WPL Land Cruiser body… What to do?

We’Ve got this little ftx, which is a rather nice truck, but my planned build looks like it isn’t really going to work at least not without quite a lot of hacking and modding. You see, the ranger body has already sustained some damage. Part of the front wing has snapped off and there’s also a crack at the rear, not the end of the world by any means. In fact, i kind of like it. However, it’s only going to get worse. My plan, then, was to replace it with a hard body. According to the specs, it should be roughly the right size to fit, but as i’m sure, a lot of you will have noticed. Sometimes chinese rulers are a slightly different length to the rest of the world. Right in the box, we have wpl’s relatively new landcruiser body. I have the version that comes with the extra accessories since there’s. Only a couple of quid difference in price, so let’s see what you get in the box. We’Ll start with just a quick look at the bags first, so we have the roof rack. What looks like the standard bumpers, another bumper and some lenses, the body which has some more bits packed inside the screws bag and the instructions, as usual, with wpl they’re, hitting well above their weight with all the bits and bobs? If this kit was from one of the major rc companies, you’d probably expect to pay three or four times as much okay, so the plastic might be better quality, but still wpl stuff, especially the more recent ones, are great value.

Inside the shell, we have a bag that has the battery tray spare wheel and a couple of other little parts, the interior, which unfortunately has holes in the middle of the front seats, but it does look pretty good. Otherwise, though, here we have some more lenses stickers and some springs i’m guessing the springs are going to be stiffer springs to replace the stock ones on a wpl chassis, as this body feels like it’s, going to add quite a bit of weight, there’s the bag with All the small bits like the mirrors, and then we have the body itself along with the windows, and i have to say, it’s really rather excellent. The lines are all very crisp. Wpl have certainly come a long way since the fairly basic b1 models. The instructions. Look. Nice and clear i should imagine, like other wpl’s there’s, going to be a couple of confusing bits, but from a quick look they do look pretty good at the top. We can see the usual contents of the standard land cruiser body kit, then at the bottom right. The extras you get with the slightly more expensive version, very nice right, let’s go in for a closer look. First thing: we’ve got the roof, rack, it’s plastic, of course, and comes with a set of spotlights. It looks like a set of three millimeter leds will fit. So we’ll have to populate them when we get to it. The rack itself has four posts that look like they’re supposed to fit in the holes in the roof.

They are extremely tight, though, so we might have to fiddle them a little bit, so they don’t get completely stuck it’s, always nice to be able to remove things later for when we need to do a really deep, clean. The plastic is very flexible, so it should put up with some rollovers without cracking very nice. Next up, we’ve got a bag with lots of big black bits. They feel like the same flexible plastic as a roof rack, which would be ideal for things like the rear. Bumper, which also has a nice little cut out for the spare tire now i’m, not super up on land cruisers, but it does look about right to me next. We have the running boards that go right under the body and i assume attached to the side of a wpl chassis. The dashboard is very nice. I think it could do with a couple of stickers for the instruments and radio but other than that it’s pretty good. Here’S the standard grille with the round lights, which interestingly has been hand painted silver i’d, have thought they would have skipped doing. The paint just to save a bit of money last out is the chunky standard front bumper, which i’m sure takes the bumps with ease next bag and we’ve got loads of small bits. First we’ve got the mirrors for the mirrors now usually i’d expect just some foil stickers, but these are actually proper. Mirror finished, die, cut plastic inserts most impressive.

Then we have these widgets, not sure where they go, but they have screw holes. They look nice though. Then we have the intake for the snorkel i’m guessing it just gets glued on so it’s going to go missing after the first roll down a hill i’d much rather, the snorkel was moulded in one piece. Here we have the steering wheel and some sort of box lid a bit big for a car battery cover. So i wonder where it goes. These are the runners for the roof on the standard kit. They mount up to the same holes as the roof rack. A full set of wipers and door handles all very finely molded out of the flexible plastic, very nice. The mirrors and snorkel are flexible too, so they should survive some actual use and now the accessory pack with the extra goodies first, the bumper, with bull bars and spots, it’s, really going to make the truck look mean and with the roof rack make the more expensive Kit well worth the extra few quid the standard. Bumper really does look a bit round and dampy next is the grille with the square lights. Now this one hasn’t been factory painted, but that’s, okay, it’s nice to have the option. Then we have some sort of bar jobbies, not sure exactly how they mount but they’re supposed to protect the front wings. Oddly, they have a clip at one end, i’m, sure it’s, going to be obvious how they all go together once the bumper gets mounted up and in the last couple of bags we have lots of clear lenses, stickers and more lenses and those springs.

And surprisingly, a plastic spudger the same ones you get with those cheap phone screen replacement kits a bit strange, but i’m sure it’s going to come in handy so that’s. What we’ve got now for the problems if we pop the land cruiser next to the ftx chassis it’s, already pretty obvious it’s not going to be the best fit first, the body is quite a bit shorter than the ftx’s wheelbase, not a huge problem. If we make up a new set of suspension links and if we split the difference, it’s really not that far off, all it would take is finding some suitable rod ends probably m2 and making up a set of links to shorten the wheelbase. We could probably even cheat a bit and just shorten the rear it’s, really not that far off. If we spin the chassis round, we get to the real problem, though those ftx axles are just too wide. Half to two thirds of the tyres are outside of the body now some poke is good, of course, but that is a bit much so i reckon my plan is going to need a rethink. My new plan thus far is for the ftx to make up some parts to run a small 2s lipo up front and some wheel weights and rewire the lights, just some simple mods, but really that’s all it needs. Then, since we now have the wpl land cruiser body, i think we should probably get a chassis for it, and i’ve often wondered if those carbon or fiberglass chassis kits with all the aluminium bits are any good.

So maybe this is a good excuse to try one out in the meantime: we’ve got the other wpl hand cruiser to finish. I did get a bit distracted best part of a year ago. It only needs drive, shafts, wheels and electronics to make it a runner. Anyway. There we go that’s where we are with the little 1. 16Th scale, trucks a few changes in the plans, but we should have some things to be getting on with soon enough right. Well, that’s it for this week, then, as always, thanks for watching like if you like, subscribe.