lowen93

Hello all,

I thought I'd share my current project of a 1/10th Scale Tumbler Batmobile from the 2005 Batman film now that I'm quite well underway with it and will try to explain how I've gone about it as best as I can and answer questions for anyone that is looking for ideas on their own projects or want to know a bit more about mine. I work as a fabrication welder so I do have access to quite a selection of tools etc so it has been a bit easier than some people would realistically be able to manage such as quite a lot of parts have been machined on a lathe and also the bodywork has been designed using solidworks however the basic skills such as measuring and thinking how or will parts work are still there. I've always tinkered with engines and cars since the age of 4 so being almost 20 I feel competent noughto just do it.

In short I bought a cheap secondhand 1/8th scale 2wd nitro a few years back which I loved but it was made all of plastic so the gears wore out and the suspension arms suffered from fatigue and had cracked so I needed to make new parts which meant it was cast aside whilst I learnt on full size cars but I now have the time to go back to the smaller cars.

What I wanted to achieve was a durable car I have designed and built most of the parts to as well as learn more about car set-ups and designing then improving parts etc so after watching Batman on dvd and watching the Tumbler drive around and over other cars I thought it would be cool to build one for myself that would function similarly.

I started by finding the overall dimensions of the real car, wheelbase, length, width, height plus the wheel diameters and widths then searched for wheels and tyres that suited, when they arrived I used a cereal box and marked the length, width and wheelbase onto it then placed the wheels roughly where they would fit by comparing to pictures from the internet.



I started building a rough frame from 13mm box that would give a basis for the chassis however at a later date it may get altered quite a bit because of parts may need to fit where the chassis is and also placed a 0.28 engine I bought to upgrade my previous car. The wheels and diff used at this point are also from the old car but the rough dimensions of the car are drawn on the cardboard.



Here shows the actual wheels I am using. The fronts are from a 1/10th buggy and the rears are from a 1/8th buggy.



Then because the car features twin rear axles I began on designing the rear axles so that the wheels didn't float around everywhere. At this point I didn't have access to solidworks still so I used draftsight which is a free 2D CAD program, this made working out measurements much easier but they were all copied from what I had decided on the cardbord template. The front axles are a similar part except they don't have the driveshaft hole in the end. I have access to plenty of 10mm steel bar so it is what used and that I had plenty of 10x19x5mm bearings in the garage.





this gave me the basis of my chassis which I could then work from.