Complete front end for a Tonka Bronco by BrianHooker

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Now that I have a 3D Printer, I thought that I would redesign my rc truck’s front end.......something that I have been wanting to do for several years....... integrating the led lights and a deeper grille all into one structure......the difficult part was styling it so that it wouldn’t look like a modern front end bolted to the square 70’s style of Tonka Bronco......I also wanted the yellow truck bodywork to continue onto the new front end......but at the same time I wanted to add the black bumpers and grille bezel, which is not only in line with the current colour scheme, but keeps some of the original Tonka front end style......so with this in mind, plus the fact that the whole assembly is bigger than my printer bed......I decided to split the whole front end into 7 parts......the main body (1), the grille bezel (1), the grille bars (1), the bumpers (2) and the clear lamp lenses (2).
During the design process I designed 4 sets of grille bars......so I have added all 4 designs as STL Files.......giving people the opportunity to choose which grille look they want, as each one has identical fixings it will fit perfectly into the Grille Bezel.
The lenses are cut (using the lens template included in the stl files) from a sheet of 1mm thick polycarbonate Lexan, which is unbreakable and almost impossible to scratch....... the grille mesh was purchased from a company that make scale metal mesh for model making......the led lights were from Hobbyking...... https://hobbyking.com/en_us/hobbyking-1-5-and-1-8-off-road-led-light-set-with-functional-brake-lights.html .......everything else was printed on the 3D printer......the whole assembly was locked together using 6 screws.
The assembly sequence is :-
1) Slot the bumpers into the grille bezel.
2) Add the grille mesh to the bezel and push the grille bars into the bezel, locking the mesh and bumpers into place, then add the 2 centre screws to lock the grille bar to the bezel.
3) Add the led lights to the lamp can using double sided tape, and feed the wire leads through the hole in the rear of the lamp can.
4) Slide the lenses into the slots provided from inside the grille opening in the main body.......the lenses are locked into place by the the two legs on the rear of the Bezel when it is attached to the front end in step 5.
5) Slot the outer ends of the bumpers into the slots in the main body and lock the whole assembly together with the 4 screws into the rear corners of the bezel from the inside of the main body.
6) The whole assembly can now be bolted onto the front of the Tonka body, once the stock Tonka grille has been removed.......but it requires longer bolts, as the new front end is deeper than the stock Tonka grille.
This truck is driven FPV (First Person View) where the truck is controlled while looking through the onboard camera via Fatshark goggles.......for an example of what it is like, you can view it on YouTube........ https://youtu.be/UVX8bOjsIS8