RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hi All
Just thought you might like to see my Tank Low Loaders for any ideas you might have for building your own units.
I have used a couple of Tamiya Haulers that was purchased as spares or repair both had good running gear but needed new cabs and radio equipment.
The Trailor for one is a modified Bruder unit that has been stretched by 130mm on the main deck and then a further 80mm on the neck to keep the proportion's right for the whole trailor. I used 20 x 10mm Alumimum "U" channel to extend the chassis rails bolted to the original bruder chassis and then plated the deck and the neck with 2mm plastic card. The whole running deck is then covered in strips of cheque plate for the vehicle/tracks. The Rear ramps are made from 10mm "U" channel steel and again plated with plastic card and then motorised by a small worm screw and gearbox under the rear of the trailor. The lights and the rear ramps are then plugged into the tractor unit and worked by the radio and main tractor drive battery..
My second Trailor is scratch built as a Lowboy. I used 10mm "U" channel steel braised together for the chassis and the detachable Swan neck, and then plated with Alumimum for the main deck over which is Cheque plate plastic card for the wheels/tracks to grip.
I asked one or two heavy haulage drivers for their opinion on a layout and from this designed the trailor to have a self propelled double winch on a raised rear deck to haul/assist equipment onto or off the bed. And then a further indepent engine/hydraulic unit on the swan neck to power the detachable neck so the unit can be towed direct coupled to the tractor unit or have the front on a dolly unit and towed by whatever. Again everthing plugs into the tractor unit and is controlled by radio and the main drive battery.
This is my first attempt at a Lowboy and after building it I can see one or two improvements that I could do.

Ran out of space so here is the rest of my photo's I have used a 1/16 scale figure from verlined (Spelling ) as a guide whilst building / modifiying my trailors and as you can see they are not far off scale. The tanker figure if anything is slightly bigger? than the scale Tamiya truck driver at 1:14 (work that one out) . Anyway I'm quite pleased how they worked out, Plus due to the more use of civilian truckers moving equipment around, I chose to use my own colour scheme and Family crest to make a fictitious Heavy Haulage company.
Hope this gives you scratch builders some ideas
regards denzil

I almost need a Panavision setting to fully appreciate this impressive bit of kit. I have the Challenger at home, and it gives me a fairly good idea of the overall immensity of your low loader rig. That's a real boy's toy ..
Very nicely presented too!

Stunning and outstanding are words that come to mind just awesome

Thanks for the replies and comment's.
As a club we do a few small local displays to promote RC tanking and entertain youngsters and I thought this would just add a further dimension to the display as the trucks drives up then unloads the tanks before driving off.
I also have to admit as a semi retired engineer the challenge of designing and building a working unit that looks as scale as possible keeps me happy and out of my wife's hair.

Very cool haulage. I putting some together myself. As for the Bruder trailer can we get more pics and detail for the rear ramps and what you done to it. What a beast of a trailer

Hi I didn't think to take any photo's of the bruder build, anyway just gone into garage and taken some for you.
The first one's show the neck of the trailer and here I used some ally triple channel from B&Q bolted to the bed and also carried along onto the angled portion of the neck for more strength, I used 3mm nuts and bolts to attached them. You will also see I used a ally drawer divider to make the base of the fifth wheel to give it a smooth rotating surface and strength. The main bed you can see from the photo's where I cut it and then inserted "U" channel ally rails (again from B&Q), bolting each end with 4 off 3mm nuts and bolts ( 2 into the chassis rail and 2 into the bed and each end).
The bed is bonded down onto the new chassis rails and a couple of small 3mm screws (to hold whilst drying).
The cheque plate covers the screw heads.
The rear ramps uses a small 600:1 inline reduction motor purchased of E-bay from china (£3.99 free P&P) and then a simple worm drive to operate the rear ramps.
The ramp hinges are made from a piece of the triple channel ally with a common bar through the centre. The centre cam is from brass with a small set screw to lock it into position onto the bar, as are also the ramp operating arms (1 in centre of each ramp). Hope these photo's help you out.
Thanks Denzil

Thanks for the photos. They are great. Great looking trailer.
Much appreciated.
Will

Hi forgot to mention the rear trailer bumper and light lenses are from the spare spue's I bought when rebuilding the globe liner tractor unit.
The wiring is connected to the tractor unit using 2 off 2.5mm phono plugs and sockets from Maplin's ( I x for the ramps power and the other one for the lights

Wow, the thing I miss when I'm busy. Awesome work!