have low wheel speed -- I'm going for one L-motor and a 24:1 gear reduction. For tires I'm thinking these or these tires.

Added worm gears to the axles and moved the driveshafts up 2 studs.

The rest of the pictures can be found in this Brickshelf folder.

I recently got myself 4 of these tires, so I figured that it was time to try my hand at a small rock crawler. I decided that it would be drive-by-wire (no battery on board) so that I could build to the scale of the tires. Of course, there's no build without some failure, so here's the first prototype, which failed because of slipping steering pulleys. This issue was fixed in the next prototype by removing the belt altogether, but it had another issue -- not enough front axle clearance. I also didn't particularly like the way the rear links were set up, nor did I like the way the L-Motor was sitting. Third time's a charm, or so the saying goes. This time, I went to a lateral MOA (Motor On Axle) setup, and I moved the steering rack up 2 studs. This allowed me to still have a supported steering rack without it being too low to the ground. Now the question I am here to ask of you all is...what should the body be for this crawler? (Or should I leave it as a bare chassis?)

Worm gears will be for the drive, I want to move as much gearing into the axles as possible.

At ride height with steering motor installed. Next step is adding worm gears to the axles and working on the transmission.

I'm keeping the wheelbase a little longer because I plan on buying some third party tires hopefully within the next month, and they're going to be noticeably larger.

The only parts I really modify are the pneumatic hoses (cutting them to a better length) and the thin rigid hoses. Those thin hoses have a lot of good uses -- connecting pneumatic tubes, working as connectors in some situations, and, of course, decoration.

Tiny car with this many functions? I approve!

Even if it could fit, it would weight too much for the suspension to function well.